So, This is retirement then?

Having officially given up the day job, I was wondering how I was going to fill my days. I really shouldn’t have worried, as I’ve been busier these last few weeks than I have been for a very long time.

Returning to illustration was just the start, and would have been a gentle, relaxing way to while away the hours listening to Radio 4. But deciding that I’d quite like to start selling prints online again opened up a very large can of worms. The sort of worms that arrive carrying an extremely long to-do list!

Amongst all the chaos, I eventually finished another piece: The Colosseum in Rome, which is now available on the website. It’s part of my Modern Wonders of the World collection, which I’ll be adding to over the coming months. However, time management is proving tricky at the moment, as there are so many things bubbling away in the background and distracting me from whatever it was I was trying to do five minutes earlier. Oh yes, I was going to draw more pubs.

There has also been a surprising amount of what can only be described as data-entry work: figuring out international shipping rates for the checkout page, organising all the illustrations into collections to make browsing easier, adding SKU codes to everything (I’m learning all the jargon), and trying to remember my long-forgotten CSS skills. That last one has felt a bit like trying to recall the French I learnt at school.

I then had the bright idea of selling greetings cards featuring my illustrations. I still think it was a good idea, but it did involve an awful lot of work and a complete overhaul of the website. To be fair, it needed it. The site had quickly become a rather confused mishmash of pages that didn’t make navigating particularly easy. Hopefully, though, that part is now done and I can get back to drawing.

In case you missed it, there was a new blog post last week: From Drawing Boards to Digital Screens, which is a brief(ish) history of my career in graphic design from 1981 to 2001 and the equipment I am using now having returned to illustration. Worth a read, in my humble opinion.

So, if you haven’t visited the website recently, please do take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading.