Hello! It’s been a while since my last post, on the story I created for Folktale Week. Since then I’ve been busy posting illustrations on Bluesky and doing many things but never quite getting around to telling you about them here. So, I thought a round-up of the past few month would be a good way to start 2025.

I signed with a Literary Agent

The biggest news is that I am now represented By Sally Kim at ABLA for children’s book illustration and writing!

I have a lovely illustrator page on the ABLA website and am now working on getting a dummy or two ready to go out on sub. Exciting times!

Urban Sketching

I continued to help run my local Urban Sketching group and 2024 saw a big increase in the number of people regularly coming to sketching sessions. Our first meet up of 2025 was at the always welcoming Museum of English Rural Life. As a change from the big machinery and farm equipment, I had fun drawing the kids play area.

book making

Before Christmas I spent a fantastic afternoon making sketchbooks with some arty friends. I used the prints from my gelli printing session as covers, and ended up with three little books.

The slot book is such a simple design but quite sturdy. You end up with squares to peek through the cover (possibly to a title?) and the centre pages show off the cover design again, with the flaps.

(Below should be two little videos showing the books, but they might not be included in the emailed version. You can click the link at the top of the email to ‘read on blog’ to see them)

My favourite book was the map fold. Just a single page inside but such a nice surprise when you open it. I really want to make one that has a newspaper design on the outside and then a painting of fish & chips inside!

I had planned to do a whole post about book making. Showing how to make some perhaps. So if that would be something you’d like to see, let me know and I can do a more in-depth post about it sometime.

other stuff

That’ll do for now! What were your arty highlights over the last few months?