I am an illustrator/artist who loves maps, buildings and villages and the characters (human and animal) that live in and around them. I hope my pictures contain a bit of heart, sometimes even humour. I often include my two dogs Simon and Celeste – they can usually be seen cavorting somewhere on my illustrations.

I love creating village maps with broad appeal but I also particularly enjoy creating bespoke artworks for special occasions –  weddings, life maps, birthday illustrations.  Sitting down with someone and listening to their ideas is always a fascinating exercise – a great transfer of ideas! Being involved in wedding plans, or someone’s significant birthday or retirement present is always an honour. I love it.

 

I am not an artist by training – I was a journalist for some years, a video script and speech writer for a few more – but, as the daughter of a landscape artist, I discovered, with surprise and some joy, that I had learnt much about drawing and painting by osmosis, standing, as a child, by my father’s easel and watching him paint.

My favourite medium is watercolour, combined with ink. I usually sketch the composition in pencil – checking the proportions, leaving room for labels and signs and making sure the deer or dogs’ legs aren’t going the wrong way – before launching my favourite 0.1mm waterproof draughtsman pen at the paper.

 

Once the ink drawing is done, the fun begins with the watercolours. Watercolour can be unforgiving. Too many mistakes, going over the same patch, trying to remove a mistake, can make the paper fluff up, blurring the image. When poised with my paintbrush I try to act decisively and with confidence.

I tend to try and stick to a small palette of colours, mixing the colours just from a few tubes of watercolour: mostly yellow ochre, sap green, cerulean blue, burnt sienna, rose madder. Too much variety in the colours can make the (already busy) composition look crowded and garish.

Most recently I have produced jigsaws from two of my prints. I found a company in Devon to manufacture them and provide the neat and stylish packaging. It’s great when customers message me with photos of the finished jigsaw – so nice to see.

The greetings cards seem to be popular. I sometimes hear that my card was spotted on a mantlepiece or someone received one from a friend. It makes me feel all warm inside!