It’s time! It’s 1 September. The new academic year is almost here. My (OK, our, obviously) 20th wedding anniversary is coming up soon, and the air has got that crisp autumnal smell.
This publication is now called Illustrated Life. With a new logo and stuff like that. I even wrote a proper About page! And I added a link to my portfolio because I realised it was rather strange not to have one.
I did wonder about moving to a more specific schedule, like I have done over at The Illustrated Plant Kitchen, where I do find the schedule helpful. But… I wanted to keep this one more informal for now and be able to more easily just write what comes to me on a Saturday afternoon or (if I’ve left it very late, like today) on a Sunday morning.
I’ve taken out the Adobe Fresco section, because it seems I almost never felt the urge to write about it. I love using Fresco, and I might well still write the odd post or part of a post about it, but having a dedicated section for it just made me feel guilty about never writing anything for it.
And I’ve upgraded and renamed the Daily(ish) Ponderings section to Everyday Life and this will be more of a journal space where I’ll write about literally anything I want to, roughly daily.
I’ve also added a new daily section called Daily Drawings. Here, I will post a daily illustration or pattern or other drawing of some kind. For the near future these will likely be the A to Z of Furniture illustrations, with the first one coming some time today (because 1 September is a good time to start something new). At other times, it might be new pieces of work or snippets of work in progress that I’m allowed to share. It may well also be old work, especially if I’m away or busy.
Neither of these sections will automatically come out to you*, because many people really don’t want daily emails! You can access them from the menu at the top (if you’re looking on the website).
Or you can subscribe to them if you want to. When looking at my publication on the website, click on the arrow by your avatar and select Manage subscription
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* If you already had Daily(ish) Ponderings toggled on, then I think Everyday Life should still come out to you as well.
I haven’t settled on a particular time of the day for the daily posts. And a caveat that they may very well not actually be daily, but dailyish.
In terms of what I’m writing about, this will stay pretty much the same:
Illustration business
Freelance life
Travel
Random meanderings
Today’s is not terribly interesting, sorry. But the renaming and writing About page and so on has been taking quite a lot of energy - and time. In a week when I was already very busy with work. Here are a few little updates, though…
It’s still very busy. We have a lot to get through before we go away for our week of anniversary celebrations in mid/late September. It is all manageable, and I could probably manage it without working weekends, though probably not without working a bit of extra time. But… I can’t risk not finishing before we go. We will absolutely, without question, not be working on this break, so I am doing extra work to ensure we don’t fall behind, because there is literally always something that happens, goes wrong or is unexpectedly needed.
For the most part it’s all nice work and not too taxing or too cortisol-inducing. But there’s just a little bit more than is ideal at once. And back to school will probably affect me a bit, though it might be more just giving my days a bit more structure, whish isn’t a bad thing.
I had to turn down a really nice sounding illustration commission, because we are fully booked until around the end of September. I can take on small, single illustration commissions in September, but don’t have time for anything bigger until October/November. I also had to turn down an editing job for similar reasons. Being freelance is such a delicate balance between having too much work and not enough. It feels like this year has veered more toward the too much (though not sure why the bank balance isn’t reflecting that), and we are feeling pretty tired because of it.
It’s now September (in case you hadn’t noticed me mention that a bit already!). Which means I need to send out emails this week with PDF portfolio links and saying ‘Available from October/November’ for bigger projects. This is a good time to reach out, I find - September, mid to late January and then maybe late April to early May.
When do you send out emails to existing and potential clients? Do you have a definite schedule, or do you just send emails when you feel you have enough new work? And do you send a PDF, embed a few images or what? I’d love to hear about other illustrators’ process with this. I may share what I’ve sent out next week, if anyone feels that would be helpful.
I finally had my vegetable illustrations accepted on Adobe Stock. And there are a bunch of older pieces that are in review for being included in their freebies. When that happens they pay you a fee for them to be included, and they won’t include any high-selling images in it. So it’s quite useful for things that haven’t sold much. I guess. The figures are still pretty small and I am constantly questioning myself whether it’s a really bad idea to be uploading things there. iStock turned the vegetable illustrations down for not being individual enough. Which… fine, I guess. I don’t feel especially excited to try to put anything up there again, now. Which may be me throwing a strop.
Here are the links to my microtock pages:
Shutterstock | Adobe Stock | iStock
Paid Substack subscriptions have increased over on The Illustrated Plant Kitchen, which is wonderful. It was definitely my aim for that to be the one that generated paid subscriptions (though note that if you upgrade to paid here, I will send you quarterly illustrated goodies of some kind in the post, so it’s worth you subscribing here, too). Again, it’s a small amount so far, but it’s building up, which is the point.
I entered the Spoonflower competition for the first time in ages. I noticed that my 2024 Bingo Card had ‘Place in Spoonflower competition’ and I figured that was definitely not going to happen if I never entered! So, here’s my ditsy Christmas pattern, which I think isn’t too bad. Though I can’t see it getting masses of votes.
You can vote on this challenge here. And here’s a link to my Spoonflower page, which mostly has very old work on it. The black and white wallpaper one still brings in maybe £50-100 a year and so does prove that perennial (and even passive) income is possible - you just need to have a lot of artwork out there for it to be more than pocket money.
Aside from that, I’ve made some sketches for some ideas for patterns for both Patternbank and the microstocks, but haven’t actually created any yet.
I’ve got reference images for the first week, and I think that’s how I’ll tackle it. Gather seven days of reference images and then get drawing. The first one will be ready at some point today. I have yet to develop a flow for when to draw, but today it’s most likely to be in the evening as I’m out during the day for lunch with friends. I’m really looking forward to this new A to Z challenge and to keeping the flow going with some of the other topic ideas once Furniture is finished. As mentioned above I’ll be sharing them on the Daily Drawings section. I might also share them on Instagram, or I might just share a weekly round-up - not decided fully yet.
Mostly I was drawing mushrooms this week, and the Christmas pattern I showed you above. I can’t properly show you these because they’re for paid subscribers over at The Illustrated Plant Kitchen, but here are some very small thumbnails, plus the individual mushrooms I’ve shared elsewhere. I will be making the second image available as a print to buy, along with some other pieces, some time this month.
I have to say that I absolutely loved drawing the mushrooms and researching the facts about mushrooms. I feel I levelled up this month from the first one I shared (courgettes) and I feel confident that I will have a solid pitch ready by the end of October to send to publishers and/or agents.
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See you next week for more Illustrated Life!
And don’t forget to check out The Illustrated Plant Kitchen too, for weekly foodie writing and illustrations every Wednesday. This week is one of the free weeks.
I love your illustrations and the new name and logo! I’m excited for you! Art and personalization of your publication makes it easier to find and more enjoyable to read ❤️
Updated to daily, thanks for the heads up. Your enthusiasm and illustrations bring me lots of inspiration, Tasha. Here's to the next steps in your journey!