Quick self portrait

Just thought I'd share this quick self portrait I did here; it's also number 64 over on my 365 cartoons project blog. Things have all of a sudden gotten super busy, which is real exciting. Lots of fun projects, too. It's true, work is more fun than fun!

I also did a pink haired version to put in the column on the right. Now it matches with the owl in the header. Hoorah!

12 Week Challenge - Week #1

For those of you who don't know, author of the illustration blog Zero2Illo and super nice guy, Jonathan Woodward, is organising a big project for aspiring artists called the 12 Week Challenge. He's challenging for artists out there to take the first steps of their journeys to become professional illustrators - right now!

During the 12 weeks, I'll be sharing my progress here, as well as on the Zero2Illo clubhouse and blog. If this sounds like something you'd like to do, anyone can join in at any time, so head on over to the blog and read what it's all about.

It's the first week of the challenge. This is where it all begins! The task appointed to participants this week is a pretty logical place to start.


What do you want to illustrate?

Sounds pretty simple, right? Some people will know the answer to this straight away. Others will find it difficult to decide on what kind of work they'd like to focus on. As for me, I'm somewhere in the middle, I think.

Originally, I was interested in doing children's picture books. But, unless you're Graeme Base or Shaun Tan, making a living exclusively from picture books in Australia is hard. And also, illustrating a picture book is an absolutely mammoth undertaking, and in the last few months I've quickly learned that these kinds of huge projects aren't really what I like doing.

I sat with my notebook the other day and thought long and hard about what kind of illustration I'd like to do, and this is the final list I ended up with.

• Advertising
• Editorial, magazine illustration
• Greeting cards, stationary, stickers, etc
• Patterns & textiles
• Educational publishing (bread 'n' butter jobs!)
• Book covers
• Illustration for licensing

So that's what I would like to illustrate! Specifically, these are the areas I'd like to focus on when promoting my work. But you know, I'm currently working on some 'fantasy' book covers featuring realistic dragons and monsters and robots, which is almost the complete opposite of the work that's currently in my portfolio. I'd love to keep doing that kind of work.

So, to wrap this up, there are definately industries and areas of illustration I would like to focus on, but there are also other jobs I am interested in so I think my range of services will end up being very diverse.

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Every week I will be doing a post about my progress during the 12 Week Challenge, organised by Jonathan Woodward of Zero2Illo. I hope you enjoy reading about my progress!

A new blogging start

It's been a while since I blogged regularly, and I really wanted a fresh start for my blog. I fiddled around with Wordpress and other platforms for a while but I've come back to blogger because it just keeps things simple.

The old Bookish Old posts can still be found here. Of course I didn't want to delete all my previous posts and the comments on them, so I copied them over to another blog.

So then, welcome to the new Bookish Owl, a blog about illustration, design, the industry and my illustrationy life. I hope you enjoy my writings and art, and hopefully readers will be able to get something out of this blog!