Tiny steps to 'They Draw and Cook' book

As soon as Nate sent me a link to 'The Most Gorgeous Cookbook Ever' on Amazon I ordered several copies and waited eagerly for their delivery. And they did not disappoint, I was overwhelmingly excited and proud to see my work in print. It had been a long time in coming.

Lets take a look at my first submission though from March 2014...

As you can see I hadn't quite found my style and I was still working out the finer details of PS. If you followed my self imposed TDAC challenge I set myself at the beginning of last year to have 30 recipes submitted by the end of 2015 you'll remember my IG feed being full of food! One of the marvelous outcomes of drawing so much food was I became very quick at it, flitting between dip pens and brush pens, which in turn made me swifter in PS and that in turn gave me further confidence to explore and refine my style.

To reach that magic 30 took over EIGHTEEN MONTHS - the same amount of time I was pregnant my two kids. It was a true labour of love because I knew the goal was worthwhile. Each time I sat down to dip that pen in the ink for the sketching or hand lettering, played about with page layouts was a tiny step towards this book. Goals take time, in some cases some longer than others.

The most important thing is to KEEP taking those steps, however small, to make that dream happen!

I was prepared to be consistent, keeping my eye on the prize, despite the many detours, leading up to that major goal. You can use this approach in most areas of you life. If you allow yourself to take small steps, one day at a time, you are least likely to overwhelm yourself. Planning also plays an important part, plan for progress not perfection!

I don't suppose the returns from selling this book on Amazon will be huge. But I plan to send a copy to many, many art directors in the future so they can reference my style and approach, and fingers crossed send briefs my way.

You can order copies of this book from Amazon.com US

Or Amazon UK

Useful Pinterest advice for designers and illustrators

A few days ago I made a short video on Periscope about Pinterest, tall pins and foodie illustrations. As these videos are only around for 24 hours I've decided to blog about the main points I mentioned, as many folks found it very useful.

I'd like to point out one important aspect of Pinterest:  approx 80% of pins on Pinterest are repins, so the image has kind of been 'recycled' over and over which is great as that's how your work is spread, and found in searches. So only 20% of pins are 'new' - they have been DIRECTLY uploaded onto Pinterest from a website or blog or shop. I do not have any marketing background -  this blog post is just based from my own experience...and I'm not saying this is the correct way or the only way.

First of all I'd like to point out that 8.5k followers is really not that many, there are other creatives with 50k+ followers. I feel my boards are representative of my major interests as a illustrator, and the sort of work I'm wanting to attract as well. I have my own illustrations on a board first then Love Food Illustrations, Pattern and Print, Creative Cards...etc based on how many pins I have on each board.

This is my Love Food Illustrations board with its 2.2k followers -I really am a small fish. However I believe its one of the larger food illustrations boards on Pinterest.

I've circled this pin as I want to point out the TDAC layout ( and you know I have a loads of recipes on TDAC) is not the most advantageous format for Pinterest. Which leads me onto this other interesting fact. It's thought that 50 - 80% of Pinterest users use their mobile device - so that's why I think its best to maximize your artwork for different devices and social media platforms. I have blogged about 'tall pins' previously and they are still play an important part - they take up far more space on a feed so viewers would most likely linger on it (create at 72dpi approx 500px wide by approx 1500px high)

Another example of an artist reformatting their TDAC piece into a tall pin is Rachael Schafer

...which ended up on this board...with over 13k followers

Here we have Harriet Mellor's Infused Waters tall pin (again refomatted from a TDAC recipe layout)....

Clicking on the image will bring up this window that shows its been re-pinned 18 times (from my Love Food board) and gives the option of visiting Harriet's website. Clicking on the '18' will bring up this ....

These are the 18 boards and pinners who have pinned the Infused Waters. Note Sara Piersanti's Drinks Illustration board....it has over 57k followers!!

Moving onto my Pattern and Print board with just 1k followers...and Nic Squirrell's tall pin of watercolour birds...

It was repinned onto this board which has 17k followers...

And as we scroll down my Pattern and Print board more of Harriet's tall pins which are proving popular...

....and scrolling down further is Victoria Johnson's Butterflies tall pin which has been re-pinned 23 times...

Here are the boards it was repinned onto...one of which has over 14k followers

Now moving onto my Food Kitchen Pattern board which was created as I felt there was too much overlap with the Love Food board and I create many patterns with food myself.

As you can see Tracey English's art is very popular and was repinned onto a board with 5.7k followers

I'm not claiming that creating tall pins and having pins picked up by much bigger pinners is a guarantee of success. However because of the way Pinterest's algorithm is set up, art that has been pinned the most and most recently will come higher up in searches! That's something to bare in mind when seen from the viewpoint of a potential commissioning editor or art director.

A little bit of effort on your part could pay dividends as getting seen by the right people is surely a wonderful thing. Please be assured it does happen. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post I am not a big player in the Pinterest stakes BUT as I have a food illustration niche, bigger players follow the Love Food Illustration board in particular. So if you feel inclined to create a tall pin on a foodie or pattern theme please send them my way and I will gladly pin!

'FEAST' - They Draw and Cook's NEW feature

It was with great delight I welcomed the news that They Draw and Cook were now accepting ANY foodie related images to their site. Yes for 'Feast' images can be submitted without a recipe!! Some of you may have seen snippets on IG of my work in progress based on food over the last year. I do have entire food themed collections in the Surface design part of my website now.

However with 'Feast' I felt it was a great chance to pull out a elements and arrange them in the TDAC layout to showcase further the range of work I can produce. And I think a lot of designers agree as there has been a wonderful variety of kitchen and foodie art that has been recently uploaded. And of course with the added bonus of TDAC huge social media following its win/win all round. Check it out HERE

It really is so much fun rearranging cakes!! Also I am very very close to completing the They Draw and Cook Challenge I set myself earlier this year, so I can be considered for a TDAC book. Although its taken far longer than I expected, in some ways has been a good thing - I will explain further in my next blog post.

Playing with 'Creative Playgrounds'

Some of you know I take part in daily arty challenges. Last August it started with month of hand lettering daily, then a month of food, then desserts and biscuits. There was no major thought process behind them, it was to keep up with my drawing skills without engaging my brain as to its final use, if any.

I am still taking part in daily doodles #365doodleswithjohannafritz if I can, and sometimes mashing it up a daily watercolour in my moleskin and even further mashed with #alittleart that Victoria Johnson started (tiny art in any medium no bigger than 2.5") Indulge me I'm getting to the point...

It wasn't until last month when I took part in Build a Freelance Illustration Business that I realized this kind of approach has a name...'creative playgrounds' . I am simply 'playing', its done freestyle, its quick, maybe messy but I'm always having fun. I never realized that also submitting to the Spoonflower and Tigerprint competitions even taking part in Inktober and #the100day project was this 'creative playground. Submitting to They Draw and Cook...some of you know I submit to them a lot... is also a 'creative playground'  

I made a commitment to myself to just spend 10-30mins each day to explore or try something new. You simply don't know until you try how its going to turn out...that new PS brush, shifting the images to 'colour burn' or drawing with a toothpick. And the super outcome is connecting with others who are joining in too, supporting their art and vice versa.

So I said I drew without thinking too much...well I want to show you some outcomes..why its good to play.

First up are these donuts I drew at the suggestion of picture book illustrator Claire Lordon during 'dessert a day' month (November 2014)...

....so these donuts ended up in at a foodie event banner in Toronto, each about 3 ft wide!

Next these very British biscuits were designer Harriet Mellor's request during food doodle month (October 2014)...

...which ended up in a UK adult colouring in publication earlier this year.

And just this week I started on Este MacLeod 'Explore Colour' painting course. The first assignment much to my delight was simply to draw swiftly the structure of fruits and vegetables, sections, slices, every angle. The butternut squash sketch ended up in this weeks They Draw and Cook submission.

And finally this is one of my very first doodles during hand lettering month last year (on vacation in Cornwall in a old sketchbook)....which will be appear in a publication later this year....

I feel its been truly beneficial to put ward work like this, letting go of the need to always know how the end result will pan out. Some of my doodles take days to a year to be worked into something that can be placed in my portfolio. If you would like to know more about the value of creative playgrounds watch Salli and Nate HERE

Inspired by 'The Martian' super creative problem solving

A few weeks ago I finished reading 'The Martian' by Andy Weir. As I've mentioned in a previous post I'm a bit of a sci-fi geek, and now with the added bonus of a Ridley Scott film adaptation of this book released later this year. In a nutshell an astronaut, Mark Watney is accidently left on the Red Planet & the novel charts his endeavors to stay alive. Yes there is a lot of physics, chemistry, botany, NASA speak and 70's disco music reference. The real core of this novel is about highly creative problem solving, lateral thinking and keeping a positive mental attitude. There is also much assessing, and re-assessing of goals and deadlines (almost literally)

There is also much maths, Mark often works backwards from a specific date, weighing up options and possible outcomes. With this in mind I reflected on my next major deadline - 22nd July. Thats the beginning of my kids school summer vacation (in the UK) We have an important family event that weekend. Then closely followed by a train ride down to the South of France, my destination for two weeks.

