WINNER

I don’t think anyone could have been more delighted - or so ruddy surprised - about this than me. The book, written by Gordon M Hay and illustrated by me just WON AN AWARD! I didn’t go to the awards ceremony because of childcare, time, money, distance, hassle and I was so so sure we didn’t have a chance against the competition. I was also recovering from yet another cold and just couldn’t face it.

My disbelief was verging on a sort of panic when I glanced at my phone that evening and it was exploding with messages

just after the announcement (which I missed). This book was self-published by Gordon and thank goodness he was in attendance to collect the award. He commissioned the illustrations himself so it was just a two person project done over email and a couple of calls throughout another year of Covid restrictions. To be honest,

I have rarely been so grateful for a project; times is ‘ard these days and the continued 2020-21 lockdowns shut all my stockists and completely torched any community projects and live illustration I had lined up.

It was all feeling rather desperate, so a chance to draw 50 odd images for a book was BIG news. It was also massive amounts of work - it took me nine months to do it around other wee jobs and childcare - but it really came together in the end. I was - and am - very proud of it.

Scots - even in Scotland - is seen as niche and a minority language (some folk even think it’s just a dialect) despite folk speaking it all over the country, as much in inner city Glasgow as up in the wilds of rural Aberdeenshire.

Doric is only one branch of Scots, so to have recognition for this Doric book is amazing. I guess the award technically belongs to Gordon, but it feels like I won too (not least because he said very nice things about me - I watched the playback!), but we owe our sky high good feeling to the unwavering support of friends, family and followers, to everyone who bought the book, voted, read it and still reads it. That’s the bit I think about. I read it to my three year old, it’s read in several Aberdeenshire schools and there must be a host of folk reading it to children all over the place. What a joy.

GOOD PRESS

For this small business ( and a lot of others!), there isn’t a lot to look forward to once the boom time of Christmas is out of the way. All that

January brings is chilly draughts and the invariably depressing last minute Tax Return (2021 WILL be different).

There is a slow and gradual pick up of work nearer the Spring, but those first couple of chilly months are often a chance for early business Spring cleaning, piles of admin (I am looking at new branded stationary quotes today) and recuperation from the busy business of the festive season. 

So, from the fug of the business grind, imagine my delight at being contacted by The National this month – recognition! They got in touch via a recommendation from past clients (which is always a nice thing to discover). They must have said some nice things and pointed out some of their favourite items as The National wanted photos for a wee feature called ‘Meet the Maker’. They had a few questions for me to answer about Illustration etc and how I do things.

All press is good press (so they say) but in a Covid-19 world of closed shops and slow sales, the best kind of press reminds folk they can buy nice things made by people who really need that support.

Buying from a wee business and pre-paying for services are the things that will keep folk going during this interminable series of closures and lockdowns. Every order I receive lifts my spirits because at the other end of the transaction there is a person who likes what I do and wants to keep a piece of it.  

I’m lucky that I have anything to sell at all. Many of us freelancers have no work; theatre makers and massage therapists, musicians and hairdressers. That list is just the folk I personally know. I suppose this is a wee reminder that we all depend on each other.

If you can pre-pay your next haircut, donate to a food bank, support another charity or buy a podcast, its worth doing because it keeps it going, but more importantly it keeps the people behind it going.

BRAND REFRESH

I’ve been laboring under the name ‘Illustration etc’ for years now and although I spent what I thought was a long time on my branding, I’ve been wanting to kick start it for ages. Partly I want the look of my site and social media feeds to better reflect my work, but I’m also shifting from precise ink and flat digital colour to more expressive pencil and watercolour. 

It feels like I’ve moved a long way in the last decade, but not so far that I have to change everything. 

I’ve bored pals talking about it, talked to creative peers, looked at what other folk are doing, but I still felt like I needed more guidance. A big catalyst was attending an online branding workshop by Liz Mosley. It gave me the confidence to start thinking about redesigning my ‘brand’ again but to not completely abandon what I was already working with. 

So here it is. My website is somewhat refreshed and the wee person I’ve always had as my logo is now more clearly me. I also eventually decided to keep the name ILLUSTRATION ETC as I believe it still suits what I do – I did remove the comma and full stop from it though – they have always got in the way!

I wanted to keep the azure blue I’ve always had because it speaks to me of bold blue skies, open seas and fresh thinking. 

The new orange complements the blue, but even better, it’s bright, optimistic and the colour combination reminds me of ludicrous 1980s colour palettes – which I love. Obviously. I drew all the elements of the branding using colouring pencils and the wee lines and patterns you might see around the site contain elements of the new logo; blue stripes from the jumper and wee orange triangles from the earrings. 

It’s been quite the undertaking – rewriting copy, moving things around, trying to ensure I’ve changed my logo and branding on EVERYTHING. It’ll be some time before everything is completely in alignment, but

I feel so much more optimistic and positive about my work and my brand.

It’s been a long time coming. 

HOURLY COMIC DAY 2021

My day in comics, hour by hour on Feb 1st. More info under this giant picture!

Hourly comic day, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re supposed to draw a comic every hour for the entire time you’re awake! It really is that silly. It is also great. I’ve never taken part before, although I have participated in other internet drawing challenges and always find them rewarding - but I think this one has been my favourite. I was definitely influenced by artist, Lucy Knisley’s superb efforts over the past decade or so!

I’m not a comic artist – YET. 

I have been doing some research into it because of a personal project I’d like to start on which I think might (in some way) take the form of a comic. At least, it’s influencing the way I’d like to tell stories in the future. What better way to try my hand than drawing comic after comic about the mundane routine of my ever-reducing Covid lockdown life?  

