Story Street is a monthly newsletter from children’s author & illustrator Jane Porter. Read on for ramblings about my life as a picture book maker, community artist, comic diarist and growing-in-confidence fiddle player. Story Street is a guaranteed AI-free zone.
I’ve spent July doing LOTS of drawing, and it’s been lovely. I’ve even been filmed drawing up a tree for an exciting project! I’ll tell you more about my role as a film extra in the spring. Despite appearances, I did use a ladder to get up on that branch: sadly I’m not nimble enough to manage without one. But I can report that the tree was exceptionally comfy, and I’d like to go up there again soon.
I also had a marvellous day in Alnmouth on the Northumberland coast, sketching with illustrator friend Marloes de Vries from Rotterdam. It’s the first time we’ve met in person, and it was so much fun chatting over pencils and paint in this highly picturesque hut:
Meanwhile comics term ended, as it always does, with a drawing game very loosely inspired by the legendary Lynda Barry. We all took turns to describe a neighbour, then drew each neighbour as an animal. Here’s a sweet 8 year old with a strong sales strategy…
A soft-hearted swearing cab driver…
My elderly neighbours of many decades ago - one prim, one a little bit saucy…
And the brilliant Major Higginbottom, who used to take his glass eye out to play dominoes!
Honestly, there’s story inspiration for LIFE from this game! If you’d like to join ten weeks of online fun comics classes next term, enrolment is now open. Term starts on Wednesday 23rd September, sessions are live on zoom, and you will feel part of a lovely, warm community. There are three time slots to choose from and you can find all the details here (the evening group is very nearly full, so don’t delay if that’s your preference):
If you’d like support with a bigger project over the coming year, keep reading to to the end to find out about the brand new Comics Coaching Club.
After a year of clearing, it’s almost time to hand over the keys to my parents’ home and let the house start a new life with a new family. I know how privileged I am to have had the stability of a single parental home in my life for over 60 years. But letting it go is painful. I found a letter my grandfather had written to my father on 17th February 1963:
“This is something of an occasion, the first letter I shall address to your own house. What a lot of different addresses I have put on your letters, from student lodgings to the high seas. I hope you and Margaret will be happy in your house, and settled there for good…”
This inspired me to write a last letter to the house…
and secretly posted it between some floorboards! I felt so much better afterwards.
I grew up loving the library. We’d visit it most weeks, and I’d come home with at least three new books. I didn’t realise it at the time, but my local library was housed in what was once John Soane’s country mansion, Pitzhanger Manor. Now it’s an art gallery and museum, and well worth a visit if you find yourself in Ealing, West London. The most recent exhibition, of wallpaper designer Marthe Armitage, had me raring to get out the lino cutters - and I’d LOVE a floor-to-ceiling pinboard like this one (shown below). There are two more excellent exhibitions coming up there this year - definitely worth keeping an eye out for if you’re nearby.
I promised to tell you a bit more about my new teaching venture: it’s called…
I’ve been planning something like this for a while, knowing that lots of my comics students have a bigger project inside them that just needs a bit of regular, gentle but firm support and target-setting to help bring it into the world. Comics Coaching Club will happen on the second Tuesday of the month from September 2026 to June 2027. Over those ten online sessions in a small, nurturing group, you’ll develop your personal project - whether it’s a graphic memoir, a story, or even an illustrated manual of instructions for life - into something that’s made substantial progress over those months. I can’t promise it will be finished, but I will do my best to get you there! If this appeals, you can find out more through the link below:
All about Comics Coaching Club
The encroachment of AI into every aspect of life is something I am firmly resisting for a great many reasons - from the ludicrous amounts of water and land needed by the data centres, to the fact that humans in the near future are simply going to lose the ability to think. Earlier in the year I made a banner for a protest, specifically referencing the theft of copyrighted material for training purposes. This month I took it along to the Illustrators’ Fair in Granary Square near Kings Cross for Momoko Abe to display it on her stand - and I was delighted that some fellow campaigners from We Are Better Than This then took it along to photograph it outside some local businesses...
If you’d like to keep up with developments in the campaign, here are three very useful links for you - don’t miss the EXCELLENT animation on the first one:
I’m going to spend some of August working on another banner - and in the run-up to Comics Coaching Club, I’ll be attempting to make substantial progress on my own graphic novel, The Ghost Carp. Wish me luck, and see you in September.
P.S. One last thing - I made some tabard costumes for a play, then I went to see the play and it was A LOT OF FUN. If you are in or near Berwick upon Tweed, you still have time to catch The Three Musketeers in action at The Straw Yard: highly recommended as an upliftingly silly night out, don’t miss it.
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