July 2026

July was hot hot hot! Two heat waves here in the UK, and I was stuck indoors because of my fractured foot. I would have loved to enjoy the close by beaches… but I can’t complain. I spent the time drawing and illustrating, with a fan on full blast, with curtains drawn to try and keep the heat outside. Thankful for my loyal assistant’s company.

This month, the usual sketchbook hasn’t been touched much really. After my deep dive into chiaroscuro and warm interior scenes, I found myself craving some lightness and have been drawing flowers in a different sketchbook. I have been experimenting with a lot of different materials and on a variety of papers. I’m a little ashamed to say that I have bought too many art supplies and too many different types of paper. I won’t tell you how much I spent, but I feel horribly guilty. I don’t know exactly what I am looking for but I know I haven’t found it yet.

I have found out however that different materials behave in a different way depending on the type of paper I use. I am finding this fascinating and I am spending way too much time playing with it. I am documenting my experiments so that I can go back to my notes in a few weeks and hoping I find some sort of missing link. I am also mixing media a lot more. I always thought I was a “one type of media” kind of girl, but in fact, I could use three or four together and not cringe.

July was intense in the sense that I had a deadline to meet. I have been wanting to enter the Key Colours Competition for a few years now and since January this year, I have been debating whether or not I should. The text was there, the thumbnails were done. I just needed to focus in order to create my final line art. I made my mind up three weeks ahead of the deadline. It’s been a rush, hard and tenuous experience, but I have managed it!

I have submitted my entry to the competition and now I’m waiting to hear back in September.

Once that was done, I felt like a fraud again. The same issue and problem I constantly face, which is my impostor syndrome . Every time I finish a project , I question everything. AGAIN! Over analysing things is exhausting but I can’t seem to stop. It’s like a vicious enemy poking at me every time I feel vulnerable. I have no idea how to deal with it. Send help!

This month, in between experimenting with my numerous art supplies, and doing the line work for the picture book dummy, I stumbled across a pastel artist who uses Woodless Pastel Pencils here on Substack. I can’t remember the name of the artist now, but her art was extremely beautiful. They were very small illustrations but with so much hazy light in them. If you know who I am talking about, please let me know.

I didn’t even know such a thing as woodless pencils existed. I have all sorts of pastels you can think of, but I struggle to use them . They are collecting dust on a trolley near my desk. I love pastels. So of course, I went and ordered the beginner box.

I have been playing with them daily to figure them out, but still no where near where I want to be. My next step is to find a tutorial on youtube for them.

I have not had time to continue to read “Good Art doesn’t sell” and my current guess is that I will need to start over as some point.

I went back to a book I purchased a while ago to help me with the colour palette of my picture book dummy. The book is called “ The Complete Colour Harmony ( Pantone Edition) “ by Leatrice Eiseman. I like the way it’s built. The book offers a multitude of suggested colour palettes to use for various situations. The book was very helpful to me and did help me figure some of my colours out.

Right now however, I am focused on understanding myself and my nervous system better through some tailored prompts, adjusting my mindset to one of growth instead of starvation, hoping to clear my head, build my confidence and find my inner child again.

If you want the full list of prompts I am doing at the moment , you can find them in my previous substack article.

How I will find my artistic voice

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Jul 27

I used to work in corporate. I had several challenging and very interesting roles in a big Media and Publishing company in London. I was adaptable and flexible enough to be moved around every time the company had a big reorg. After several moves that made absolutely no sense, when they offered me a redundancy package, I took it.