With divisive actions playing out all over the world, especially those from in positions of power, let's not turn on each other. Be kind. Be thoughtful of your actions on others. Be respectful in the smallest of moments, because nothing else will have meaning. Be what you want others to be to you. It's exhausting dodging the fear and hatred people carry for themselves. Do better and be kind. Be a warrior for your inner child not the fear that lives inside them.
#words #wars #warriors
In 2021 fellow illustrator and now friend, Sue Gent and I did a podcast episode for the Association of Illustrators. It was about finding your voice as an illustrator, being that both of us had had extensive careers up to that point and therefore had a lot of experiences with and without clients calling the shots. I felt compelled to share again the accompanying text to the podcast, that was written up into an article for 3X3 Magazine by the AOI’s very own Marianna Madriz. We don’t have access to the podcast anymore but this article covers the main points.
Here is the text repeated here:
Author: Marianna Madriz, Illustrator: Caroline Pedler courtesy of AOI
Finding your ‘style’or a preferred way of working is a very individual journey which nobody else can do for you. There isn’t a clear step-by-step, and nobody has all the answers. It’s about achieving a sweet middle ground between condensing your personality visually and creating a language that can be enjoyed by others. While the results can take time to bubble, there are cautions and elements illustrators can consider throughout their personal creative journeys:
Don’t be a victim of your own success, or your insecurity. While it’s crucial to get commercial work (illustrators need to make a living after all!), it’s important to not sacrifice personal development. It’s also equally important to create self-initiated work in quiet periods to push your practice further. If your portfolio ends up becoming an inaccurate reflection of your ethos or your goals, invest time and energy to steer the wheel in a direction of your preference. You are in control.
Don’t forget the artist in you. Trends and new technologies come and go. For longevity, you must enjoy what you’re working on in the present and future—if you dislike how you’re approaching illustration work now, take the time to re-invent yourself and reflect. Allow yourself to be intuitive—change and play is part of the process.
Set yourself personal projects. It can be an individual image, or a series.The key is to not force a clear outcome, but to do it for the sake of experimentation. Caroline Pedler began a daily collage project every day of the year in 2016, and as a result, a new illustrative way of working was developed. Moments of solitude (going on walks, having a coffee by yourself) are often the best ways to spark ideas, without other distractions getting in the way.
Be open. Branch out of obvious inspirations, look beyond contemporary illustration and take influence from other sources like sculpture, film, and other mediums you don’t necessarily practise yourself. This can help build distance, and reduce comparison with other artists and illustrators. Be open to stepping outside of the box, and try things you wouldn’t necessarily consider at first.
Failure is good! Failure is a big part of the journey, a big part of being a creative too, and it’s best not to antagonise it. If you don’t like a drawing you did for yourself, that’s ok—finish it and carry on to the next one. Keep the failed experiments as part of your own archive. These tests can inform the next drawing you do, and inform your process overall. Don’t get caught up on self-imposed expectations, allow yourself to play and to make mistakes.
Be honest. This was one of the phrases that kept being mentioned throughout the chat. It’s good to stop sometimes, look at your body of work and reflect: do I see myself here? Is this representative of where I am at the moment? If the answer is no, then move on the next drawing and keep reflecting.The more you reflect, understand yourself, ask questions and realise what you’re happy creating, the easier it will be to see a clear pathway. Once you see a direction you’re happy with, this will inform what kind of commercial work you’d like to focus on next and what strategies you need to put in place to make it happen.
Can you have more than one style? This is another big question in the illustration world, one with many opinions. Caroline shares it’s fine to work in different ways, but may be best to limit it to two styles if possible. Try for it to not come out of a place of fear or insecurity, but out of confidence within your abilities. Some artists enjoy being versatile and multifaceted, others prefer to have one recognisable visual language. There are no rights or wrongs, just what’s right for you.
What to do when you get stuck? A blank piece of paper or solitude (or both) can be the worst enemies for some illustrators. If self-direction becomes a challenge, try investing in other activities: attend a workshop or a meet-up, sign up to an online course, collaborate with a peer. Others’ feedback and direction can be the right push to spark a new idea, or pick up where you left from. Also, breaks are essential for your physical and mental wellbeing—sometimes space is all you need to re-energize and get back to creating.
Why is it difficult? Illustration is storytelling, problem solving and communication, which aren’t easy feats! Nobody has an easy rite of passage, no matter how easy it looks from the outside. Instead of getting frustrated by the difficulties, reflect on what you’ve learned and achieved. Even if these don’t seem like big successes at the time, these small learnings will pave the way for positive and flourishing outcomes in the future.
Be persistent: it takes time. As highlighted many times in the talk, and throughout this summary, there isn’t a linear way of achieving that unique voice. It’s a process that’s very much down to each illustrator and artist—but with the right headspace, resources, support, perseverance, and willingness to experiment, you can evolve your practice and set yourself for a long and fruitful career.
Published April 21. AOI.com featured in 3x3 Magazine US.
So in a brief response to this, why is it important to find or locate your voice as an illustrator or professional creative? Because when your work is only driven by a trend, or a client, we as ‘the artist’ within the role of illustrator or creative professional, can lose ourselves in the job and over time give everything we know away, meaning we can suffer burnout, lose the love and an income. It is not sustainable constantly sourcing our ideas and ways of working from exterior sources or giving our ideas away without filling the creative pot from time to time. It is of course possible to make a living like this, to source from other illustrators, artists, switching into a new style or trend and step into the copycat roll, but there is little, if any creative integrity, enjoyment or sustainability to this and leaves the illustrator for example, and the industry in a situation of over saturation, creating work that is meaningless ‘tittle tattle”. (Zeegan 2012a: n.pag.) Sadly the commercial world oftentimes needs the professional creative to make the same thing over and over again, led by trends and sales, not by inclination or creative desire. Creative evolution is inevitable in an authentic and authorial led practice, where change is integral to the lineage of practice, which does not suit capitalism.
If we work in a creative field it is essential to feed our own creative pot in order to maintain creative and professional momentum and a certain level and quality of idea generation and enjoyment, giving time, attention, thought and consideration to ones own needs, sensibilities or interests. Writing our own briefs and creating personal projects led by curiosity, exploration, experimentation and inclination is essential in maintaining a healthy and sustainable creative career, so we can bring authentic ideas and applications to the client, which invariably can help ignite the illustrator, the project, the client and their portfolio, future and present. It’s a win win situation!
After nearly 3 decades of working professionally as an illustrator and before that as an exhibiting artist, and student of art, and later a teacher, what comes up time and time again when talking about how to find your voice is that creative immersion, commitment and attention are integral components of finding your voice, of locating a visual language that houses your values, beliefs and ways of seeing, and the bedrock of a healthy, sustainable and enjoyable practice. How do you do this? Well that is an entirely different post that will need some thought and attention. Breaking it down into bitesize tangible steps that I have learnt in all my years of helping people locate themselves in their work. If you‘d be interested in this let me know below.
I hope you found this insightful and helpful in your own journey and feel free to comment below or ask any questions in relation to the content. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading.
Illustrator and passive activist Paul Bowman used a cumulative title for his Association of Illustrators article EDUCATE - AGITATE - ORGANISE back in 2008 as a call to arms for educators. It was in response to the state of illustration as a discipline and later in 2017 he referred to that article with another title - Educate Agitate Abdicate.
