Website

Dear John,

I made myself a website, I think it still needs work but I've done what I can for now and its nice to see my work up.

http://cargocollective.com/potatofinch

Hallmark

Dear John,

This week Hallmark offered me the opportunity to go for a two week placement due to a cancelation. I was very excited about this as it's the boost I need to remind me why I bother trying with this course and a way to provide me with some work experience that I quite desperately need. The issue is that they want me to come in this monday so I have no time to prepare anything or find out what I'll be actually doing or need. Fred really wanted me to turn it down under the idea of concern that I wouldn't be able to keep up with my work and that if I'm stressed now then I'll be doubly so after the two weeks. All of this was true and why I sent off the email with his compromise of suggesting I do two days a week for the next four weeks. However after the meeting with him and after I went home I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than I'd made a massive mistake and that I'd given up on the one thing I'd been actually excited about for the first time in, well in probably the time it's been since I was accepted onto this course. When I came into college the day I was asked to do it, I felt like I could do anything. After talking to Fred I felt like I couldn't do anything good enough and that all the time and effort I've been putting in hasn't been worth it. it was from this great divide that I decided I had to take them up on their offer, I couldn't turn down an opportunity that I obviously cared about when I find it hard to care about most things. So I spoke to him again first over email where I overstepped my bounds in being frank and frustrated that instead of helping me like he said they would do if any of use got a similar opportunity he was just giving me the disclaimer that the course wasn't going to take any responsibility for my actions and wouldn't move around any deadlines. I honestly never expected any of that and was a little insulted that was all he would say to me when I was trying to go against his advice in the most inoffensive way I could think of and was trying to make my commitment to staying working clear. However as the student and him being high ranking here I am in no position to say any of my frustration to him. This made the couple of days I had between getting the offer and when it starts even less as I spent so much of it trying to do things the way I thought Fred would like (the being honest and trying to sit down with him to work out a time plan rather than the emails) rather than just going for what I wanted myself. To be honest I should have come directly to you but I knew you would be busy and I got this between mondays. All of this seems to have been harder than it should have been when I already didn't have a lot of time. But anyway enough of my emotions about it and more about the practicalities. I've planned my time so that every night I'll becoming straight from Hallmark to my college to do my work including saturday daytimes, I'll also be doing what work I can on Sundays. It'll be unpleasantly hard but it's what I'll have to do to be able o do both the things I want to do. Also the welcome pack they sent over has mentioned how they'll look through my portfolio, which I don't have and won't have time to pull together but I emailed them to say this and she said it won't be a problem. I'm trying to quickly make a professional website to show them instead but it's proving a little more difficult than I thought.

Quick post thought bubble post

Dear John,

I only sold one print at thought bubble and it was after lowering the price to £2.50 from £5. I'm not sure if it was the right decision to lower it as the person that bought it was the same person who liked it the day before and may have bought it for the full price or it could have been what swayed him over. I think Barbarella may have been a little to obscure for thought bubble as while it is a cult hit type film a lot of people around my age range don't really know it. Rowena who had my print on my table said that it was the adults that would stop to look at it rather than the younger ones. I think if I were to get a table next year I would have to make more easily accessible fan art. That being said I think I would still like to have half of my own work there as I don't love making fan art but it is the type that sells there.

Thought Bubble

Dear John,

It was the first day of Thought Bubble today. I had to meet my friends who actually have tables this morning to hand over my prints. When I got there this morning they hadn't left the house yet. It turned out that one of them was having some stress/illness problems so as I had nothing to stress over I helped them set up their tables and got in everywhere without a wristband. It really reminded me of my childhood where we'd sell chutney at craft fairs, so I was really comfortable and was just able to be there for them to help where I could. I left when it started to get busy (before my lack of wristband was noticed) but I'm really glad that I was able to have been some help and I think I'd really like to get a table next year. I didn't want to leave them this morning.

Thought Bubble Prep

Dear John,

I've focussed on cop so much lately and got so stressed about it that I've hardly prepared for thought bubble. I was going to print out my business cards this week but I scheduled to do it straight after my dissertation tutorial, which was a mistake. They never got printed. I did however find one that I could a least put next to my prints to say that they're mine and I found my potatofinch stickers. So I used those on the bags to reinforce that they're mine. Another thing that I didn't manage to prepare was packaging for my prints. However as everyone is lovely I was told about how the works sells A5 cellophane bags which really worked and helped to make my prints look more professional. I had however found a little easel that could hold my prints but I'm not sure if I'll be able too use it as its not my table.

