Week 5 of my 5-week interrailing trip round Europe
Final wrap-up of my five-week interrailing trip round Western Europe.
Week 3 of my 5-week interrailing trip round Europe
In which I travel from Nice to Valencia, navigating the intricacies of the French rail strikes, and the wonder Las Fallas.
Week 2 of my 5-week interrailing trip round Europe
Some of this was written on my phone on trains while travelling. Some of it was written on Sunday night, with my laptop lying to me and saying it was only just gone 8pm, when actually it was 9pm. Here. Obviously. It was 8pm in the UK, and in (some parts of??) Portugal (huh, who
Ponderings after attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
Some thoughts following attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair for (part of) a day.
Week 1 of my 5-week interrailing trip round Europe
End of first week – Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich Monday Train to London – fine (nice to get an early one without paying a small fortune) Waiting a lot at St Pancras as vey early (better early than late). Bought a book and some snacks. Eurostar to Amsterdam. Absolutely fine. Fell asleep and completely missed going
Planning a big European train adventure
In which I talk about my plan to interrail for a month to celebrate turning fifty (next year).
What makes your heart sing?
Have you worked out what makes your heart sing yet? I actually think this is something that is probably continually evolving for most of us. It’s certainly changed throughout my life, but even changes a bit from day to day or different times of the day. I think people who find this out early on
Working from home
Working from home? Is it like Marmite (that may be a UK-centric question)? Love it or hate it? I have worked from home (apart from a six-month stint in-house nine years ago) since 1999. And, unsurprisingly, I love it. I love that I don’t have to worry about the weather, spend hours on a bus
Lifestyle illustrator: Hand-drawn type and drawing words
Blog post about my love for creating hand-drawn type and decorative text. With examples of my work. Illustrated by Tasha Goddard.
NEWS: List Happy by Vanessa King, illustrated by Tasha Goddard
Blog post about List Happy by Vanessa King and illustrated by Tasha Goddard, including some spreads, artworks and process videos.
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating everyday objects
Blog post about illustrating everyday objects, including sketches and finished illustrations
Life as an illustrator: My illustration process
Blog post sharing details of my illustration working process, including timelapse videos
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating people
Blog post about illustrating people, including a variety of examples of my people illustrations
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating rooms
A blog post with a selection of different illustrated rooms and talking about lifestyle illustrator, Tasha Goddard’s love of drawing rooms and a bit about her life, too.
Food illustrator: Uses for food illustration
This is part of a series of blog posts about different uses for illustration (particularly focusing on the themes and topics that I like to illustrate). While I don’t especially like to pigeon-hole myself too much, I do tend to think of myself as a lifestyle illustrator, with a particular focus on, or love of,
2022 Word for the year
It’s hard to go into 2022 with a positive attitude when the Covid numbers here are scarily high: And when some of those closest to me are going through really shitty times. But… I’m an optimist and so I am going to do my utmost to come down on the side of hope and see
Creative play
It’s so important to include creative play in your schedule. For fun, but also to grow and explore and build y our practice and to evolve your style.
Style exploration
I recently took Tom Froese’s new class on Skillshare, The Style Class: Work Out Your Illustration Style in a Daily Project. (If you don’t already subscribe to Skillshare, you can try it for 14 days free with this link.) This involved doing a daily drawing, using the alphabet to keep you going, and picking a
Memories
A year ago today, Jenny Goddard (aka Mama, aka Jenny Scott Smith, aka Jenny Zamenhof Goddard) passed away. I can’t quite believe it’s been a whole year, but also can’t quite believe that it wasn’t only a few weeks ago. (To be fair, a lot of that disconnect with time is down to the weirdness
Soundtrack to corona lockdown
There is lots of newness (and a fair bit of the same) about this corona lockdown…
What I want for my kids by the time they leave home
Some of this will be covered at school, some will need to be covered by us and some, realistically, they probably won’t know when they leave home (some of it I’m still working on at 46). But it’s what I’d really like to help provide them with by the time they leave home.
Word for 2018 | Listen
Rather than New Year’s Resolutions, which always (in my experience, at least) tend to fall over within a week or two, I’ve spent a few years picking a word for the year (along with a gazillion other people – it’s not something I came up with all by myself). Last year’s word was ‘Inspire’, 2016’s
Escaping the social media bubble
I’m at the end of a voluntary (and now I’m thinking I totally could have done something extra with it like got people to sponsor me in a whole Sober October kind of way) Facebook break. I decided on an arbitrary amount of time that I thought would be enough to give me more
Self-portraits and daily practice
After Inktober I felt the need to keep up some kind of more focused daily practice. I do pretty much always draw or paint something every day, whether just doodles or rough sketches, or fully realised pieces for my portfolio or for a client. But the focus and impetus to stick to a daily practice
Illustrated recipe: Refried beans
We love tacos and I came up with this homemade refried beans recipe a good few years ago and use it every time we have tacos now. It’s really nice in tacos, served with some shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes and grated cheese and maybe some sour cream, as well (cheese and sour cream totally optional
Travelling while vegetarian
And here’s Part 4 of my trip review. Part 1 was about holidaying with srprs.me, Part 2Part 2 was about holidaying alone and Part 3Part 3 was all about Malaga. This part is about travelling as a (lifelong) vegetarian. This was by far the most challenging aspect of the trip and the single thing that
Visiting Malaga
Part 3 of my trip review. Part 1 was about holidaying via srprs.me and Part 2 was about holidaying solo. This one’s all about Malaga, and Part 4 is about travelling as a vegetarian. Well, that was an eye-opener and a definite benefit of using srprs.me! I would never ever have a booked a holiday
Holidaying solo
Welcome to Part 2 of my trip review (and sorry it’s taking me so long to write it all up – somehow that vision of being a travel blogger jetting off to all corners (hmm, there aren’t actually any corners on a globe, are there?) of the Earth is fading slightly – probably should have
Travelling with Srprs.me
I’d decided around Easter time that I wanted to go away for a city break in Europe on my own some time soon. I’d been doing a lot of introspective thinking/searching/pondering, while and after reading Beth Kempton’s Freedom Seeker (highly recommend it, by the way). And I’d realised that I’d never gone on holiday on
Kokeshi Doll Colouring Pages
It struck me the other day that I haven’t created a new downloadable colouring book in absolutely ages. So I’ve put a new one up on Etsy – it’s chock-full of hand-drawn kokeshi dolls for you to colour and includes some fairly blank ones for you to decorate yourself, as well as plenty with lovely
Inspire in 2017
I don’t think I did a word of the year last year – or, if I did, I didn’t record it. I have a feeling it might well have been ‘Mindfulness’ if I did do it. I spent the year cutting back on lots of extra responsibilities and commitments and concentrating on finding my own
Printable Floral Colouring Bookmarks
I have a tendency to just grab a sticky note to mark my page when I’m reading. I have quite a few bookmarks – the ones that come in the books you reserve from the library, a fair few made by my daughters and laminated by (hopefully) willing early years professionals and teaching assistants, some
Happy Weekend Free Colouring Page
Lots of people have been coming to this page recently, so I thought I’d give you an extra Happy Weekend colouring page, that I created this week (today being 23 September 2022, a LONG time since the original one below was created). Scroll to the bottom of the page, for the new one. (And you
Christmas Colouring Book (printable) available now
A little later than I’d hoped, but I’ve finished my Christmas colouring book and it’s now available from my Etsy store. Jam-packed with 25 festive Christmassy designs to keep you calm and colourful through the month. You could even print them out four or more to a page and use them to make Christmas cards
Inktober Colouring Book now on Etsy (plus free sample)
My (digital) Inktober Colouring Book is now available on Etsy to buy for £4 (plus VAT, if you’re in the EU). It contains all the drawings I did for this year’s Inktober. Some are more suited for colouring than others, but there’s a good enough variety of complexity, I feel. Flowers, Paisleys, symmetrical patterns, women,
Free Sugar Skulls Colouring Page
Happy Halloween (or Day of the Dead – sorry, far more scope for pretty colouring!) Time for a little one-off freebie. And watch this space (or the Etsy store) for a new colouring book coming soon with all of this October’s inktober drawings – some are more colouring friendly than others, but I’ll put them
Going with the flow – floral pattern
Part of the new calmer lifestyle I’m trying to adopt, I’m throwing out all my design career goals and schedules and plans and ‘going with the flow’. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to do any work for studios – but I will only do so when I have the time and when it’s a call/assignment/trend
Peace, calm and embracing single-tasking
I’ve been suffering for a year and a half with numbness down the left side and almost constant dizziness. The severity would change, but it would be there most of the time. I had lots of blood tests done and a bunch of things ruled out. Then I was referred to a consultant neurologist, who
Holiday Flowers: New Colouring Book and FREE sampler
While on our holidays this year (in a very beautiful Cornish pair of villages – Kingsand and Cawsand), I did quite a bit of drawing full pages of stylised flowers – this seems to be my go-to relaxation technique – and I shared most of them on Instagram or Facebook. A few people said they’d love to
Another colouring book – and a free sample
Well, it’s taken a while, sorry, but I’ve uploaded my second printable colouring book to Etsy. And I am, of course, offering you a free sample as a little taster – hopefully it will whet your appetite enough to buy the whole book, but even if it doesn’t, I hope you have lots of fun
Colouring for grown-ups
So… it seems grown-ups are getting totally into colouring now. Awesome! I’ve always loved colouring, and used to spend hours as a very young child colouring in Altair Design books using my big tin of felt tips. These days I mostly just colour my own pictures, but now and then my daughters will ask me
On gratitude and the blues
This weekend, Chris and I both had to do a lot of work. This meant we didn’t have time to take the girls out to cinemas or swimming or to hang out in cafes and museums. They got their homework done, had their baths, got given breakfast, lunch and dinner and also had approximately 5
When it all just flows
I don’t really have a problem with artist’s block (touch wood) but sometimes it takes a while to get into a brief, especially if you’re trying to do something that’s a little outside your comfort zone, or something that’s not really ‘you’. A lot of freelance and agency work involves pushing out designs quite quickly
The Landlady – Patternmash project
I joined up for Hannah’s Patternmash project at the start of January. Hannah provides monthly briefs to create patterns/collections for. Not hugely unusual, I suppose, but… her briefs are really well-thought out and researched and in-depth and she provides supportive moodboards, colour palettes and more. I think it’s the depth and the reaching beyond the
Drawing, drawing, drawing
Much of my December designing was all done in Illustrator – though almost always starting with sketched ideas and plans. I then squeezed in some painting at the end of the month, using some new paints – Golden Acyrlics – oh wow, I am totally and utterly in love with these paints. The only acrylics
Goals, tasks and accountability – NOT resolutions
Continuing on the ‘I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions’ theme, I am still looking to start the new year with a fresh attitude and raring to go. Because the girls start back to school on Monday (5 January), and that’s also when I’ll be officially back at my (TAG Publishing Services) desk, I’m really treating
Word for 2015
I used to make New Year Resolutions. I’d resolve to give up smoking, lose weight, save money, learn to drive… And I’d quickly fall at the first hurdle with most of them. And then I’d feel sad and grumpy and like a big fat failure. Resolutions seem to be made for giving up, even though