This was first published as a newsletter, back in August 2023.

Hello you lovely person you.

I hope you are having one of the best days. May tomorrow be even better.

Let's get right into it. In this newsletter you'll be getting a sneak-peek at my most recent illustrations, and a helpful drawing hint.

Next week I will be taking part in an Instagram challenge to create illustrations for The Jungle Book.

(The Jungle Book Instagram challenge was created by @mosokje on Instagram and the hashtag is #bksjunglebook. Follow along if you'd like to see some fantastic picturebook illustrations.)

Now, in working on these images this week, I learnt a little lesson that I think will help me in future illustrations. It's a technique that helps to solve a problem many artists have: what to do when sketches have vitality, but the final illustrations are stiff and lifeless. Maybe you've experienced this yourself? Either way, I'll share the tip:

Be under-prepared.

To explain, let me begin with my overall concept for The Jungle Book challenge: although I enjoy the book, I felt a lack of connection with it; and the characters have been recreated so many times that I didn't have much to add to the conversation. So, while scribbling some ideas and wondering how on earth to draw a bear falling from a tree (this will become clear later), I decided to change the setting of the book from India to somewhere closer to home: central Africa. This meant changing all the animals to an African equivalent.

I did hesitate: how on earth were they going to be recognisable as Jungle Book characters? But…

“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks,” - Mark Rothko.

Besides, I’m a rebel. I rebel against everything…especially people saying that Baloo has to be a bear. (Ok, his name actually means bear, but still.)
So Baloo became a gorilla, another large tree-climbing animal, technically. Obviously Bagheera became a leopard and Shere Kahn a lion. Mowgi’s wolf family are now African wild dogs, and Kaa is a beautiful python. Nowadays, these animals wouldn’t all be found together in one area, but most of them were once widespread in central and southern Africa (back in the good old, wild days).

Back to the lesson about being under-prepared:
Once I had sketched out some small thumbnail ideas for each illustration, instead of carefully sketching the characters and backgrounds and then working on the final illustration over that, I simply put a rough sketch onto my lightbox under a clean sheet of paper, got all my paints, pens and crayons out, and just started drawing. If I wasn’t sure about - for example - how to layer the grass, I experimented a few times in my sketchbook, then went back to the final, with a loose wrist and low expectations. I embraced the “mistakes” or anything unexpected that the materials did, and was happy with the results.

So, in the end, being under-prepared is another way of saying leave some space to play.