Victo Ngai

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Dear John, The Victo Ngai talk was really good so I tried applying somethings that she does to her work (and things I'd like to explore myself) to mine. for a while now I've been thinking that I need to explore texture and that my black lines are too harsh for al of the illustration but even after playing with it I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I think I need the contrast to be stronger because I just went from it being really harsh to being really soft. I think I should play with texture too as I think it adds a bit of depth. However I think its going to take a bit of work before it looks decent. Notes from the talk: ...Make the most of your limitations - use the space you have effectively ...How to pick the right moment in the story - how to plan the right composition ...Capture the concept of the story and foreshadow the ending without giving it away ...Use the cropped space to reinforce the idea of size ...Size of the character/object reflecting the emotion or their role in the story ...Fit the structure of the story ...More money for a job tends to mean less freedom -big corps. are less artistic and give more instructions - less appreciation than from an art director ...They can demand all sorts of things like how all the men have to wear long sleeves ...Advertisement will buy the rights to your drawing for a certain amount of time (3 months etc.) and they can use it on everything ...When given something vague, make your own narrative ...The way you grew up may be visible in your work, Victo Ngai said that she draws busy scenes because she grow up in Hong Kong ...Make textures ...As long as its consistent within your drawing its fine not to be literal ...A good illustration (balance structures) should work in black and white as well as in colour ...higher contrast lines for closer and fading ones for background ..."obstacles are for eliminating the ones who don't want it enough"

Ls6

Dear John,

On tuesday night I was walking home with Hollie and Rowena and we stopped in Ls6 the bar/cafe to pick up Becky and Adam. When we got there they were doing an event where they were drawing people who would sit opposite them. So obviously we joined in for a little bit, it was really fun and a really good way to chat to lots of different people. I think this would be a really enjoyable way for us to promote ourselves. Tom has already emailed them to tell them that we'd like to do it again. 

Travelling man exhibition

Dear John, 

Last friday I went down to travelling man with Joe and tom to hang all the prints up for exhibition. It was pretty fun and easy (nobody died or broke anything woo!). We tried to put work together based on how light or dark the colours were so nobodies work would get drowned out. I think we did this pretty well and I'm happy to see everyone's work looking good and professional. I posted the top picture to my social media and I've had some people share it it (without me asking them to) so I'm pretty happy with the promotion side so far (as it's only a little show it doesn't need much). However to reinforce it I'm going to post my poster up on monday and remind everyone that the exhibition up as that's its official launch date. 

You told us some good information and here's some notes

Dear John,

here's some notes from the good info you gave us:

• Always break down my invoice in case they ask for it later
• £50 an hour 
• Look at the client brief 
• Clarify the brief with the client so you're on the same page
• Evaluation and estimation
• Add on any costs of necessary purchases - memory sticks etc.
• Itemise and estimate all content needed and the timing - tell them what they're paying for
• Double check everything before you start
• Agree over email as it's date stamped
• Call them by their first name
• "Can't wait to get started" seem enthusiastic 
• "Minus any unforeseen details" these things do happen and need to be talked about briefly 
• Put your time frame into words they understand - make sure you give ourself enough time as you may be working on something else already
• Project terms
• Don't accept checks 
• Use official purchase numbers
• Don't ever send invoices to the client if they have an accounts department
• Make a Linkedin -don't say student say what you are!

To do now:

Choose someone and get in contact with them. Who? What to ask? and write 250 words about it.

Thought bubble prints

Dear John,

I got my 5 A2 prints of Barbarella done for the travelling man and I also used this print slot as an opportunity to do some A5 prints for the thought bubble event. Originally I was going to print ten (5 A4s with two on each page as they don't do A5 prints) but as I had a an illustration for my friend to print too I thought I should fill that space with an extra Barbarella. However while I was printing the printers messed up twice first with the colour being off on the A2s (all the red came out pink) and then with one of the A4s the printer accidentally printed on to two sheets of A4. I've decided to take these as free bonuses as the pink while unusable for the exhibition could probably still be sold (even it has to be at a marked down price) and as I was printing two a page for my A5s one of them is still usable. I'm pretty happy with this as printing is so expensive (especially when you don't know if any will sell), at least I got more for the money I did spend.

Hallmark

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Dear John, as I was late to our meeting we didn't really get the opportunity to talk abut Hallmark which is what I'm most anxious about but here are the examples of my work that I think I'm going to send over. The first one is a drawing I did of the friend of mine that works there. I'm not sure if these are the most appropriate and could do with some advice.

