sketching and illustrating

First things first…

I have gained quite a few stockists recently, and I’ve almost run out of Town & Country Garden birdwatching logbooks so I have been getting that title rejuvenated before I send an order off to the printer. I have the usual dilemma of needing to order quantities that bring the unit cost down to a profitable level (I have to offer a 40% discount to retailers, which is where the bulk of my sales are focussed) but also being aware of the total cost as well as the volume of booklets I will need to store. Another consideration is that new stockists often prefer to start off with Sale or Return so although I think I have only ever had a couple of people who have actually wanted to return them, it still means that those books are out but I don’t know when I will get paid.

In addition, I have to charge postage in order to keep the discount at the same rate, but it is an additional cost for the retailer. To offset this I have started adding books to the value of the postage in with the orders as it’s a sort of split the difference arrangement.

So, that’s the admin side of things.

Meanwhile, in my sketchbook…

I have been enjoying my drawing recently and am getting close to the end of my Fabriano Venezia so there will be a sketchbook tour coming up soon. Here are some Alaskan animals that I drew. I feel so conflicted and downhearted about the, er, “situation” in the US (can you tell I’m British) specifically the complete disregard of the natural world – not belittling the complete disregard for well, everything and everyone. The subject of Alaska came up on a podcast I listen to and being obviously Eurocentric, I realised I’d never really thought about the fauna of the North American artic. I used grey Khadi paper for the polar bear and the ringed seal which I cut out and stuck on the page, with the muskox painted straight on the page.

I’m wanting to see if I can use the same bird style on things other than birds, as it would be really fun to do some wider illustration projects sometime. I have done commissions of non-avian things before but I need a bit more practise before thinking about offering or promoting my skills beyond my comfort zone.

I have been using Notion to keep track of my illustrations as I lose track of which version is win which logbook, and I’m endeavouring to reduce the doubling up where I can. I am taking the view that I can get away with having the same illustration in Birds of the North West Highlands and Birds of the Isle of Wight, and there are some which are maybe less familiar (like the Black-tailed Godwit) which people probably aren’t going to notice too much, but with the ones which crop up frequently – not sure why Curlews are in about half the titles – I want to make sure I have a selection of images to use.

Here are some of my recent paintings, as well as some I’ve replaced with a blue background: