It’s been a while … actually it’s been a whole season since I last wrote!!

Summer has whooshed by a brake your wrist speed (seriously), and rather than delay and get bogged down with detail, if it’s ok with you I’m going to use this post a bit like a pin board, and stick up just a few of the projects in which I’ve been delighted to be involved… Here we go… and I promise not to do this again.

Quite out of the blue I was invited by Howies, to design some t shirts for their summer range. This was very new territory for me, but they were extremely kind and patient! The first theme was geared towards one of my favourite past times, that of cycling, with an emphasis on what it ‘gave’ me.

So I illustrated a fish (of course) on a bicycle, escaping the hum drum routine of swimming with the crowd! To my amazement (and relief) it sold out in the first week!


Howies then flattered me further by asking if I’d write a blog for them about the other thing I love to do: forest run. They wanted the dirt, the running at full pelt, hopping over fallen branches and sliding through slurries of mud, to emerge through leafy canopies into glorious sunshine or eye stinging rain! It sounds foul, but there IS something about it… feral, freeing and getting covered in mud… I digress.

Here’s a link to that blog if you’d like a peak, and the T shirt that went with it…funny how it turned out to be a bit like the British Isles.

As most of Britain swung into full Summer mode and the general public’s mottled purple legs turned from pink to brown, the lovely people at the Guild of Fine Food asked if I would design and illustrate a map for them to celebrate British Charcuterie.

As I began to research, it revealed itself to be a thriving and rather unknown industry; I had no idea just how many independent producers we have on these isles, and how diverse the British range of charcuterie truly is. Do you remember when we as a public would show a certain element of indifference (bordering on snobbish disregard) towards the British cheese industry? Yet now, due to a lot of campaigning and persistence  by the producers, and various celebrity foodies there is a palpable element of (smug) pride we feel when hunting down a semi obscure British cheese. It would be great if British charcuterie could enjoy the same level of grand scale public support.

Then there was the project for an Italian photographer who, like me, has a bit of thing about octopus…

The last one I’ll mention was a great couple that ‘won’ a commission through an auction held by the brilliantly innovative Do LecturesThey got to choose whatever they wanted. I got to illustrate it for them. They chose pea pods. Lush. 

So that’s it for now. If you made it this far, thank you for allowing me to spill a few bits of work onto the page. I promise the next scribblings will be a little more inspiring!

Off now to work on some mackerel stripes, bye for now x