Hallmark

I got a message through from my friend at Hallmark, They want to see my (non-existent) portfolio or examples of my work and I'm now a bit terrified as I have no idea what I should send over but I know I should do it as soon as possible. 

Barabarella finished

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Dear john, I finished my poster for Travelling man. I hope it works A2, I've done some A3 test prints so hopefully A2 will be the same. I'm most worried about the background of marbled ink as I took it of the internet originally (I changed its colours to the colour scheme and it said it was 19th century so I don't think I'll have any copyright issues), When I first printed it out A3 it got really pixelated. Since then I have quadrupled it and mirrored it to match up, In the A3 text it looked ok but it may still be pixelated in A2 but I guess I'll just have to find out when we go to print. The next biggest problem I had was about how to make sure they don't look like they're floating. I had tried just putting a floor underneath them and shadows but it wasn't quite enough. I got some good advice off some friends to look back at the film and see if there's anything from that I could use to make it a bit more solid, and I saw that the dream chamber (which I had been thinking about anyway for the background) has a mirrored floor (fits in with my current see through floor) and had these spike plants everywhere. I tried making them but my first attempt was too much really. So I made them thinner and more basic. They worked a lot better but it was only when I put a run of them along the end of the floor that it really came together. The addition of the text really helped to make it look more finished but I'm still a bit anxious about it as I've never made a poster before or worked with a limited colour scheme and I really want it to be good for the exhibition.

Barbarella progress

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Dear John, This is where I'm up to for my Babarella poster, It's taking me quite a long time to do it but I think that's because I'm over thinking it and being too perfectionist about it. However I'm pretty pleased with the Finished Barabarella and I'm pleased with both the feather detailing and the chain mail pattern I made for her.

Barbarella

Follow Rosie's board Travelling man on Pinterest. Reference imagery

Travelling Man

Dear John,
A couple of us third years have been chosen to make an A2 poster to be exhibited in Travelling Man (a great comic book shop in town) for the duration (and perhaps a bit longer) of Thought bubble. I am particularly excited about this as I've been visiting Traveling Man since I was a young teenager, I was shown it by my sister that's five years older than me and theres still somewhere in the back of my mind that thinks its an incredibly cool place because of her. Also its a pretty great comic book shop. I've also been thinking of making some smaller A4 or A5 prints to have available for sale at Thought Bubble as some of my friends have tables that wouldn't mind me putting a few small prints on. This should be a pretty good way of getting my work seen and hopefully will get my name out there a little bit, at the very least one or two people will know potatofinch after this.

I've decided to make a poster for Barbarella for this as I've just seen it and thought it was great, also because 60's sic fi would fit in so well in Travelling Man and Thought Bubble. I've been looking at a lot of 60's posters as reference and gathering lots of reference images from the film. It's been a bit tricky to draw as I don't normally draw either 'sexy' characters or men (particularly muscly men) but I think they've come out well and hopefully they'll all tie in together well. I've been thinking that I'd like to use a marbled ink texture for my background as the film has lots of trippy backgrounds in it. Another thing is that we have a colour scheme that we all have to use to tie our work together, I've never had to use a limited colour palette before and I'm a little bit terrified that I'll do it badly and cock up all my work but I don't know that for sure until I try. eeeep.

Flying eye books

Dear John,
My ultimate dream as an illustrator would be to create a children's book for flying eye books. To me they are the height of of being a children's book illustrator, they have incredibly high quality in both the physical attribute and the stories/visuals. I would love for one day be up to that standard and to be able to publish my work with them.

Presentation

Dear John, here is the presentation which we didn't need but it certainly has some useful stuff on so it's worth a look anyway. I've put some frame by frame explanation below. Frame one: My smaller logo which I've also been thinking would make a good signature to put on emails and to be a quick way to identify myself. Frame two: From left to right this is who I am as an Illustrator right now, I am a children's book illustrator, I draw portrait(ish) illustrations of people, I illustrate moments in my life/my thought processes and I do a lot of character design. Frame three: This is my business card and full logo, I think they could use a little work but I'm not really sure where I'm going with them. Frame four and five: These are examples of work I created at the end of the last academic year and what I've done at the start of this one. You can see how I still work very similarly but also how I have improved over the summer. Frame six: These are some examples of the type of work I'm looking at a lot, I mainly use instagram to look at contemporary illustrators work and over the summer I started following even more people how create inspiring work. Frame seven: when I messaged my friend. Frame eight: Examples of who I would be interested in contacting. Frame nine: My professional social media. Frame ten: Is pretty self explanatory.

Hallmark

I've got a Friend who works in the editing/word department at Hallmark. About a year ago or so when she first saw my work she said I should show my work to Hallmark but I've been too shy to approach her about it for a really long time. I got it into my head that she just said it to be polite about my work but as we have to contact people I thought I'd start with a friend. I sent her a message today and it's below. I'm really glad she didn't think I was bothering her, it makes me think that I could do this.

Online Presence

Over the summer and through to now I've been uploading my sketches and finished illustrations to my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I use my Instagram more regularly as its so convenient and I think it's a better place for sketchbook work. I've been getting some likes from people I don't know pretty often and its nice to see that it's not just the people I know who like my work.

Sean

After Showing Maddie the drawing I was working on her boyfriend Sean requested a drawing for his birthday so I did a quick one of him as Snufkin as he loves him. I did this when I had a bit less time so I don't think it's as good as it could be but I think it really simply gets across what I wanted and has made me want to draw more people I know.

Maddie's

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This is for my Sister Maddie, I started this by myself but when I showed her my initial sketches she want it as a commission. Unfortunately I still haven't finished it as I started doing this before I went to Edinburgh festival and side coming back my life has been pretty busy. I am however really pleased with myself for making improvements to backgrounds and detail. I've also never drawn so many people into one illustration or added in any people that weren't in the original reference. I think this has been very important in making steps to improve my practice but if I was going to do this again I'd draw all of the characters individually and then add them together as they've ended up looking a bit compressed. I'm hoping to finish this pretty soon.

Sheep

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After gaining confidence with Emily's drawing, another friend contacted me to ask for 12 drawings of the same sheep in different positions so he could create a pre wedding treasure hunt for his fiancé. I agreed to make them for their wedding present and treated it as a live brief. I asked him everything I would ask a client but as he's a friend a lot of the in between was regular chatting (not super suitable for my blog). I think I responded to his request pretty well, I did my research and designed my own sheep which I'm happy with. However because he's a friend I didn't put enough importance on it and let my timetabling slacken more than I would've liked.

Emily

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At the start of the summer my friend emily came round to my house while I was doing some doodling, after telling me a story about how she rescued stray kittens that had to be scooped up with a lacrosse stick I made this drawing. I decided that I would treat it like a proper job, I edited and coloured it before printing it off professionally and presenting it to her in a frame. She was really pleased about it it and covered the printing and frame costs. This showed me how much I like drawing people around me and how I could take commissions even though I didn't think I had anything to offer to people before.

Time management

My largest failing this year has definitely been my time management and organisation. I was already terrible at these but this year I have just let myself continue to be terrible without putting into account how much things like New York and finding a place to live over Christmas took away from the time I had to waste. I didn't realise it at the time but the start of my stress for ppp, responsive and cop started when I went to New York. As I was already a little behind on 504 before I went I had to put all of my energy and focus into making sure I would be able to finish it for hand in when I came back. I had told myself that it would be fine if as I'd be able to work over christmas. I was not able to work over christmas, I had to prepare a christmas for boy and try and find somewhere to live before I started uni again. This whole process meant that I became very single minded about the modules and ended up saying that I'd be able to catch up on them over Easter. Yet again this didn't work out like I'd hoped I had one beautiful week where i was able to come into college and make progress before I had to look after boy all week and as soon as I was able to get back to work I got the flu. This flu was the type where you're stuck in bed for over a week and by the time you're able to leave bed you still feel like you're brain has melted into puddle for most of the day. This combined with how stressed I can get about coming into the studio and how a childish argument removed my place in the studio meant that for the past month or so I have had to work near constantly. Working 9-9 has worked really well for me as it meant that I didn't stress about when I left at 9 because I knew I had done all the work I could have done for that day. It also meant that in the evening hours there would only be a couple of others in the studio which suits me much better than having everyone in and working. However while working those hours saved me they also have been incredibly draining when kept up for so long. For the next year I'm really going to need to work longer days and organise my time better as I can't do this again. Also I'm hoping to be better when Hollie, Rowena, Adam and Becky move in near me as I'll want to leave with them on the morning. I'm hoping this will mean that as my lateness will effect others I'll be better at coming in. We will see ....

Promo pack and contents

This is my promo pack and it's contents. Surprisingly it was harder to do then I planned, I changed it from A5 to A6 when I realised that A5 is still quite big and that made everything a little easier. I printed at my mums house again as I did not have the time to try and get into the print room. However this meant that I also had to cut it down at my house rather than college, I do own a little guillotine but it's one where you pull the blade down rather than across. This means that it bends the page each time and cuts it at an angle instead of a neat edge. I've tried to minimise this as much as possible but there are still some issues. For actually giving my promo pack to a professional I'd want to recut these and make the package a bit neater. I had a real issue with the blue pencil ones as well. I hav never tried to keep the pencil lines when neatening things so it became quite difficult to keep a white background and the pencil marks. As well as having trouble initially keeping the pencil marks I also had trouble when printing them as they kept coming out too pale. As I don't have photoshop at home I had to use a regular photo editing program that i had less control over, so I'm less happy with how they turned out. The business card also had issues as after buying some card to print on, it was too thick for my mums printer. To solve this I ended up printing it on to a heavy stock and then gluing it to the card I bought. It's not as neat but it seems to have worked reasonably well. All the examples of my work I included have a purpose, they each show a different example of my work: comic, book, character design, analog, autobiographical and stand alone. To finish off my work I printed some stickers of my potatofinch to seal my pack. I really like the look of this but it wasn't quite strong enough by itself, so I added a small bit of the plain, clear sticker to hold down the inside pages. If I'd had the time I would have liked to have printed an "open me" sticker so the the inside sticker didn't look so out of place and so the receiver of the pack knew it was meant to be opened completely.  

Creative cv

These are what I've made for my creative CV it's loosely based on Adam's one but mine is made with the knowledge that I don't have as much time as Adam did and with the idea in mind that it should show how I work. To do this I showed the tools that I work in and coloured them with blue pencil as I am near constantly using blue pencil to sketch my work out. I also wrote what illustration I am interested in and most often do. I would have liked to have put some more information down but I have no prior experience in anything really. I suppose I could have put more personal information but as it's about my work I didn't really know what else I could say.

Presentation

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Here is the presentation that I've made. I think it could look a lot nicer but I definitely don't have the time to spend ages making it look amazing.

Presentation notes

These are the notes I made to help make my presentation. I think Fred might have said once to not go through the year module by module but I can't think of the year in any other way as its how my year has been structured.

Instagram

This is the instagram that I already had. I changed my photo to that of my logo and added my facebook page and tumblr. Aside from that there wasn't really anything more I could do. I had already been posting my work to instagram really regularly so I didn't have to upload loads like I did for facebook and tumblr. Which should make it really easy to keep promoting my work through instagram as it is the way most familiar to me. 

Tumblr

This is the tumblr I created to promote my brand. Apparently I already had a tumblr under that name so I had to go through deleting all of my past posts and making my page look less terrible. I found it quite hard to use so I'm not very proud of the result but it will be easy to link to my instagram so I can post to both at once. 

Facebook page

The facebook page I created to promote my brand. I found it pretty easy to set up my page and as I've been using facebook for so long I doubt I'll have much issue with it. However it can't link to my instagram like tumblr can so I'll have to upload everything to that separately.

business card

This is the final design for my business card. I feel that some aspects could be cleaner around the edges but aside from that I'm really happy with how it all came together.

logo

I found my use by compromising and having both the logo of myself and two little potatofinch's underneath. This meant that I could still go by potatofinch and I could use the more complicated drawing. At first it didn't have the branches underneath the finches but without it they were just floating and with the simple addition of them it seemed to really round it off as my logo.

potatofinch

I redrew my potatofinch a couple of times and then coloured him, while I think he may be a bit too simple to go on his own on my work I really want to find a use for him as he's so very cute.

Business card tests

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I found another drawing of me and fixed it up in the same way. I then started making and testing the layouts that I had sketched earlier. However I did this process for so long that it became meaningless and time consuming for no good reason. I did managed to make some designs I particularly liked but as they were the black lines on colour, I decided that they didn't actually show how I work well enough and I would rather my business card shows how I actually work.

possible logos

I found these drawings of myself I had made at various points and I thought that they would work well as either logos or just as a header for the about me page. I coloured them and cleaned them up a bit ready for testing.

Potatofinch

I already go under the name potatofinch on instagram and as my email so it would be quite good to remain under it. It would also work well as a unique name as I doubt anyone else goes under it. I also really like this as a logo design as it would work very well on multiple media and still efficiently show that it was part of my brand. 

