What am I doing here?

or my Substack plans, at this moment in time

I’ve had this Substack since 2022, but have not really been following any kind of plan with it.

I’ve jumped around a number of different things to write about, a number of different times to write, a number of different commitments. I switched paid on without having a genuine idea about what that would mean. Note: all my posts are currently going out to everyone. There is nothing that is going behind a paywall at the moment. If that changes, I will absolutely let you know. I explored daily posts in two ways (one which lost a bunch of subscribers; the other which was read mostly only by my sister). I wrote about the creative mind, portfolios, routines, sketchbooks, learning, digital nomading, looking for my quirk or USP, travel plans, and searching for a perennial income – oh and writing in general.

And lately, in among many viruses and other bouts of illness of varying kinds, and being in the thick of a very busy work period, I have been reading and watching lots of Substack experts, and reading and looking at how other illustrators and artists are using Substack and thinking about how I can use it and whether I need to create five or six different Substacks for all the many things I might talk about. (Not now. Maybe in the future when things are different.)

What I will mostly write about and share

·       Illustration (and pattern design) practice and business
including sketchbooks, learning new skills, growing or branching out in style, diversifying income, searching for clients, marketing as an illustrator – and other general illustration (and pattern design) stuff

·       Freelance / self-employed life (because both my careers/businesses are freelance)
including burnout, life balance, managing time, organisation, working in two different careers (with offshoots), ‘success’, goals, managing finances – and other general work-life intersections for those of us who work for ourselves

·       Combining work with travel
including research, plans, sharing trips and how (or whether) I have worked on them, thoughts about good places to go, where to stay – and probably some general travel stuff, as well

·       Adobe Fresco* (this one is currently a placeholder, but hopefully will fill up through 2024)
including general descriptions of how I use Fresco in most of my illustration and pattern design workflow; particular tips on drawing in vector as that’s been the bulk of my Fresco output until recently; how I’m exploring bringing raster into my Fresco process; how I’m exploring the animation tools; process walkthroughs, process videos

·       Daily(ish) ponderings*
this is a space for me to ‘dump’ random meandering thoughts about pretty much anything; no-one should be automatically subscribed to this, but if you ever want to dip in you can access it from the main page

·       Random meanderings
this is a catch-all category and may include a whole bunch of stuff, including introspective ponderings, talking about daily life in general, talking (very generally, because my family prefer me not to share their entire lives online like I used to on the parenting blog), what I’m reading or watching or listening to, memories and journally or memoir kind of writing, general creative writing (maybe) and possibly rants or opinion pieces about stuff going on the world

* These are separate ‘sections’ though I think all posts show up when you look at the ‘all posts’ view. The others are links to all posts that are tagged with that topic.

Some (if not most) posts will fall under more than one category, of course. Some of you will enjoy the random meanderings much more than anything about Adobe Fresco or illustration business in general and some of you will probably only want to read about the illustration business stuff. And there might be some people are only really interested in the travel bits.

Timing of posts

I am finding that Sunday mornings are a really good time for me to write these, so you are likely to get a post on most Sundays, that will usually be related to the illustration business side of things or freelance life, and sometimes the travel side of things. Occasionally it might end up being a random meanderings one, but hopefully not too often. The daily(ish) ponderings (that don’t get emailed out at all) may get daily, or even twice daily sometimes, posts, but equally might not be written in for ages. And I am going to aim for at least one post a month for the Adobe Fresco space.

Here is some of my recent(ish) illustration and pattern design work

A small handful of recent(ish) work

Here are a few posts that might give you a bit of background and a taster as to whether you want to subscribe or not

In search of perennial income

Digital nomading

Where or what is my quirk?

And why are you here?

I would love to get to know you better, too. If you read this, and feel happy to share, tell me a bit about yourself and, if you have one, feel free to share your own substack or favourite post in the comments. Or tell me why you like to read my posts/newsletters.