Why am I telling you this? not because you need to know, but because I really like the use of the cumulative style title, using three verbs. It feels clear, effective and engaging, and it’s a style I have used for my own model of reflection. Make, Curate & Reflect. So after a number of years teaching in various contexts, I have noticed and collected patterns of behaviour, of my students and the problems and barriers they face in creating a continuous creative line of inquiry. My brain naturally wants to solve these for them and in my role as tutor, mentor, teacher or lecturer I regularly come up with tangible solutions in the moment, allowing the student to move through and out of their problem or block.
Make, Curate and Reflect is a model that can help the artist move through a period of not knowing where to go or what to do next. This model is nothing new and is completed by creatives everywhere as part of a natural creative process, but by defining it formally it makes it feel more purposeful and acts more as a tool for when things aren’t going right and that you know you can fall back on in moments of doubt.
MAKE: Making (or collating) a body of work or series of work, or maybe there’s a series of unconnected works you want to make sense of. Then bringing all these pieces together in one place, on a table, wall, computer screen. Having them on one plain together is crucial.
CURATE: The curation can happen in a couple of ways:
1. Thinking like a metal detector and honing in on any pieces that have a charge to them, ie pieces you enjoy, think of as successful, like the most.
2: Using a more objective, less feelings approach, looking and paying attention to any patterns emerging, then curating those patterns into groups. This could be patterns of visual application, conceptual meaning, or content for eg. Something that brings them together. Editing out any pieces that don’t serve you anymore, or that don’t fit into a pattern or you simply don’t like. (Continuity is the corner stone of understanding in creative practice and helps to build trust for you and the audience, along with paying attention to what you pay attention which is a rudder for continuity. and focus. When the work has too many different things in it it is hard to understand what’s going wrong, so pinpointing any patterns that are occurring in your work can help you reduce the distraction and help you find focus, clarity.
REFLECT: So with all the pieces you have chosen out of the entire body of works in front of you and depending on your approach and needs, reflect on what is working and what is not, or asking yourself why you enjoy them or not. Now looking critically (ie: objectively) at the curated set, looking at formal qualities, context, content, application, feeling, atmosphere, consider are there more of something than the others, do they all sit in a genre together, what do they share?
If you don’t know why, that’s fine keep going, looking for patterns that could help you make more sense of the work you create, or want to make, doing this over and over and see what happens, (making new work if possible and repeating the process). By having a series of pieces in front of you and reflecting on them objectively (say what you really see, without assumption or personal perspective), asking questions of why they work and why they don’t can help you understand where to edit, or change or move forward with or not.
Rinse and repeat all three throughout your practice or project.
This is a great task for a seasoned pro or someone starting out and if you do this over and over again you are building a library of what you are drawn to, with intention to understand further why you made the decisions you made. A powerful piece of work has meaning, resonance or impact on the artist, even before it gets to its audience. We don’t always know why something works, or why we make something, but cyclical reflection can help us pay attention to the decisions we are making, so we can a build a formula to work with, to make and progress again and again. When one insight drops, it makes way for others.
Ebbs and flows in clarity and understanding are inherent in problem solving and therefore creative practice, so having a toolkit of actions to get through the troughs and around the peaks is necessity for sustainability and enjoyment within practice. So reflection is key for progression. If ever in doubt or a place of not knowing how to continue, go back to where it felt good, unpack it from there and move through this model and hopefully you will be more aware of what’s working and not and why and how to move forward. I hope this helps and good luck! Any questions let me know x
Over the past year I have been funded, in part, by the Arts Council DYCP funding, (Developing Your Creative Practice), with the intention to develop my picturebook process as an author and illustrator. Taking a year away from academia and teaching at Arts University Plymouth, while continuing to teach a series of collage themed workshops locally and co leading the Defining Practice long course with Faye Dobinson at Newlyn School of Art. So I hadn’t given up teaching completely, which was fine.
I started with a strong feeling of catharsis, hope and joy and that I was finally getting the time I craved to work on my own work, to develop strands of practice that would take me places, help me sustain a wonderful rich life and everyone would be wowed by what I had achieved. Fast forward to the final months of the project and it didn't quite work out that way but I did realise the importance of carving time and space out for thinking, processing and percolating, and the impact that has on the energy and sustainability of practice, and connection to creativity, while realising the full extent of my neurodivergence.
So my main aim was to lean into my creativity and create some story starting points to show publishers as author and illustrator, to try out some new ways of working and play around with texture, shape and colour.
To help my project feel expansive and fully engaged in the arena I wanted to play in professionally, I started the 10 month project in full creative immersion in rural Germany, in an international illustration workshop ran by friend and fellow illustrator, educator, Jesus Cisneros. The workshop was run by friends and creative duo Studio Schmal, Johanna and Cristo, in a small hamlet of houses in Erlau on the edge of the woods. It was an amazing location where a pair of sparrow hawks were nesting on the kitchen balcony, and the young fledged while we were having breakfast one morning. (Sparrow hawks have become a strong and regular feature in my life since). We ate together everyday, and walked to the woods to see the fire flies at night, while Sophie from Belgium played her Armenian Flute, the Duduk! The theme of the course was nature so perfectly in tune with my first self-authored book The Accidental Gardener, about the power of nature as healer and a symbol of hope and the driver for this creative time for myself. The whole week was full of magical experiences and one I will remember forever. The magic of these wonderful experiences were seeping into my bones and it felt so right and so enriching. I loved watching that feeling of warmth evolve into the final illustrations of the course and since then I have developed them into a book, The Messenger, published under my own small press An-ti-dote Press.
We were given various guided tasks everyday that took us out into nature, responding individually through our unique and international ways of seeing. Building an illustrated garden over the week, I left with new friends, a warm glow in my belly and a set of new illustrations for a new book and to submit to the Illustrators Exhibition at Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) 2025.
(Since then and although they weren’t picked this year for the fair, which was fine - I realised the work that made it in to illustration exhibition previously felt more in tune with my authorial trajectory. These were an anomaly for me, enjoyable to make and very much an illustration of my experience on the course and definitely fed my creative fire, but the collage work has the personal, authorial attachment and lineage of everything I have done and therefore has the power and energy needed to hit the high notes. I really do believe in the lineage of energy and attention in a creative practice and the continuity that comes from that and helps publishers and commissioners invest in you and your work. This was not that. It was a side step, so back on the collage for me and back to the trajectory of making a long story).
Back to my DYCP timeline and when I got home from Erlau it felt most natural to respond to the nature in my garden. Loving my studio in the warmth and glow of summer, sketching the shapes I could see and working on the Messenger story above. I talk about this period in my garden a bit more in my previous post ‘A quick look behind the scenes’.
After this, I leant into my love of building textures through printmaking, working with John Howard at his print studios in Penryn, Cornwall, using texture and collage together in scenarios and imagined landscapes. Following this with thumbnail sized pencil sketches and artworks of all my story ideas. There are few! I started integrating a well known character to me. Me! Wearing my pyjamas, symbolising a dream world but also reflecting my relationship with sleep and how I live in parallel worlds when in bed, of sleep and reality, which fascinates and scares me all in the same breath. Being a child into adulthood who experiences regular night terrors, I feel a strong will to sit creatively in this space between two worlds. Almost as though I haven’t quite found the answers I am looking for yet.