Up to this point, my illustration style has been quite precise, in a way. Fairly  representational, it’s been map and architecture heavy and illustrations have been pencil drafted, inked and carefully rendered for adding flat, bright digital colour. Well, not any more! Well, probably there will still be some of that, but 

I’d like to make work that is looser, quicker, less controlled, but with more character.

 Throughout the day I got more confident, more daring as the hours clocked by. I drew the first two or three comics with zero intention of sharing them, except with a couple of pals. I looked back over my work and thought, “you know what? These are nice.” Sure, they are quick, rough and a bit wonky but they’re full of life and honesty and personality. I love seeing that in other folk’s work so I took a deep breath and went for it. 

It was an intense day and creating the comics was really all I thought about, even when I was emailing or cooking or playing with my toddler. Seeing my world as a narrative isn’t something I do naturally, so it was a great exercise for that. Practice makes perfect, of course, so I think my illustrations actually improved, even through one single day of drawing.

I started to look for ways I could simplify shapes or actions to make them quicker to draw or clearer to look at.

Only by the end of the day did I really think about positioning the text sensibly so it would be read in the right order by a viewer, I tried a heap of different perspectives and views so it wouldn’t look boring, I tried to visualise all the fragments as part of one piece. Best of all, there were artists across the world all drawing with me, all covering similar ground and all looking to each other for inspiration and a bit of a laugh. A really great day. Hopefully I’ll be able to make the time to do it again next year! 

Thanks to pal, Ishbel McFarlane for encouragement and to Joe for looking after everything else while I drew. 

4. UNFINISHED BUSINESS

A small inked section of A Midsummer Night's Draft, Act II, Scene I. Puck first appears and we are introduced to the King and Queen of the fairies who are having some time apart.

I’ve started 2017 trying to overhaul Illustration, etc. That involved looking for help, mostly! Amy helps me for a few hours a week, I’m trying to take more time away from my desk, but still organising, sorting and cataloguing my past projects and work. I also decided it was time I went to the Cultural Enterprise Office last month for a one to one session to talk about Illustration, etc.’s future. I see these sessions as a kind of semi-emergency business therapy.

If I’m stuck and I don’t know what my next step is, I go for a chat

and I always feel so much better afterwards. I’m sometimes lacking another perspective and I can’t be very objective about the little business I’ve built for myself.

The upshot of this latest meeting* was that I should find more time to be creative, to pursue my own goals as well as those of my clients. HOORAY! Sounds like a great plan. Finding that time is part of the big overall plan, but for starters they encouraged me to consider taking on only projects that further my ‘story’.

So the things that interest me, that make me excited to be an illustrator, that I really believe in –heritage, equality, stories, community, education, all that sort of thing.

I joked about my recent organising and the folder marked ‘UNFINISHED’. It sits chronologically last in all my shelves of folders, encouraging me to add to it, or perhaps to finally migrate something from the folder to my desk and into a completed projects folder. The biggest of these ‘on-hold’ projects is pictured above. I call it A Midsummer Night’s Draft.

It’s so big. It sometimes feels pointless, but one of my goals (deep breath) is to illustrate the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream as one single long panel using only Shakespeare’s words, like a lengthy tapestry. Back in Summer 2013 when I began this project (so long ago!) I edited the play down to (what I felt) was the minimum amount of text to tell the story properly. The play is set in ancient Greece, so my illustrations will reflect the vernacular art of that period. In this case I chose blackware pottery, you know, the elegant black and terracotta colour urns with all the people running around them, jaunty patterns, beasts, folk drinking and all that? The speech would go in the top and bottom borders, like a comic. I thought it would be fun. Turns out it is MASSIVE. Also, I don’t actually have a reason for doing it except that,

1.     I think it would be so beautiful if I get it right.

2.     It would be amazing to see the whole play all at one time so you could see all the themes and character arcs and mischief play out all at once.

3.     I actually think as an educational tool, it’d be a great introduction to the (let’s face it, pretty confusing) play.

4.     Folk who assume Shakespeare is too intellectual, too out of date, too boring would be able to see how much fun this magical play is right from the get go and would be able to see it and read it and understand it and it would still all be Shakespeare’s own words.

But it has been shelved. I don’t know how I would make it worthwhile, you see. Once I’ve finished it, then what? It’ll take several weeks to do at least, maybe months of not being paid. I just can’t do it. Who would fund something like this? The only remotely finished, inked section is the one I did for this blog post! I have only done the pencil sketches up to the end of Act II, Scene II and that took me at least an hour a day for three weeks in 2013. In pencil! Also, I’d do it a bit differently now so I guess it’s a page one rewrite.

I hope that other creatives have these folders - whether in their head or on a shelf or tucked away somewhere secret

– they feel to me like the dreams we return to when the rest of our working lives can feel somewhat staid or cynical. The thought of returning to this unfinished draft fills me with trepidation, but also I can still see its latent potential. It will give me pleasure to revisit it and build it up, inch by inch. I might even tweet some images at the Globe or the RSC or something - they might like the idea too. Looking through the folder of half baked ideas and forgotten sketches, I look forward to the possibility of placing some in the bin where they belong, others back on the shelf for another time and the occasional one onto my desk for much needed reconstructive surgery.

*Overall I have had three CEO meetings, two in 2014 that were connected to the Glasgow Alphabet Map project (it lacked direction initially) and then this latest one once I remembered it was an option.