This is what I aim to fit in by 22nd July

-follow up art from Surtex (maybe 8+ collections)

-new collections for Printsource in August (4+ collections)

-have my 30 illustrated recipes submitted to They Draw and Cook for book consideration

So I'm doing the maths...I'm 20 recipes in...which leaves me with 10 recipes left to illustrate. That means submitting TWO recipes whenever possible for the whole of June!! Here's my most recent TDAC art....

Still thinking along the lines of Mark Watney maximizing the best use of his time and resources, I took a long look at where I could improve my time keeping. I am blessed with two very bright kids who are always ready to start the day at 6.30am!!! This gives me an hour and a half to set up the day - laundry, prep evening meal and general cleaning. So after school drop off I am able to concentrate on art until 3pm. That is until the end of term.

Whilst my life does not depend ticking off everything before the July deadline (I will not decompress for example) - I have calculated realistically and honestly the hours I will have for art from mid August - with the kids around. I intend to involve & integrate my children with many arty projects...starting with a sketch a day or #the100dayproject. There will be trips to London and Cambridge and most likely make use of old canvas's and papier mache.

I have worked steadfastly this year and I'm still keeping my eye on the prize. I think these summer hols more than others I'm just going to lean into it - be kind on myself, and not be too anxious about producing amazing 'polished' art. And also use this time to reflect on my successes thus far, re-coup & plan for the next set of goals. I'm sure a fortnight in Provence will also be most inspiring and I will come back refreshed & full of ideas.

Tall pins...great tool for illustrators on Pinterest

Just a really quick blog post as I add more of my illustrated recipes from They Draw and Cook to my website. As you may well know the layout for TDAC is very long horizontally (5000px x 1875px ) Not a problem - I love the challenge of finding exciting ways of filling this space.

However I did encounter a small drawback of this format - it doesn't work very well on Pinterest. On this site each image will be displayed at a maximum of 192px wide. My illustrated recipes were not shown in their best light. So with each new blog post and website update I would rearrange the different food, map, sketch etc elements into whats referred to as a 'tall pin.' Pinterest does not restrict the HEIGHT of pins. So if an image is (much) taller than its is wider it will be displayed in a way that will get you a lot of screen space - people will be able to view it for longer as they scroll down.

Let me demonstrate with the latest TDAC uploads pinned from my website...

Here the Futo-Maki sushi roll with the TDAC layout is in the middle. To the left you can see a version where I've rearranged the steps vertically so they do indeed take up more screen space.

On the far left are my illustrations from Beer Advocate magazine, and step by step pizza illustrations from TDAC arranged into tall pins - this is how they appear on the Pinterest feed. Both are approx 800-900px tall.

Darn it my Rose Syrup & Margarita illustrated recipe is not quite tall enough in this feed!!

Tall pins are so quick to create out of your existing artwork, and I can vouch that they do pay dividends. Pinterest can be used advantageously like any other social media and I'm certainly open to exploring this platform further.

Beer Advocate Magazine....the beginnings of the TDAC effect?

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.

They Draw & Cook Challenge -update

So last month I wrote about my plan to create a illustrated recipe every week...in the hope of having a book published by They Draw and Cook...well its working out so far. Recipe No 3 was Raspberry & Passionfruit cupcakes which was featured on their Valentines recipe collection. I was able to use the hands making the heart shape from a short animation from last year. And the cupcakes were from a doodle a day exercise from last year also. I'm finally understanding the value of leveraging!

Next up was a crunchy Pear & Walnut Salad. Again the pears were from a Doodle a Day from last Autumn. I did have to come up with rather a lot of various salad leaves and the walnuts.

The next week was Grilled Mackerel with lemon & Chilli. I loved illustrating these mackerel- they are wonderful to cook when super fresh. I was able to use the chilli peppers from a greetings card project. Below are the sketches that I worked from. I have a loose framework of ingredients that I want to work with an have started planning two or three weeks ahead.

