Way back in February I received an email '....I stumbled across your autumn vegetable illustrations online, and they are exactly what I was looking for so I wanted to get in touch...' It was from Beer Advocate magazine and they wanted me to illustrate an editorial about brewing with vegetables. It was a perfect opportunity & I jumped at the chance.

First of all I was so so excited to hear they had found my work via They Draw and Cook. By late autumn of last year it was dawning on me with TDAC huge following on Facebook (over 200,000 likes) and other social media platforms their reach was wide and varied. As long as I kept producing considered illustration, used the best of my abilities, and kept exploring, then TDAC would be a great vehicle for showing my artwork. And it looks like its beginning to pay off...slow and steady as it is with these things.

So here we are...beer and vegetables. The concept for the leading spread was beer bottles growing like vegetables. And spot illustrations of the vegetables mentioned in the article.

Finally I want to end on another positive - I am in the middle of another exciting project where the art director found my illustrations on Pinterest, once again via a They Draw and Cook recipe artwork from last year. A Pinterest inspired blog post coming up soon.

So we arrived at just over the half way mark. There was an inkling that it would be maps, although some of us rather dreaded it. The mini this week was to create hand lettering using the name of your home town. Thankfully I live in a small semi rural town with s short name Ware- yes it really is called that. I wanted to convey how OLD my lil town is from its Roman, Saxon, Medieval and Tudor roots.

When the brief came through the first thing I did was go out and take some snaps around town. For such a small town it has a lot of old buildings. In part from the days when Ware was a main stop off point for a change of coach and horses going north to Cambridge or further along the old Roman road Ermine Street to York.

There was so much I wanted to include as I really do love history ( I have an A-level in C15th -C16th European history). But there was still the River Lea which is also another important part of the growth of this town. These days it doesn't carry cargo or malt but is used for more leisure activities and I have spent many a day walking along it trying to get my babies to sleep!

Realistically I bit off more than I could chew - something Lilla had cautioned against. I finally uploaded my Ware map with seconds to spare for the deadline - I do not wish to relive that last minute. Overall I was really pleased with the outcome, I feel it gives a good impression of the highlights of Ware ( rather that the industrial sized pharmaceutical plant that employes half the town)