After a lot of creative activity and a few months into the project, it felt random and unwieldy, then after a period of confusion, frustration, bewilderment and questioning of what I was doing, I told myself it was now or never and that if I was to have the life I wanted, to be a published author, I had to relax, trust and let go, because the previous 20+ years of striving and driving got me so far, but it wasn’t sustainable (being prone to burnout) and I wanting to stop the cycle of me having to drive everything that was ever good in my life! I wanted to attract it more than drive it.
That said, I also had the inclination to design and run workshops, now I wasn’t teaching every week, which led to more workshops and collaborations that felt more exciting and expansive. It felt like I had space for more creative opportunities. Somehow over the 12 years of teaching I had reduced my capacity to see past my guide ropes or what was possible. These workshops continue to be part of my vocabulary now and the interactions of the students and their progression help compound insights I have had previously, of the value of collage and how communicative and productive it is as a tool.
While I was considering my development and therefore the final aim of filling my folio with new work, I was getting ready to go to Bologna Children’s Book Fair, getting feedback from my agent about what publishers were looking for, which was brighter, lighter stories. More positive, less intensive due to an uprise in mental health stories and darker subjects. So I took this onboard and considered what I wanted, which was to make a story that has reality, impact and meaning, but because my natural gait is melancholy and emotionally resonant stories, I wondered how I could translate my ideas into something positive. I was beginning to think about how much I loved collage, so this was bubbling away all the time and something to think on.
Over time I also realised that there was something about how I led my life that wasn't working anymore, and that I didn’t understand. I had so many questions, of why couldn’t I get the work out of me, and why was was no-one interested in the work I was doing. Well they couldn’t see it! I was constantly working and doing great little pockets of work, of stories and characters in scenarios in between other projects and work related activities, but they were all random short stories in a series of 3 and all a bit ADHD. Great starting points and fun, but what I needed to create was the longer story - to put time into thumbnailing and developing the long story. It was this that I felt would have the most impact on the publisher and the reader and have more personal resonance for me. Something I could confidently share with my agent to share with all the publishers who liked my work and were waiting for something to drop. (Having been to Bologna Fair now and meeting with Simon & Schuster, this was compounded by them and a finished story was what I needed to create).
Without any startling ideas for a long story at that time, I put my attention to my first long story, The Accidental Gardener, my first self authored book, which took me to so many places, mostly abroad. I wrote and illustrated it between 2019 and 2022. About a character suffering from overwhelm, where nature is the healer and a sign of hope. The illustrations in the book took me to China in 2018 and Italy in 2022, winning awards and votes from international publishers and winning the hearts of all who read it. So in Nov 2024 when I thought I could share the story locally where I lived and worked, ticking my box of feeling visible in my own town. I had shared my book overseas as far as Shanghai, but no one had really seen or read it in the UK. Part of my reasoning for my DYCP project was to locate myself more visibly creatively in the town where I live, so an exhibition would be something that could help me feel more visible and connected to the town. It was a big deal to even consider sharing my work publicly in town due to previously problematic neighbours. However it felt like the right time to put myself out there. It also made sense as my partner had an empty shop with a beautiful shop window that he wanted to start up as an art space (89 Redruth) so I offered to be the guinea pig exhibition. I set a date and installed all the work that I made to make the book. Covering the walls in a chronological order of how it developed over a number of years, starting from the work I created on my master’s in Illustration (Authorial Practice) in Falmouth Uni onto the book and the newest work created in Erlau.
In curating the exhibition, I really wasn’t sure how people would respond. Feeling trepidation of being so visible and vulnerable, being that the story was a very personally driven and a little dark. I didn’t need to worry and although I was totally unprepared, the response was warm and gentle. People young and old enjoyed the story and although I forgot to include a comments book I came away everyday feeling warm inside from the conversations and warmth of people’s authenticity, of sharing their own stories of anxiety and overwhelm and how the story in it’s essence is about hope. They totally got it and the children loved it which made me feel beyond happy. Finally I felt validated for my storytelling. A good majority of publishers I have shown it to really liked the book and some have said keep it as it is, others said it as too dark too early, but the children especially loved it and the general feedback from everyone was not to change it and that the darkness at the beginning was what gave the hope more impact.
Three particular pieces of feedback have stayed with me, the first was a child of about 8 years old who sat on the floor behind a small wall with a drawing pad, drawing in response to my work on the wall. He said that he felt creative and felt like this was the best place in the world and he didn’t want to leave. Now kids can say stuff they know would please us, but this felt immediate and true. I keep thinking about him and how he made my heart sing with pride and validation. Resonating totally with me as a child when I was told I had some issues because I wouldn’t socialise and would sit on the floor on my own drawing.
Illustration for Lotty Loves to Draw
The second was from a art group adult who didn’t understand art in galleries and why people felt emotional about it, but she did now because she had such a strong response herself to the work and hasn’t stopped feeling about the exhibition.
The third was creative, comedian and friend, Stacey Guthrie who has this to say:
“Having known you for a long time I thought I had a fair idea of what to expect from the artist talk and Q&A that I’d booked to go and see at 89 Redruth. However, I was the first visitor to arrive and though the space was empty of humans, I was met by a crowd of images; scraps of paper with scribbles and notes, plans, finished drawings, colour, monochrome. It almost felt that if I just listened I would be able to hear them talking to each other and to me and I realised I’d never seen this part of your process before.The rest of the audience filled the room bit by bit and as they chatted and looked at the work, I sat down and tried to work out why I was so affected by what I was looking at. My eye kept being drawn to one particular piece; a small, inky black character, trying to outrun a massive cloud of swirling darkness. The image should have been disturbing or unsettling but it wasn’t. Faye Dobinson was next to me and I heard myself saying “I always feel happy when I look at Caroline’s work”. Faye asked me if ‘happy’ was the right word and I thought about it. No, happy wasn’t the right word, I realised I was feeling reassured. You had managed to encapsulate what it feels like to be threatened by overwhelm; the negativity and atrocities in our world chasing us down, and yet it felt like relief to look at it. Your images were giving us permission to be human. So much of what we are presented with has a brittle veneer of positivity; candy-bright and loud, clamouring ‘sad is bad’, but these drawings were allowing us to feel everything, with no shame and somehow with the message that we aren’t alone. I was also fascinated by sheets of layout paper that had been broken down into a grid of images, I assume each one depicting a page in the book. As someone whose practice has moved from fine art to narrative filmmaking I realised I had abandoned my art practice, mistakenly supposing that the two processes were incompatible. I’d seen filmmakers use a layout grid to plot their scenes but hadn’t felt its relevance to my own practice, the layouts seemingly rigid and somehow cold. Your pages, with their words and images spilling urgently out of the grids onto the outskirts of the page made me I realise that I’d been following arbitrary, self-created rules, and that my art practice should obviously be part of my filmmaking process. The whole evening created a sense of mental wellbeing and gave me the space to consolidate my own way of working, Your total openness and generosity in sharing her process meant I felt included, not, as so often happens, excluded by jargon and ego. It was genuinely an incredible experience and I’m extremely grateful.”
So back to the project timeline and advertising the show online publicly, a publisher from Australia got in contact before the show went live, wanting to buy a copy of the book. After telling her it was unpublished she asked if I would consider them to publish it. I was over the moon and over time we talked about publishing the book with a small edit. Sadly a few months later they went through a round of redundancies and weren’t taking on foreign acquisitions so meant it didn’t happen for me that time. She said to stay in touch, so we will see.
Since then I have been meeting with local theatre producers, Cousin Jacks and as a team we are adapting The Accidental Gardener into a promenade play. I am so excited about it and working with the team. We’ve had our first couple of meetings and even pitched for funding with Impossible Producing, which although was unsuccessful financially, Charlie and Gabby from Impossible are on board to support us with networking with national venues and a space at their FIA festival in Falmouth, within their showcase event. With the plan to go live in Spring next year with a promenade play, a small run of the picturebooks through my small press An-ti-dote Press for the launch and various community events inc an interactive trail. The exhibition will be the starting point for the research and development, so another chance to experience the show.
So although I didn’t find this year as easy as I had hoped, and oftentimes overwhelming in pressure with various blindspots of how to progress, I have added depth, understanding and a clarity of myself, my creative practice and my neurodivergence that I was not expecting, which in return fills me with joy and a warm glow of fulfilment.
So great things have come from it with the most important of all a strong, personal connection to the work I am creating. Knowing that it represents me, my life experiences and ways of seeing. I have felt an increased sense of freedom in how I think about the contexts of my work. I feel creatively validated as an author. I love the conversations I have been having with my mentors and more to come. I have written two long stories and one very personal one in progress. I have a warm and bright glow in my belly for the stories I am telling, I feel more creative! and I have understood the value of meeting my audience face to face, receiving the most meaningful and impactful feedback I have ever had or at least felt, maybe because I have created the conditions around me to be able to receive it this time. Seeing the response in person will always outweigh selling loads of books abroad but I would still like both. I want to continue to exhibit my work locally and internationally and will continue to spend regular time in the studio thumbnailing story ideas along with down time and rest.
So in light of the show and a feeling of putting the darkness to bed, and the insights that came from the show, partnered with my own feelings of progression, of transition and stepping into a new way of thinking, personally and professionally, I moved into feeling of wanting more colour in my life to reflect this, so in came colour! which will be my next post. Thanks for reading and do post any comments or Q’s below xxx
I wanted to write about a personal long project I am doing in the centre or Redruth. Gradually drawing buildings and shops in the town centre. I wanted it to be as simple and accessible for me as possible with minimal barriers to getting out there so I chose to do them just in pencil (BlackWing for those in the know). I love the simplicity of pencil and feel like I am capturing a moment rather than labouring on it, offering so much without the bells and whistles, not unlike Redruth! The people here are honest, friendly and unapologetically themselves, which I find refreshingly familiar, having grown up with older Cornish relatives.
Each drawing takes me a couple of hours, sometimes longer if a lot of people come and chat to me. The comments I get vary between “that’s not bad” “that’s actually quite good” “that’s amazing” and “what’s it going to be?” “will you paint it later?” and “you’re very good keep it up, I’d buy one”. The interest and intrigue is obvious and I love that people are confident and curious enough to interact, ask me questions and have a conversation about it. The general mantra from the general public is “you have a talent and I don’t. I can’t draw to save my life”. There’s a whole conversation there about creativity, education and being human, but the general feeling is that being creative, drawing painting is a separate to most people and just for a select few who have the talent.
The reason I started these drawings was to centre myself as an artist in Redruth after living here for the past 8 years and having a strong feeling to be more locally visible as an artist. The reason I settled here was having a fondness for the town due to spending a lot of time here in my late teens, frequenting the many pubs and clubs so I knew it well. Also coming from a long line of ancestors in the mining and dairy industries around Camborne, Pool and Redruth specifically, including my parents who also lived here for a few years before I was born, with my mum being born and bred locally.
So these drawings are as much about my history and connection to Redruth as producing a drawing for public consumption. I will exhibit these when I feel I have enough of them to celebrate the buildings, the people, the history, past and present and when I feel I have done what I came to do. This will be at 89Redruth artspace /venue and also Kresen Kernow. My original plan was to draw every building, but not sure that is as sustainable for my creative brain, but I do plan to draw every area at least, not tying myself down too tightly. The very act of being on the street and being in the middle of Redruth feels great. I am enjoying drawing all the beautiful features of the buildings and the street furniture, (when you walk down Fore St make sure to look up!) but what feels most engaging is drawing the people in motion, the busyness of these areas capturing conversations, regular cafe huddles, the daily shop, the traders and the different speeds and paces that people move at.
Being in one spot for two hours gives me a new perspective on the variety of character in people and how they interact in the town. And of course a drawing would not be right without a pigeon bombing in there somewhere, especially in a redundant space! It feels good to be at the centre of something, especially in these fractured times we live in. I hope you enjoy the drawings and come and visit Redruth with an open mind and a kind heart, to see for yourself what it has to offer. Spark up a conversation and see what happens, you might surprise yourself.
My Life As A Rock, Published Fall 2025
Earlier this year in the Spring I finished a picturebook for Reycraft, a publisher under the umbrella of Benchmark US. A publisher creating authentic stories and illustrations that reflect the voice and vision of all Children. They found me through my agent Amy at Illo Agency. It is interesting to note that this was the first book I had created in my new collage style created from my year long project in 2016. A completely different visual language to the 50+ commercial picturebooks I had made over my career. It was also the first book for a client, since leaving my rolling book contract with Little Tiger Press in 2022.
So going back to the day before I got the email from Amy, at that time I was in hyperfocus with my love of rocks, having realised the connection between my childhood of growing up on the beaches of Cornwall and my colour palette and sensibilities as a professional creative. I was building a whole body of work around rock formations and specifically the interaction of rocks when they are piled on top of each other, like the Tors in Cornwall we used to walk around as a child. Longrock in Penwith being a favourite, along with Carn Brea and Helman Tor of which I created my book Untethered about earlier this year, published through An-ti-dote Press.
So, rocks were on my mind and I was teaching at Newlyn School of Art, where I co-lead the Defining Practice course with Faye Dobinson. I was giving a talk to the students about my love of rocks and how they help me define what I am interested in, in regards to content of my work but also the connection back to childhood and the colours and textures I use in my work today. Showing them sketchbooks full of drawings and paintings of rocks, from memory, imagination and reference, talking about the tension and weight of the interactions and curation of my work and the continuity that now runs through my practice. So, it was a lovely surprise when the next morning I greet the students in our morning introduction, with news that I had received a commission from a children’s book publisher about a rock! A rock that travels through Millenia, glaciers, and many different situations to end up on a beach. I just had to say yes! It was exactly the same amount I would have got paid from my previous commercial books, so felt like another sign to say yes.
So I embarked on creating a set of thumbnail sketches (tiny sketches in proportion to a singe or double page in this context) which were accepted as they were, no edits, which was rewarding knowing what I was doing on my own was working (without editors, designers guiding me) . When the sketches were approved I went on to creating a few rock characters and immediately came up with this guy. He seemed to stick and Amy loved him so I knew he was the one! Using artwork textures from my book Untethered as the background helped expediate my ideation process and get connected to my main character. So then I spent the next few months creating spreads for the book, checking in with the publisher now and again, and with hardly any edits I continued to create the entire 40 page book.
Although I had a template to work within and the text had been set for each page, I designed each page allowing for text, editing where needed and also designed the front and back covers, end papers and vignettes for the title, copyright pages etc. It was a joy to have so much freedom and time to create the book, I think 8 months in the end with the delay on feedback and me scanning everything! at 600 dpi which took longer. Luckily I had bought a new laptop that could handle the file sizes and have a professional scanner meaning I could do everything my end and send to the publisher when finished. A new and enjoyable experience for me.
Above are some vignettes of some of the supporting characters, who I have always loved most! and could easily make books about each of them, any offers, let me know!
Producing textures for the rocks and mountains and background features
The process I use is painting A4 and A3/A2 sheets of white card with different textures and colours, that relate to the content I want to represent, whether trees, rocks, water, animals etc. I oftentimes cut elements straight out, not planning first, just knowing the size I need, using the thumbnail sketches as a guide, then adding details in crayon or pencil if needed. For content that has to be more accurate I would draw first and then cut out, but generally it is all very freestyle, messy and intuitive. I sometimes make a whole double page in collage, and other times I cut the elements out and compose on the page in Photoshop (a digital, photo / image editing software). The pages of these in themselves can be really satisfying to flip through.
Separate elements
So a small peep into what I do. Within my Arts Council funded project I hope to add in new ways of creating textures, bring in my love for printmaking textures, which have served me so well in the past and I would love to lean into more. Continuing to work on my picturebook process as an author / illustrator, with any spare time in between other work commitments working on portfolio pieces and mapping out exciting ideas for other creative ventures. I feel fresh with new energy and ideas and really excited to see who I will be working with next and what book I will be illustrating. Thanks for reading and please do ask questions below if you want to. I’m going sketching!
Although I am officially on a sabbatical / career break from my teaching at Uni, I am currently also juggling freelance work, my job as an external examiner and an outstanding Uni related essay that will give me a higher education fellowship ( FHEA). So I am starting my days in the studio assessing where I am at with the DYCP, Arts Council funded project (working on my picturebook process as an author) and where I need to go. This is not always clear so I am following my nose until clarity comes knocking! Until then I wanted to share what was happening in my studio quickly. I have different stations that do different things and offer me a space to go to when I need a change of scenery. I also have a lot of different ideas in my head at all times of what I ‘could’ do, (unless I am hyper-focused on one thing, which gives my overthinking brain a break). Right now I am still in overwhelm of overthinking, so everything is up in the air right now and my studio is reflecting that! When I say overthinking, this looks like having too many ideas, overthinking those ideas and therefore being in creative paralysis. Whizzing between the ideas a bit erratically and therefore going between my studio stations. So where I am at now is working in my blog writing station, where I would normally do my freelance work and picturebook artwork and sketches, another painting station that is flat and is just about painting, a drawing station where I am drawing the bits and pieces from my morning walk (to see what may happen when I look more closely at the micro details - which are already compelling me to collage the shapes) and a make shift exhibition bookcase for finished pieces. The other spaces are storage for piles of books and numerous other project ideas in notebooks!
The workshop in Erlau, Germany with Jesus Cisneros and Studio Schmal reignited my love of painting and especially with oils. Jesus brought a new style of painting with oils into my creative world. Using relief transfer and rubbing and building up careful layers rather than expecting it all to come good in one layer. I love this way of working, a dance of what to paint over and what to leave, working with negative space and careful and considered application. It suits me well. I have also been using procreate to see if I could enhance the details in the paintings, but I was actually able to add more on the artwork by scraping away the paint to add the smaller paler details. I thought the artworks weren’t enough on their own, but I have come to love the subtleness in the colour and detail so will leave them as they are now. I will design them into a story and add thumbnails to perhaps make the story longer. I am not sure yet?
Going backwards I started the DYCP project off by drawing my garden as a starting point. It is just outside my studio and connected to my project intention of celebrating nature and also Jesus and Maria brought us to the idea of us creating an illustrated metaphorical garden that housed our values and beliefs, to define what our garden was to us. This resonated fully and a theme I will continue, thinking my story could start here.
Then I had a meeting with my friend and DYCP mentor Rebecca Cobb. I started talking about a story I have been writing and illustrating and how I was enjoying the green parts in the story, so she suggested to start making the end papers as I love making them. They can be super fun, or as simple or intricate as you like. So I have started working on that story too now, and will see what occurs over the coming weeks.
Anyway that’s where I am at. Starting to think how I want to use my new studio in the Buttermarket in Redruth and how I will continue to use my studio at home? watch this space for more next week : )
My manifestation drawing!
In March 2024 I received funding from the Arts Council from the Developing Your Creative Practice fund.
My intention was ‘to recalibrate my picturebook process, to immerse myself in original creative making, written process/flow & risk-taking’. (Pedler, C, DYCP application Dec 2023). To essentially become Author and Illustrator after 24 years of illustrating other peoples characters and stories.
Today is the first day working on the project, development and I am totally winging it! I am trusting that whatever I choose to do is authentic, a natural part of my process, while being progressive. I have chosen to document and share the process throughout. With no real knowledge of how yet, other than buying a set of 3 Moleskine plain journals, writing this blog and sharing on the usual socials. The rest will evolve naturally.
Why can’t you write your own books without the funding? Well, working two days a week at University with all the very cerebral energy that takes, and working freelance the rest of the week means that there is little time or inclination to work on unpaid, personal work. Importantly I have realised that I need momentum and continuity to commit to anything of value and not sporadic moments. Meaning that fitting it into an already sporadic structure of freelance was unreliable. So the only way I felt would work was replacing my two non-consecutive uni days with two consecutive days for my project, over a year. The funding and associated support from Arts University Plymouth also makes me accountable, to build in a pressure that will drive me forward, to take it seriously and to believe that my peers believe in me and are invested in the process and the outcome. A little like working to a brief as I am used to professionally. Being successful in getting the funding validates my activity and gives me permission to fully safeguard this time from exterior and interior distractions.
Not meaning to sound cocky, but writing a successful application felt inevitable, mainly because it fitted like a glove into the trajectory I have been on since 2009, along with the feeling of it being now or never and failure was not an option. It was so important that I got this funding, to give me a break from the feeling of swimming against the stream, having only the small gaps in between paid work and life admin to make the authentic, meaningful work I craved to put out into the world. So because this funding was my only path to meaningful progression, I started writing my application 3 months before the deadline. Having ADHD meant I was able to access support and although I didn’t choose an ADHD specialist, having someone who knew the drill to check in with, was invaluable, giving me a better chance of success. Working with Tonia Lu, who I had worked it on successful Cultivator bids previously, and roping in my good friend, Sasha Dobrota who had previously written successful bids, was instrumental in my success. The doubt about my ability to complete the application surged when work got so busy and my ADHD and Dyslexia flared its ugly head, where time seemed to clam up and I had less and less time to do it. With an odd hour here and there to work on it in between freelance work and Uni commitments, nowhere near optimum conditions for me, I was adamant I would apply, so it had to work.
I created this illustrated timeline to help me and my support people to grasp and highlight where I was at and what I needed from the funding.
So to back track for a few paragraphs and put this into context, I have been on this same trajectory since August 2008, when I went to see the MA Illustration-Authorial Practice final show at Falmouth School of Art, (Falmouth Uni). It was here that I found the thing I didn’t know I wanted. To find my personal and professional visual language, to create work that meant something to me first and then the client. To have authenticity and integrity in my process and application and step away from the commercial treadmill I was on. (The same still applies but now more focused and nuanced). I applied and got in and thankfully won a bursary for my first year. It was ‘meant to be’ and the course felt as though it was made specifically for me and would later do wonderful things for me, which I am still reaping today.