Promo pack sketches

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These show how I would like my promo pack to work. I am aware of what time I have to make it in and I know that I won't be able to print something special to make the pack out of so I had the idea of using a bright colourful card to make the pack with. I want to use the card to make a sort of parcel that will open out when it's opened. after making stickers for 505 I thought it would be good to use a sticker of my logo to seal it. This would also mean that I have a tiny piece of my work that can be seen from outside my pack.

Business card sketches

These are the layouts I'm thinking about for my business card.

Pie tree sketches

This is an idea I actually really like but seems more like a collaborative brand or a collective to me and i think I'd rather save it for an occasion more like that than my brand. I also had a nice comic idea I could make from it instead. 

Gillipug illustration

This was another vague idea that I liked the sound of but just didn't really work. It came from how when my mum was little they had a breed of pugs named Gillipugs as their name was Gilligan. It was a nice idea but it was just too unrelated to me and my illustrations. 

Rose wood sketches

This was for Rose Wood as my brand and I kind of hate it. It works alright as a making something out of my name sort of thing but I find it way too twee and not really about who I am so I doubt I'll carry it any further.

Rosalind wood logo sketches

After I highlighted a few choices of brand name, I started drawing out some sketches for each one. These mainly featured a drawing I had already done of myself as the logo as it would be a brand of myself. However I also drew out an idea I really like of having  my childhood toy as my logo as It'd be really lovely to be able to carry him  with me into the professional world as well. 

Brand names

I started anew with names of what my brand could be. I'm not a big fan of my brand being Rosie Wood as I'd quite like to separate myself from my professional  self and I don't really think that  wood makes a good fancy illustration name.

Notes

After  my rather poor start I wrote some notes on how to think about this project and how I should start it off properly.

Initial response

These are quite literally my initial response to having to make a brand of myself. I'm not very happy with them but at least it's a starting point.

Comic

This is the first comic I've ever made, I had been sketching out rough ideas for comics for a while now but as they all seem so long or like such a lot of work I scared myself away from trying. Since I managed to do this and still really like it, I have become way more optimistic about making comics and would really like to try to do it properly.

Tiff giff

Again this is something else that I've talked about elsewhere but I wanted to talk about another new thing I've learned. I've not entirely learned GIFs but from this small thing I'm now way more excited to make another one. I find seeing my work move incredibly exciting but the animation project had completely turned me away from this. The animation we had to do was far too long and too complicated, if I could have made moving illustrations where just small components move I would have been much happier and more excited to do it again. As it is I had a chance conversation that got me interested again instead.

Mockups

These were the first mockups I ever made. I know now that it isn't daunting or hard but before I was terrified of doing it and now I can make my work to a higher standard than before.

Collaboration

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This is what I did for my collaboration project. I just wanted to say here about how this one, while not perfect and definitely in need of improvement, was much better than last years. It made the prospect of working together with someone not seem so repulsive, which is how I felt about it at the end of the last collaborative project. This one left me interested in trying it again at some point.

Tove Jansson

at some point over the winter I watched this documentary on Tove Jansson, who is probably one of my biggest influences. It really inspired me in how she led her life and how she treated being creative. It really showed how I could make books if I put the time in. It was the first time I have ever felt a desire to write, I had always half assumed I would have a writer and i would just illustrate but watching this really made me want to do it all myself and to be able to see the worlds that I create come alive. I'm really excited by the prospect of making my own children's book. This excitement also caused me to binge read her books and I started doing some really Tove style drawings for awhile.

Flying eye books

I've really got into flying eye books this year, I collect children's books that I find beautiful and I noticed that four of the books I had already bought this year were flying eye books. I started to notice the quality was to the same high standard in all of their books and I started to look out for them whenever I'd be looking for children's books. After a while I realised that they are the exact type of books that I would like to aspire to. It was only after going on their website did I realise they were part of Nobrow, Flying Eye Books (FEB, for short) is the children’s imprint of award-winning visual publishing house Nobrow. Established in early 2013, FEB sought to retain the same attention to detail in design and excellence in illustrated content as its parent publisher, but with a focus on the craft of children’s storytelling and non-fiction. That's what they say on their website and I should have realised straight away that FEB was part of Nobrow as it really does have the same attention to detail in design and excellence in illustrated content. These books really show the quality that children's books can be. I would say that these have been the most inspiring to me this year.

Off the page

I really enjoyed off the page I had never pictured my work in an exhibition and it was really lovely to see that it could be there and I could potentially have it in another exhibition in the future. I was in the hang team and I did try to be helpful and did some sorting there wasn't a lot I could do. It felt a lot like a too many cooks in the kitchen scenario where there were too many people with too many different ideas to make any progress.