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!
1. Morning Ink
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 had a lot of trees - I’m not even going to count them, there were so many - two grids, one collection of cups and jars of flowers, one cat, five birds, some fish, and a few landscapes (some big and some dinky and in one of the blocks of a grid).
This was a favourite, too, but it looks rubbish within a gallery, where Substack makes everything square:
On most days, I have also been sharing photos from my walks. I have been getting 10,000+ steps for more than a fortnight now (except for Friday, but I am not going to let that phase me) and I am very fortunate to live in an area where I get those 10,000+ steps in a multiple directions that will get me into beautiful nature. (I would note that I also absolutely love getting 10,000+ steps in beautiful cities, being bathed in amazing architecture and art of so many kinds - as well as, often, gorgeous parks, canals, rivers and other places that are full of nature. You don’t have to live in the countryside to find beauty on daily walks.) And I’ve been sharing a handful of the photos I’ve taken on these walks.
The words in the Morning Ink post got quite lengthy this week - though mostly it’s the walk photos that are contributing to the length. I do think I go through pages of writing a lot and a little, and of course some days I just want to be silent and others there’s a flood of stuff in my head that flows out onto the screen.
I wrote quite often about the walks and what I ate the night before and how the day before’s work went (or didn’t). There was also a little tangent about the death of the net book agreement in this country on Thursday, a diversion into feeling too scared to walk in the countryside at night and trying to reclaim that on Tuesday, a bit of a talk through my drawing thought process of the day on Friday, some talk about making a new illustrated recipe and a sneak peek at some drawings for it on Saturday and a lot about how I am finding much joy within life at the moment on today’s post.
I am really enjoying the daily writing as well as the drawing at the moment. I am, I think, mostly writing for myself, but I do also think a little about the fact that there my be some other people reading it, too. I do find myself visualising how much more the practice could bring me (quite possibly inspired by listening to We Need Your Art recently), if I didn’t have client work to get on with. I do have a tentative idea about how I might be able to make that work, maybe in one or two years. And that feels positive and exciting, rather than depressing, which is what I have felt in the past when I considered that I would have to wait and work really hard to get to a point when I could be creating full time.
(Morning Ink is a section of my publication that goes out daily. You can toggle these daily posts on or off, via Manage Subscription.)
2. Illustration Business
This section is what I’ve been doing illustration business wise - drawing, outreach, and so on.
I have not done enough this week here. At least it feels like that. I have done some admin bits and bobs and finished off a few little things. I have not progressed at all with the website update, which is annoying me. And I just looked back at last week’s Sofa snippets, where I put a longish list of illustration business admin tasks I wanted to get through and I have done almost nothing on them. Although I did do some useful things that weren’t on that list! And my illustration business notebook has a few pages more of notes. But it’s all very well making notes about ideas and plans, but if you do nothing to progress them, what’s the point? (The point, actually, is to have those notes to look back at when you find you have extra time and energy available so you can pick something to do then. The point isn’t to get annoyed and angry with yourself.) I did download some free mockups from one of the mockup sites (can’t remember which one).
I did finish off the birthday cards for the agency. I did watch some and read a variety of stuff about picture books. I did find a new illustrator whose work I am very very in love with.
I did find a children’s publisher who looks like somewhere I would love to pitch to when I am ready to pitch my picture book ideas.
I did …. no, that’s it!
3. Freelancing Work
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.
Publishing work has been fine, with a mixture of proofreading, audio checking and development editing. Actually, I have not fitted masses of hours in, which might also explain why I have been feeling content, and even happy, this week. I do think that my ideal hours per week (or that kind of work, at least) is around 20-25. Because that allows space for other things.
4. Culture
This is the culture section - mostly what I’ve been reading, but might also include TV and film and wider culture, too.
Books: Finished Come and Get It by Kiley Reid. Started Mon Mari by Maud Ventura.