So moving forward to 2016, five years after graduating, where I was a little tired of going round in circles with my personal visual language, not really getting anywhere and producing lots of different styles, so I set myself a year long project (Collage 366) that would set me on the second phase of the current trajectory. I committed to making an image a day for a year, which turned into making a collage a day around day 25. Posting to Instagram for accountability. Around day 300 onwards there was a strong continuity between the artworks, with the right energy and character that I was after. The style that evolved was a total surprise and not what I expected my work to look like, but I had finally found the methods of making that was in harmony with my love of shape and painted texture, which felt brilliant! Ureka!
How did it work I hear you say?
It worked because of the repetition, of committing to making, to practice and practise on a daily basis. I was in momentum. Only through creating on a daily basis was I able to slowly shed all my exterior influences. To exhaust my thinking brain so my creative sensibilities could show me the way. Only through paying attention to my sensitivities and sensibilities, to material, application and feeling, could I see, feel and understand my ‘true’ lines of creative inclination and decision making. Being able to recognise authentic decisions versus those influenced by others, giving me the strong foundations of creative integrity and inclination I needed.
I spent 2017 putting this new way of working into action, specifically for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Illustrators Exhibition call out. My commercial work had been at the fair for years, but not my new work. So, looking closely at previous works of art from the exhibition as a quality benchmark to compare my work in progress to, I worked hard to match my new work to the exhibition standard. Using a series of artworks around a picturebook character I had created, I was successful on my application and in 2018 my work was part of the world renowned Illustrator’s Exhibition and world tour. This was the start of a stream of international opportunities with those picturebook artworks, exhibiting in Italy, Russia, Shanghai and back to Italy and a couple of world tours.
In 2019 I built a new studio in my garden and took 3 months away from paid work to complete the picturebook story that had done so well. (This was risky and unsustainable but I was so committed I took that risk). In 2022 the finished book was successful in the DPictus unpublished Showcase in Italy with 20 publisher votes and tons of feedback. At this point I had got as far as I could on my own and couldn’t afford to take anymore time away from my freelance work. I was tired of pushing and now needed some serious income and a meaningful amount of paid time to work on my process.
Coming back to today and remembering March 12th 2024 and that email telling me I was successful for the DYCP Fund, I am feeling elated and in full trepidation to start this project today. I feel excited that all my actions have led to this moment so far and there’s more to come. My end goal being to be a celebrated author / illustrator of my own stories that represent me fully and impact the reader positively, published by a reputable and well known publisher. To be published in my home country after 20 years of being mostly co-edition (foreign rights).
Writing about starting felt like the easiest way in, to be clear on my intentions going forward! Almost a manifesto and an act of commitment, for myself and those supporting me in my time of making, so, here I want to offer my intentions for the year ahead, in no particular order:
to slow down, to look, feel and experience
immerse myself in creative process and play
create and harness creative opportunities, connections & collaborations locally and abroad
maintain a healthy brain and body for creativity to flourish
to maintain strong boundaries and safeguard my creative project days
enhance, enrich and finesse my relationship between analogue process and digital application
weave my fine art sensibilities further into my visual language
create on a daily basis
elevate my writing within my practice and outputs with more confidence and presence
connect with and inspire a new generation to love and look at nature with wonder and curiosity.
with the help of two mentors, build on my storytelling skills and outputs
be in flow, to connect, to enjoy, to play.
Follow my progression on @cpedlerpics and on here and thanks for reading : ) Please do comment and feel free to leave any questions in the comments or message me : )
I wrote about the writing of my writing an academic paper for the Journal of Illustration for the new website DX: Diagnosis and Writing while being diagnosed with ADHD. The link is here for your perusal. It’s all a bit meta, because I’m writing here about writing about writing! It was a long drawn out process, as is my process, but always worth the feeling after I send the final draft in. I hope you enjoy reading it and do get in touch if you have any questions, or thoughts, feedback : )
here is the review Eva wrote:
Eva Aldea
Oct 10, 2023
Caroline Pedler’s ‘Mapping the Writing Process: The life and opinions of an ADHD creative’ is a deeply personal and bravely honest reflection on how a late diagnosis of neurodivergence shifts one’s perspective on many things, including creative work. It’s been a privilege to edit this article with Caroline, as I recognise myself in her writing process; we were both diagnosed with ADHD aged 47.
Caroline’s article and her wonderful illustrations vividly identify some of the challenges – and strengths – of neurodivergent minds. It gave me pause for thought about my own practice.
I never considered my academic writing to be about anything else than mastery of the subject, but reading Caroline’s account made me realise that the often torturous process of fitting my unruly mind into a strict logical format was a way of aligning inner and outer realities. As Caroline succinctly puts it: “The established constraints, objectivity and critical thinking of academic writing helped me make sense of my world personally and creatively.”
Reading and editing 'Mapping the Writing Process' I became aware of how my critical work has strengthened the belief in my own ability deal with the sense of overwhelm and inertia that I inevitably encounter when writing. I now know that my process does not start with any kind of planning, but with a scary, messy jumble of ideas, perspectives and fragments. What my brain is good at is to tease out connections and weave threads through chaos, if I give it time and space to do so. Help from editors, readers and other writers widens that space.
I am sure Caroline’s words will resonate with many writers and other creatives that have navigated anxiety, paralysis, and a sense of never quite measuring up. I am so pleased that she has used Dx: Diagnosis and Writing as a site to map out her path from diagnosis, via many hard-won insights, to a powerful affirmation of her writing process.
The Things that unravel me…
When I started writing this blog post back in May 2023 I had just deleted my social media apps, declaring it would be just for one month. Well it has been four months and I haven’t looked back, yet! I slowly realised I was in, what Jim Kwik calls, digital deluge where my brain was flooded by information and I was suffering information overwhelm. I felt like I was inhaling too much visual information which wasn’t curated by me. I had no control over what I paid attention to and the choice of imagery when scrolling for example was just too much. Instagram and facebook were obliterating any creative autonomy or energy I had. I felt like I was not performing efficiently in any area of my life and losing professional connections and creative reputation. Whether this is true is not clear but it felt that way.
So the break down of my digital exposure on my phone was 4-5 hours a day! 30% on emails and managing work related tasks, taking notes for freelance and teaching etc, a whopping 50% on messages from friends and shared groups, leaving social media at 20% of my time, so although not a heavy social media user, what was most worrying was that I constantly had my phone in my hand. Instagram and facebook being the hook, the distraction and the time waster, which I didn’t see it as a problem. I was enjoying scrolling just before bed, on the toilet (we all do it!), in the adverts in a film, on the train etc etc. It wasn’t until the penny dropped and I connected the professional inefficiency and lack of clarity I was experiencing to scrolling thousands of posts on social media that I felt compelled to do something about it.
Since deleting the social media apps from my phone I have been happier in myself, I have felt less taut and less in need of constant digital stimulation. As soon as I deleted them I felt less agitated and more inclined to get back to writing for my blog, which I hadn’t touched in years. That week, by chance an opportunity to write an article for a new website about ADHD diagnosis and writing came into my email box. It felt like an omen that this was a good move! (link to follow).
As time unravelled further and further and I was online less, my brain felt free and more flexible and I started to pay attention to the choices I was making and that I needed to slow down and ground myself. Thinking more carefully about the apps I was engaging with, which was mostly Instagram and facebook and realised that they had become too quick for where I am currently. Apps like these are a daily commitment with a continuous stream of consciousness required to maintain a ‘following’ or to interact with any continuity or meaning. Essentially they are too needy. What I needed was time and a slower pace. I work better with a longer, slower lead in time where I can spend some time mulling over what I write, then edit, think, edit, think and rinse and repeat until I am ready to post. Posting only once a month perhaps. That felt more healthy, creatively and personally.
