Sofa snippets #004
Trees, lions, bugs, a new agent, sitting on briefs, a sweet potato curry and the loss of a prolific and wonderful children’s author
Hello and welcome to Sofa Snippets, a weekly roundup of bits and bobs from my life and work.
If you’re reading this in your email inbox, it might be too long and you might be prompted to read it on the website. Sorry!
This section is mostly about what my Morning Ink practice has shown me this week, and sometimes other general sketchbook insights.
This week’s Morning Ink has been mostly trees for some reason (33 of them!). It interests me how I seem to have phases of drawing lots of one thing. It also interests me when what I’m drawing outside of the Morning Ink creeps into the sketchbook and when it doesn’t. I feel I would like to get back to some deep diving into fine art of some kind again, so that some of that can creep into the morning pages (as it did with the Great Mongol Art phases – following visiting the exhibition at the V&A, getting the exhibition book and also researching more and looking at other art in various museums’ online archives). I am not sure what to deep dive into next, though. Maybe I need to go to some more exhibitions!
There was also one fox, one cat and one person, two tea cups and a few vases of flowers and houseplants. Only one non-day-of-the-week word – ‘chill’ on Wednesday.
Some ponderings from Morning Ink posts included two where I talked a little about wanting to write – Monday and today – and some thoughts about gender and gossip and whether gossip is a feminist issue or not (I don’t think I actually said that exactly) on Wednesday.1
I didn’t do a huge amount of other sketching this week.
Firstly there was an attempt to draw from some of my photos from last week’s trip to Bath, with some absolutely awful proportions. But that’s what sketchbooks are for. The sketch without a face got the proportions a bit better. And then I had to stop and do something else, and didn’t come back to it. Whether I go back to drawing that woman another time isn’t really important. But the more of that kind of sketching I do the more I will get proportions right from the start.
And then there were lots of lions (see below about the pattern challenge). Lions have the most fascinating faces. You can see why there are so many lions in picture books. I think they usually have very wise looking faces. Or maybe I am imprinting that wisdom from the The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe readings of my childhood (and my kids’ childhoods).
I had to order some more sketchbooks, too, as I only have one left and I have one page left in the current Morning Ink sketchbook. And I couldn’t find the exact same sketchbooks anywhere – No!!!!. I did get some that seem pretty similar, but we’ll have to see whether they work as well. (The Seawhite Cup Cycling sketchbook with a blue cover - made from recycled coffee cups. And I also got some of the A6 Seawhite Eco Starter Sketchbooks to keep in my bag.) Of course, now I look, they have the ones I normally use back in stock. So, do I immediately order ten of them, or do I see how the others work? I think I need to try the new ones first. If the Cup Cycling ones are good I might be fine to switch to them, as I really like the idea of using paper that’s been made from recycled coffee cups. But I feel like I’d need to switch to blue ink.
(Morning Ink is a section of my publication that goes out daily. It is not automatically switched on for you so, if you want to see those posts whenever they are sent out you’ll need to toggle them on, via Manage Subscription.)
This section is what I’ve been doing illustration business wise - drawing, outreach, and so on.
The biggest news in my illustration business this week was that I signed with a new agency. New to me and also pretty new in and of itself. I have started writing a full post about this, which I’ll hopefully share some time next week. In the meantime, here’s the link to the Instagram post:
Other than that, I haven’t done a huge amount of commercial drawing, as I felt quite exhausted after a couple of months of doing a lot of commercial drawing for the Talent Tap contest (which lead to my offer of my representation).
Now, I need to get back to a regular flow of creating new work for licensing, as that’s predominantly what the agency is aiming for, though they will also be happy to deal with commissions.
I’ve been working on some decorative bug pieces.
And my brain is working on some others, too. I find I do best (maybe) when I can keep a brief in my head for a few days, or even a week or two, and have ideas circling through my brain for a bit before they’re ready to be turned into rough thumbnails and then proper sketches. I can absolutely do it the other way and sit down with the purpose of coming up with something for a brief within an hour or two, using references and the most immediately obvious ideas. But I feel more feeling and better compositions tend to come out of pieces that have percolated for a while.
If you're an illustrator or pattern designer, too, I'd love to know if you find a similar benefit to having a brief sit with you for a while, or if you prefer going at lightening speed.I also decided, at the last minute to join in with Melanie Johnson’s summer pattern challenge.
Whether I’ll join in for the whole thing, I don’t know, but the first one was a lot of fun. In fact, I feel I might well have a few more lion patterns itching to come out of my Apple Pencil.
Are you joining that pattern challenge? Or any other summer art challenges.
This section is about freelancing life, including what I’ve been working on with my educational publishing hat on and just general bits about working from home in a self-employed capacity.
Work has been fine this week, but with some longer days. They weren’t actually longer days, it turns out. They were what most people would call normal days. Around seven hours. But they felt long. I think part of that is because I’ve been consistently having the bulk of my (educational publishing) days be around five hours in the last month or two. Five hours at a higher rate hits my target. And I’ve mostly been doing work at higher rates. I can also do three and a half hours at the higher rate and two hours at the minimum rate and hit my target. It frequently doesn’t work out that way, of course. Work slips a lot in the educational publishing business (as with much freelance work) so you can end up with days where you have to fit in very long days or turn the work that has slipped away. But if you turn it away, then they money you have budgeted that would be coming in suddenly won’t be, plus if you keep turning work away because it’s slipped, in a business where work frequently slips, you might not get offered work so much. The perennial dilemma of the freelancer.