Audio books, podcasts and radio: We Need Your Art, The Archers, Storia del Nuovo Cognome, Normal Women
TV and film: Gilmore Girls, Film Club, Only Murders in the Building, A Real Pain
Music: Booked tickets to see Zaz in London in May.
5. Substack
This is the Substack section - Substack posts or publications that I’ve particularly enjoyed over the past week.
So very happy to hear about the launch of a Children’s Booker Prize! And that there will be children on the judging panel.
This fascinated me and I think it’s kind of brilliant in a lot of ways - art, feminism, identity. And I realised that, while my list would be pretty darned short, even then, I don’t remember or know the names of all their mothers.
Beautiful art here, with some process pictures, and some lovely story-telling, too:
This is interesting (for those of you like to read about food things at least):
Well, I do this already, of course! And I find myself frequently sketching with a fountain pen, now, too.
But, that said, ideation and messy thumbnails are still all pencil and I am actually really wanting to have a play with doing some ‘proper’ drawing in pencil and then adding colour digitally. Which reminded me about this post of lovely pencil drawings:
This was a great read. I am yet to listen to Lily Allen’s new album, but have read a lot about it and think I really need to set aside some time for a good listen. Interestingly, there are some phrases in this post that remind me of the book I’m reading right now (Mon mari, in case you skipped the Culture section above), which intrigues me both about the album and the book. (Don’t you love when different elements of culture and life intersect in unexpected ways?)
This was interesting and made me think a bit about my own travels and thoughts about where I have ended up. I think I had similar feelings about Saint-Nazaire last year. I remember really wishing I’d stayed in Nantes instead, and realising that I prefer bigger cities for longer stays and just day trips or one night stays in smaller towns. But then some smaller towns can be a very pleasant surprise and usually do have something nice or interesting.
6. Food
This is the food section - meals I cooked, new food I tried, places I ate out, and other food-related bits and pieces.
Food this week included mushroom and kale soup (loved it a lot and making an illustrated recipe of it), macaroni cheese, galettes (with a cheesy leek filling for me and a traditional - and not vegetarian - ham, cheese and egg for Chris), mushroom risotto and some lovely pastries yesterday (that were actually from Waitrose rather than the farmers market, though Chris did pick me up a box of mushrooms from the mushroom stall, so I can make even more lovely mushroomy dishes this coming week).
Next week I will make one or two dishes using the market mushrooms. Will have a think about what. And I will probably make a vegetable filled pasta for a (possibly) visiting elder child and hopefully Chris might make a nice selection of Japanese food with lots of vegetable dishes, too. We shall see, though.
7. Kitchen Table Chat
This last section is for general other stuff - things you might talk about over a cuppa at the kitchen table.
Got sucked down some internet rabbit holes looking into the representation of women within the UK History curriculum. Obviously this is somewhat inspired by reading Normal Women at the moment, but it’s also inspired by thinking about what my daughter is studying in History at the moment and wondering why the topics are not women-focused, since she’s at an all girls school. It’s not that there’s nothing about women in there, and I know, as someone who regularly edits History books and resources, that publishers are always aiming to bring more and more about women into their resources, but it’s still very male-centred and that’s the fault of the curriculum (and partially of the exam boards, though they do have to follow the curriculum).
Royal Historical Society: Finding Women's History in Schools
Times Educational Supplement: Why So Few Women in History Lessons
Hachette Learning: Still Anonymous: Women in the Whole History Curriculum
Teaching Medieval Women: Finding Women in School Assessments (PDF report)f
Reading Normal Women really brings it home how very much the voices of half the population have been erased from history texts for so long. Why isn’t there a topic on any of the exam boards’ syllabuses that focuses on women (at least I’ve not come across one? That could be a really interesting one and could pull in, like for example, Crime and Punishment, from a variety of different periods and look at different sections of society.
Anyway, that’s where my brain took me this week.
Where did your brain take you this week?
Anywhere interesting, surprising, worrying, fun, beautiful?
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).
Thank you so much for the mention!