It is also impossible to share everything you are working on when working with projects that don’t go live for a while. Having just finished working with a large paint company on a new campaign, where the project doesn’t go live until Sept 2023, along with just signing a new book contract for a US publisher, so although I am excited by all these things, I can’t share anything yet and posting anything else feels like unrelated noise.
Years ago in 2009, when I was a first year master’s student, I was creating work that was in hindsight completely disconnected from my core values or beliefs and was just noise. In a tutorial my then lecturer said ‘Caroline, stop looking around’. I sat with the comment for a while and realised he was so right. I was using exterior inspiration to lead my head, my heart and my hands, when I needed to look more inwards to what drove my true inclination. So this simple and honest feedback helped me break a cycle of useless habits and helped me build new ones. I started to pay attention to what I paid attention to, looking at where I always laid my eyes with inclination, looking at the colours and textures I chose to wear or have in my house. The artists I loved and was first inspired by and stuck with. I reflected on patterns of behaviour and set new ones, creating new methodologies while following my inclination and intuition rather then what I felt the world wanted me to make. It was the start of the authentic path I am still on today.
Since I graduated from my master’s in 2011 and especially over the past five years, I have worked hard to build solid creative business foundations that can sustain a healthy and happy practice embedded in truth and integrity. Reaching out to creative mentor Ceri Hand was integral to this and helped me hold a mirror up to myself and my critical inner voice. Helping me look and listen objectively to the conversations I was having with myself, paying attention to the language I was using and translating them into more positive affirmations, using kinder language with myself. Most recently, in response to a more anxious outlook to life, a chiropractor I was seeing suggested I listen and watch my body get older with curiosity and grace, instead of trying to stop it or control it so much. To give myself a break from trying so hard. All of these suggestions have made sense and slowly enabled a more healthy balance of life and work for me.
So providing the space for all this to unravel was well overdue and I feel like I am finding the path back to my creative myself again. Listening to those pesky internal conversations, being more objective and focused, which is reassuring and refreshing. Writing this blog has helped me again untangle some more recent thoughts and new habitual ways of being and given me much joy. My writing process has always been how I ground ideas, my values, beliefs and insights. First herding them all into one space through free writing, making lists of personal insights and mind mapping keywords, helping me make sense of my thoughts at that time, then critically editing and redefining them into sentences, paying attention to their efficacy in order to validate and expand my understanding.
Writing for an audience means I have to be accurate in what I am sharing. The process of being accurate means I have to delve deeper and spend more time analysing my words and composition, which unlocks the meaning in the blindspots of my memory, knowledge and experience. Helping me make better critical and creative decisions going forward and where I feel a higher level of authenticity is located. It also allows me to feel seen and heard on my terms, which gives me a great sense of personal satisfaction and fulfilment. So an important reminder is that making space for personal clarity is essential for growth in my creative practice and for my personal and creative mental health.
So what now? Well in the week ahead I am in Lostwithiel with creative friend and soul mate Faye Dobinson on a creative retreat, living in shepherd huts for the week, walking across tors and through woodland and perhaps even a swim in the river. We will be spending time responding to the landscape and seeing what fun we can have in good company and what art we can make. It could be a moment to share some work online but I will see how it evolves before I make any promises to myself or others. I have been tempted to go back onto social media and have posted a few bits but I continue to feel fearful of losing myself in it again, so maybe an idea to limit any posts to a project timeline could work. I do miss connecting with fellow artists and creative friends all over the world and seeing what everyone is up to and above all I love sharing what I’m up to, what I am thinking and how I see the world. I love the storytelling aspect of social media, so I haven’t deleted my social media accounts and the window is still open for when I have the work to share. So no reinstating of apps until I feel strong enough to be in control. A little like my inability to keep biscuits in the house! if they are there I’ll gorge on them until I feel sick!
So thank you so much for reading and watch this space….if you want to : )
I will be using my blog instead of social media now for the foreseeable future, so watch this space for all my updates and work in progress and musings about art and creativity. I used to write all the time and post, but with social media it’s all too much choice, so I have limited the choice by posting only here on a monthly basis : )
I will write some words later about why and what I am hoping it will do for me. Thanks for dropping in : )
Gone Swimming
It’s been a dry year in terms of making new work and I have been relying on the work I have created over the past few years to sustain my creative spirit, by rearranging, reposting re imagining. I have also been looking, listening, digesting and focusing my eyes to the things that my heart cannot let go of, therefore aligning my inclination to a more focused horizon. That horizon is painting. I have been drooling over various paint applications of simple shapes with varying levels of opacity and weight for some time now. Dreaming of a tentatively placed whisper of paint versus a gloopy plop in the exact right spot! while sending shivers down my spine.
Down Pendeen
I am happiest when I am responding to the world through the skills I have accrued with my hands and a love of paint and muted colour. Interpreting and composing colours, shapes and contrasting textures with a gestural stroke. Not knowing what will happen, whether they will carry the sophistication I need in the chosen ones and simply enjoying the response my hands are having to my eyes’ inclination. Any clarification of skills or sophistication come much later and all I am concerned with in the moment is whether my hands are respecting my heart and eye, in translating the correct angle, weight and pressure of my hand. The holy grail is a feeling of resolve that I have been true to my eye, heart and hand.
Rothko says ‘For skill in itself is but a sleight of hand. In a work of art one does not measure its extent but counts himself happiest when he is unaware of its existence in the contemplation of the result.’ The Artists Reality, 2004.
The content this time is where it all began, back in my childhood. Reconnecting to the landscapes of holidays and weekends as a family in Cornwall. The sea greens, dark infested blacks, stone beige and anemone purples. It was only a few years ago that I realised my colour palette came from my childhood and it’s feels like my work is coming full circle and it feels wonderful!
See the series here
Mermaid of Zennor & High Tide
An article I wrote for a college paper publication.
My Studio is my happy place….
...but sometimes it’s not enough.
An opportunity came up on my Instagram feed in June 2018 that was almost too good to pass up. It was for a workshop in Germany, run by one of my favourite illustrators, Jesus Cisernos (Hay,zoose). I decided there and then to go, and made my plans, spent numerous pennies and pounds on travel and accommodation. A tonne of emails later, and I ended up near the Polish Border in a village called Gerswalde (Gayz,valda). It was quiet, remote and almost chic without knowing it. On the way into the village centre, there were some big green metal gates that opened into a garden that wouldn’t look out of place in a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett ( The Secret Garden). This was the garden we would work in for 6 long and very hot days.
We spent 6, sometimes 12 hour days working to the direction of Jesus, creating imagined worlds, limericks and illustrated narratives in the company of 15 other artists from all over the world. It was the most unique, rewarding, hot and sweaty week of my life and I loved every minute! Even the gripes we had about mis-organised buses and distracting babies screaming over talks in three different languages, was not enough to mully my ideal view of a week in Gerswalde.
We worked hard in the day and cycled to the lake to swim most nights before returning to our accommodation a few miles away in Böckenberg. We ate together and showed our work to each other after each project set. Shared our creative life experiences, laughed about stories we told each other, probably moaned a little bit too, but generally everyone was so accommodating, accepting, forgiving and open to each and everyone’s quirks, and there was always a tree to shade under or to escape to, and a lake to cycle to when the day got too much.