But I had a couple of long days, nonetheless. Not because anything slipped. But because I needed to get something finished and other life had got in the way on other days. Mostly I was working on childcare resources - PowerPoints, worksheets and quizzes - as well as some small bits on Spanish IGCSE, some invoicing (I love sending out invoices – ever since I tricked my brain into thinking that the time it takes to send the invoice out is the time it took to earn the money I’m invoicing. Obviously that’s not actually right. But my brain accepts it and gets a buzz – or maybe a dopamine hit.) and some preparatory work for the things I’ll be working on next week. Which will be mostly History. With some other bits and pieces on longer-term projects to intersperse that.
And I’ll be taking Thursday off again, this time to go to Bristol with my younger daughter.
This is the culture section - mostly what I’ve been reading, but might also include TV and film and wider culture, too.
I’m still reading The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, though I’m almost done finished, and might well finish today. And, after an enforced break due to my library card expiring, I am back to audio-reading Where the Crawdads Sing which I am loving. I haven’t picked a new non-fiction to listen to or to physically read. (Actually, I still have non-fiction physical books that I need to finish.)
On Monday, I listened to a Paid 2 Draw episode, where Viktoria and David interviewed Yuko Shimizu. It’s a long episode, but I really enjoyed it and hearing about her journey and her bits of advice.
And on Wednesday I listened to Andy J. Pizza’s Want to Quit Social Media? episode, which was good. If you don’t already listen to the Creative Pep Talk, I highly recommend it.
I watched the first half of the final part of The Lord of the Rings with Chris. We’ve been (re)watching it for a while and it seems we find it difficult to find (or set aside) a chunk of time to watch two hours of film. And, often, these days, the teenagers appropriate the living room for their own film-watching purposes.
TV-wise, I’ve not been watching a huge amount, but have been catching up with Season 2 of The Change, which is brilliant. And set near us. The Forest of Dean is in Gloucestershire. (I say it like that because, at a pub quiz when I was a student a friend overruled me, insisting that The Forest of Dean was in Wiltshire – or maybe he said Avon. And, of course, I was right. Though I would also accept that it is it’s very own county, indeed it’s own country. We lost by one point. Maybe. I remember it as us losing by one point and have never forgiven him. Actually, that’s not true, it’s myself I have never forgiven, for not being more forceful when I knew with absolute certainty that I was right.) I also watched the next episode of The Buccaneers and the first episode of Sirens.
Looking forward to some different culture this week, as I’ll be taking my younger daughter to Bristol to see Moulin Rouge. It will be great to see it on stage. I’ve watched the film quite a few times.
This is the Substack section - Substack posts or publications that I’ve particularly enjoyed over the past week.
This is the food section - meals I cooked, new food I tried, places I ate out, and other food-related bits and pieces.
Not masses to say about food and cooking this week. I made my spicy tomato and tofu noodles I think on Thursday. And Wednesday and Saturday Chris cooked. Wednesday he made a nice stir fry. And on Saturday he made polenta with roasted vegetables and roasted new potatoes and salad, which was delicious. I had at least one day of bad freezer food – I think that was Tuesday, when we went to the pub, and I probably didn’t want to cook proper food once I got home.
Oh, and last Sunday I made a really really nice curry. It was sweet potato, spinach and chickpea curry, with lots of tomatoes in, as well. I used some curry powder, garam massala powder, turmeric and three chillis, some garlic and a heaped teaspoon of toban djan sauce. It was the best curry I have made in a long time. I usually find it difficult to get curry to taste as good as it smells. But this really did.
This last section is for general other stuff - things you might talk about over a cuppa at the kitchen table.
I feel like this week has been light on things that aren’t work. Except actually it did have some good stuff. On Monday, I went charity shopping with my younger daughter and I bought two nice dresses, one of which fits and is really comfortable (the other one is going to need a little bit of a stich here and there to make it work). And then I spent three hours chatting with a good friend who I have known for decades. I love those kinds of chats - the ones you feel could just keep going for hours and hours more. We used to talk for hours on the phone when we were teenagers, even when we’d seen each other already that day and sometimes when we were going to see each other again in the evening. I can’t fathom being able to do that regularly now - life gets in the way a bit, doesn’t it, though I do have long chats like that with my sister over the phone still.
And Chris and I walked up to the pub on Tuesday (The Woolpack) which was lovely. It was raining a bit, which felt so refreshing after some very heavy and humid weather. And chatted over a couple of pints under the shelter of the canopy but still in the lovely fresh air.
As so many people have done, I pulled my copy of Each Peach Pear Plum down off the shelf on Thursday. Sad to hear that Allan Ahlberg passed away, but also a good opportunity to think about all the great books he and Janet brought us over the years. I think Each Peach is my favourite, but The Jolly Postman might be, too. And I’m very fond of the Funny Bones series, too.
Do you have a favourite Allan Ahlberg book?I’m going to predict that Eva Goddard says The Jolly Postman.
I hope you enjoy this weekly roundup format. I will still be writing some ‘proper’ posts on individual topics, but I enjoy reading these and it will keep me regularly showing up in your inbox (it has a section of its own, though, so you can untoggle it if you prefer, by going to Manage subscription).
A reminder that I post my Morning Ink drawings every day, usually accompanied by some words of some kind, often just little bits on what happened the day before or plans for that day, sometimes ponderings on what I’ve listened to that morning and sometimes just completely random thoughts. This does not go out automatically to subscribers (because most people do not want daily emails cluttering their inboxes), so if you do want to receive my Morning Ink posts every single day you will need to (1) be a subscriber and (2) toggle Morning Ink on.
I missed the news that he had died. I am so obsessed with the jolly postman books. But also each peach pair plum , the happy families books . All of them in read and re read and used to them to twa h children to read. And write when I tutored Liam we did a project of making our own jolly postman books 📚 I would get so lost on all thoes books and finding all the different details in the illustrations . Rest in peace 🙏