And this weeks was Herb Infused Oils. I had back to back deadlines and knew had had to come up with something simple but effective. I researched the different flavours then in one evening I drew a sheet of herbs and a sheet of various oil bottle shapes.

I have enjoyed researching, planning and trying out new layouts for each recipe. I have learnt to work quicker and hopefully not lose any freshness. Whilst I'm very pleased with these and have played and explored , this month I'm going to try adding some new elements and expand things a little further stylistically.

My They Draw and Cook challenge

Some of you may know that I've submitted a few illustrated recipes to They Draw and Cook over the last year. There wasn't any plan behind the recipes I chose to illustrate - sometimes it was inspired by what was in my vegetable box that week. Other times it was just a random idea I decided to act upon. Either way I very much enjoyed the challenge of filling that 2000 x 1400 pt layout. It helped me to explore my style further and hasten the process I had found. And it was always great to receive great supportive comments from the TDAC team, Salli & Nate.

I saw their newsletter at the beginning of this year which announced some exciting treats, including a new website and the printing of 4 books of recipes by 4 artists under the TDAC banner. Each would contain approx 30 illustrated recipes....well I pretty much dismissed my chances after that as I only had 4 on their site.

However many of my friends thought this would be the perfect vehicle for my work. A WHOLE book filled with my foodie images would be a dream. I started to calculate how long it would take to illustrate 26 recipes. There were submission deadlines for March, June, September and December. Well it turned out I would need to submit ONE RECIPE A WEEK- taking me to the end of July !!!! - to be in with a chance.

At first glance I SERIOUSLY doubted I could handle this pace. In the past its taken me weeks for a single spread while I mull over minor details. It occurred to me that I already had many fruit and vegetable images from collections I have worked on. I could easily adapt and rearrange most of these to suit the recipe. And it could be a whole load of fun.

So I started last week with 'Fruity FIlled Popsicles' as my first submission. This week I decided to make it much simpler with 'Roasted Asparagus with Bacon & Eggs' I only have another 22 recipes left to illustrate. If you would like to follow my challenge look out for #TDACchallenge on Instagram

Mulled Cider illustrated recipe

Its taken me a while to get my head round the 'leveraging' my art aspect of this creative business. I was thinking how can I get more work into my portfolio quickly, with maximum impact and create potential work for my (soon) Etsy shop? Answer was create one body of mighty fine work then work it work it (!!) into many different areas/ markets - well thats a plan.

Last month I doodled food for 30 days, and amongst what I drew were cloves, star anise, cinnamon sticks and oranges. My little grey cells had a ponder....it came to me during my entry for last months Tigerprint competition where we were asked to overlay hand lettering over an image. One of them was associated with mulled wine - nice enough image but I felt I could inject a bit more 'flavour'.

I knew I wanted to 'overlap' all the different ingredients as 'mulling' really infuses the cider with lovely delicious layers of flavour. Technically it was the most complex illustration I'd done, testing the limits of my Mac's output. It turned out to be a fruit & spice ho-down and I felt there where many wonderful things happening. You can see the full illustrated recipe at They Draw and Cook

Cocktails - They Draw & Cook

This was an idea I had with one of my MATS mates Harriet Mellor. I create a series of illustrations relating to the country of origin of each cocktail. It was noted in my 'ideas book' along with dozens and dozens of ideas ( some really good some are just odd) I still have a slight nervousness of putting my work out there but then thought back to They Draw and Cook. They have a huge following and are very supportive of illustrators as Nate and Salli are in the industry themselves.

I had recently bought some new PS brushes and was very keep to try them out. I'm getting the hang of using masks and my layers are a lot neater. This was so much fun for me - I did enjoy Pimms rather a lot.

They Draw & Cook illustration party

So this is my second competition - they're really making me 'pull my socks up' as we say in the UK. I have been wanting to enter for years, but never had the courage until now. A fellow MATS mate had already entered this Glad sponsored competition where you have to illustrate 3 recipes using the same ingredient. Time was short so I choose lime as I'd drawn quite a few citrus icons for Bootcamp ( more in next blog). I choose the recipes for their easy methods and maximum flavour, and also personal favourites. I really had so much fun and I think it showed. I tend to think about food and travel a lot and very much want to include more in my portfolio. (I'm working in a hush hush foodie illo project that I'll be able to reveal soon)