Coming together and seeing what everyone else had done was so important for me, it gave me a marker for my own work. Something I could reflect on and work with when I got home. While I was there I wasn’t sure how this week would impact my life, or whether it would at all.
Cafe Zum Lowen within the garden walls was where we ate everyday, Ayumi (Saito) and Sayuri (Sakairi) at the helm feeding us a variety of fusion Japanese / /British / Vegan wholefood Delights. One review said it feels like you have ‘just stepped inside and got lost in a Ghibli movie’. The cafe offers a certain grubby ’Patina’ as another person reviewed, which added to the timelessness and character of the whole experience. Ayumi became a friend, as did everyone who took part. I have already arranged to visit Yoshiko and Robin in Japan in 2020/21. Some of us are planning a catch up in Berlin in April, and I have starting learning Spanish, the most spoken language of the week.
The week here taught me above all that with a common ideal, cause or love of subject, cultural differences could be transcended by creative endeavour, and a good narrative could breathe fully and with vibrancy regardless of language barriers. This is continued to be mirrored in seminars and conferences I am beginning to attend at Picture-Book fairs such as Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy and Shanghai.
It was the illustrators I spent a week in Gerswalde with that are right in the middle of a way of thinking and representing the world through Picture Books that is exciting, different and pushing boundaries of the picture book aesthetic. Celebrating through individual style, while continuing to use content that is globally resonant, and I felt privileged to have experienced that week, with those exact people, in that very place and that specific time.
The participants were and worth a google:
@Maria.Dek - Poland
@ValarioVidili - Italy
@KatjaSpitzer - Germany
@Sophie.Jackson - Chile
@Cyndoor - Cynthia Alonso - Argentina
@csrdraws - Cristina Sitja Rubio - Venezuela
@MarieVanPrague - Belgium
@Nomonki - Cristobal Schmal - Chile
@varyadrawing - Vavara Yashchenko - Russia
@HannahGopa - Chile
CarolineHeinrich.de - Germany
@lu100ac - Lucienne Abdala - Peru
@Johanna_Schmal - Germany
@Isabel_zazel - Isabel Peterhans - Austria
@Kunstgriff23 - Heike Isennmann - Germany
Robin Weichart - Japan
@Yoshiko_Hada - Japan
Interesting publishers around the world and also worth a google:
Tara Books - India
Pato Logico - Portugal
L'Ecole des Loisirs - France
Magikon Forlag - Norway
La courte echelle - Canada
Les Fourmis Rouges - France
Topipittori - Italy
Planets Tangerina - Portugal
Liels un Mazs - Latvia
Peter Hammer Verlag - Germany
Baobab - Czech Republic
Pequeno Editor - Argentina
Will O The Wisp
Will O The Wisp - Baoshan International Folk Arts Museum - Shanghai
Read More
Aliens Can Be Friends Too - working title of work in progress
Children’s Illustration - Personal work:
Lots has happened in 2018 and I have lots of new personal projects that I am working on. Probably too many to concentrate effectively on. I have had my newest Illustration work exhibited in Bologna, Italy in the Illustrators Exhibition at the Children’s Book Fair, which was just fantastic. To be among some of the most prestigious and talented illustrators around the world felt very accomplished. I have also had my work chosen for a competition in Russia, The Image of The Book. I won a diploma for the work I entered there, and that will be awarded in a ceremony at Bologna Fair this year. I also have been asked to enter work in to another contest in Shanghai, The CICLA - where my work will be exhibited in the Folk Museum there for the Chen Bochui International Children’s Book Festival, if it makes the final curation.
I am currently working on the story that the Illustration above came from. It was born from personal experience of chasing dreams and desires that were manifested in childhood. Only to realise that the answer to fulfilment and enlightenment wasn’t in those dreams, but in the enjoyment and focus of the everyday instead. This idea was also played out in some paintings I created under the title An-Ti-Dote, shown in the Picture Room, at Newlyn gallery in 2015.
A story of hope after tragedy, celebrating the reality of everyday life, while encouraging the main character to follow the reveries of his heart.
The other story is about a little girl, also from my own childhood, of how I used to draw all the time and how that has helped me overcome overwhelming feelings as an adult.
Practice: A week in Gerswalde
Practice:
I struggle to make time to practice regularly, and that’s not even physically, it’s mentally too! I have time sometimes, but don’t feel compelled enough to get to the table, so I waste it on Instagram or catching up on emails. I did however go on a workshop in July / August that was tricky to arrange, but so so worth it. It was in Gerswalde in North Germany, near the Polish border.
There were 16 of us plus other people and families staying in the accommodation. It was rural, by a lake and remote. I loved it and worked very hard every day. I made some very special friends, and met so many lovely and warm, creative people. It was a life changing or maybe mind altering affair. It made me see the UK book market from a new perspective. I realised I was trying to fit my work and compromise it into a market that didn’t want me, in the style that was most honest and raw to me anyway. I could change it to fit, to change the style to be more accessible, but I want to see what happens when I do the work that I love doing, To see where it fits. It already fits abroad and has been doing pretty well as you see above, so long may it continue. The workshop was run by the very talented Jesús Cisneros. Sketchbook to Picturebook - hosted by the also talented duo Cristobal Schmal and his wife Johanna Schmal. it took place in Cafe Zum Lowen where Ayumi made us the most delicious food everyday! It was the best week : )
Interview: I did an interview with the lovely Mel Chadwick of Creative Conversations recently, which meant she came to the studio (that’s all ripped up) and we talked about my creative projects and what it means to be a creative. It was lovely to chat to her and we went sketching in Helston together a couple of weeks later, which was great. you can see the interview on video here.
Commercial Work:
I have completed another book last month, Sept, and I feel free of a looming deadline, but also rudderless, so weaving my college work in and around chores, catching up and getting my head and body to the creative, making table of my own work. College takes over considerably, so I have to balance that also. I have realised that I have missed writing blogs, as they are a punctuation and celebration of work achieved, jobs finished etc and take a little more investment than say Instagram, which I love but sucks the life from my day!
Also the cheese I illustrated for Curds And Crust has just won Best Cheese on the planet award! ha!
Charity events:
I did a couple of charity events where I was asked to donate small pieces and because both were for projects that my friend and fellow Illustrator Rebecca Cobb was involved in of course I obliged. One was for a local postcard event for Constantine School and the other for an event co run or at least facilitated by Beccy and author Nicola Davies and Foyles Books in London.
Can you see which one is mine?
What next?
Possibly Shanghai in Nov, if I find out in time? more time spent on my own books. Getting my studio and garden straight and giving myself more structure so I don’t feel quite so messy everywhere. Bologna to get ready for also!
Thanks for popping by x
Sooo much has happened since my last post. I am up to no.317 on my Collages and I have been posting an image for about 350 days! so here are a few more recent ones : ) I'm liking these guys and finally finding my feet with a style and application. Follow me on collage_366 for more of the reasoning behind a few. Here are a few of my favourites.
Just a few images from my daily collage posts...in progress.
You can see all of the Instagram pics on https://www.instagram.com/cpedlerpics/ with a few bits of normal life thrown in, or just collage here https://www.instagram.com/collage_365/
I am in the middle of writing and illustrating a short story, with a little humour. Just an offering and published myself, when I make the time to finish it off. Here's a little snippet
These are the few I've missed...
I'm loving the collage and the aint and it feels like finally I have realised it's the way I enjoy most. It is still very young yet, and lots to improve on, but it's getting more enjoyable and more exciting. : )
