Recommendations

For getting through a sticky patch

It’s been a tricky quarter but I’ve still been busy in the background; I just stepped away from social media for a little while. My mobile phone was on the blink and it has been something of an electronic holiday. Also, my Grandmother passed, at the fabulous age of 100, and I felt a deep need to be quiet.

Nevertheless, I have been :-

• Taking some in-person classes - notably a screen printing workshop with Print Club London, which got me thinking about making my art simpler and more accessible to my target audience.

• Through LinkedIn I discovered an open day at an Oceanographic institute, where I completed work experience 30 years ago. It was a great day out (for me, not the kids so much) and I started to wonder if a collaboration might be possible.

• Listened to an Orange Beak class with Thames Hudson, who are actually my dream publisher and work with Yuval Zommer and Julia Donaldson, both of whom I met at Bologna and are repped by the fabulous Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency (part of RCW Ltd)!

• Enjoyed the work of Gosia Herba She uses gouache and pencil and I have been fascinated to watch her transform these traditional paintings and concepts into digital pages, which look so effortless but lively

• Been on some long train journeys with work to the North of England which has offered me the chance to read ‘The organised mind’ by Daniel Levitin

• Then on my most recent trip, I stumbled on the way to the station and broke my ankle. For someone who lives at pace, being forced to sit still for 72hrs was akin to torture. So I took the only sensible course of action and started some online learning. This time with SVSlearn. They have a set of modules for the absolute beginner and for a long time now, I have been missing some basic rules of perspective and shadow in my toolbox. At less than £25 per month, this feels really affordable for a few weeks, to set me on a path to rework some old illustrations.

My first recommendation this month: address the biggest gap in your knowledge.

Since visiting Bologna* in April, I have been stewing over an idea to write a non-fiction book on the topic of Ocean Science. This is a direct result of listening to talks with world-renowned scientists; boutique publishers and a representative from the UN at Bologna on the subject of increasing children’s knowledge of the marine world.

Words like diatom, upwelling and dinoflagellate don’t roll off the tongue and yet educating the next generation on the water cycle and the food chain is exactly what we need; to ensure that a sense of wow, becomes a sense of wonder which in turn elicits a desire to protect. Even the smallest amount of research at our local library showed me that the topic of Oceanography has no dedicated space on the shelves in the same way as Astronomy or The Romans. It has me wondering why.

My second recommendation is to sit still for a while and wonder at some of the serendipitous events which may have been occurring without your attention.

Time sitting in my studio, but unable to easily access all my materials comfortably gave me the opportunity to muse on my goals for 2024. So far I have entered one major competition - the Shirley Hughes award with Orange Beak, but not joined in with any submissions to agents or publishers. It was time to take a bite of the elephant. Rather than reworking any more art, I pulled together my last 2 picture book stories with a covering note and hit send!

My final recommendation - is there an application which you have been putting off out of fear? Perhaps now is the time to just give it a go and start reaching for your dream.

If like me, you are feeling rushed, anxious and over-whelmed with the amount of activities you judge to be necessary, breaking an ankle is probably too extreme to force a pause, but definitely, immediately and without any guilt - turn off your phone and muse on the first half of this year. We have 6 months left to make some brilliant things happen!

Stay creative

-Tabsy-

Footnote: *(I realise that I haven’t yet posted anything about my experience in Bologna last April. It was a brilliant week but due to family illness I had not prepared my picture book dummy. Instead of rushing the process, I decided not to take a portfolio for review but instead enjoy listening to talks whilst walking the halls and soaking up new ideas. My travel diary is full of notes, contacts, screen shots and fliers for relevant events and I will share my experiences soon)