Stories and Illustrations
I have written stories for a long time but it wasn't until my niece came along that I really fell in love with writing and illustrating. I wrote Maddison and The Mystery of the Missing Shoe at the end of 2019 for my niece and entered it into a competition, I didn't win but that was never the point. I never had the guts to enter something I had made into anything before, always thinking that it wouldn't be good enough but this time I did have the courage to enter. I have been dreaming up characters and stories ever since. I have a number of different mysteries for Maddison, an adventure for Betsy and even a character based on myself. I hope you enjoy my stories, keep checking back for updates on others.
Maddison and the Mystery of the Missing Shoe.
Help Maddison and her dog Finn find the missing shoe and see what else you can see in the pages of this book.
The story will turn a page every 20 seconds, if you want to look longer just hover over a page or press the arrows if you want to move forward
Maddison and Finn are based on my niece and her mums dog Finn. I wrote the first story, the mystery of the missing shoe, when Maddison was only a year old and I had no idea what her personality was going to be like. As it turns out my nieces love for Finn and investigating things isn't something I made up.
More mysteries for Maddison and Finn to solve are in the works, they include:
- The Mystery of the Puzzling Buzz
- The Mystery of the Falling Leaves
- The Mystery of the Muddy Footprint
Other Stories and Illustrations
I paint a lot of my characters before I ever have stories for them.
I have some stories planned but other illustrations don't have stories yet so use your imagination to make one up
Betsy
Meet Betsy. A Rigid Galloway cow owned by a friend of mine, yes she is a real cow!
Betsy has lost her friends after a storm and must search through the farmyard to find them.
Betsies story hasn't been written yet but it is planned, for now you will need to imagine her adventure and who she will meet along the way.
Creating Betsy
Each of my illustrations takes a different amount of time, some may take an hour others can take up to a week to complete, but all are hand drawn and painted, including my books.
I start with an initial drawing, sometimes using a real life model like Betsy but other times I will get an idea and just go with it.
Once I'm happy with that I start to paint. I use watercolour paints for all of my illustrations and these need to be applied in layers. I use pens to finish certain elements and they can't be used until the painting is completely dry.
When I'm happy with the colours and the way the picture looks I will add in finer details, with Betsy that was her hairy ears, face and chest.
Hilda and Pip
Hilda is a witch and pip is her mouse familiar. Most witches have cats as familiars but Hilda is allergic to cats, so a mouse it is.
Hilda lives in a cottage on the side of a hill surrounded by fields, not a small clearing in a wood.
Hilda and Pip will have many adventures and learn lots of things so keep your eyes peeled for the first instalment.
Creating Hilda and Pip
As you can see I have a certain style, you will notice that Hilda's basic shape is the same as Maddisons.
Hilda started life as an idea in my head. When I started to draw her it was her hat which came first. I knew I wanted to draw a working witch, a slightly scruffy witch, a witch who may just be me in illustrated form.
I didn't want her to have a cat familiar, for a start I can't draw cats, but I'm also allergic to them so it made sense that Hilda would be too. So Hilda has a mouse who much of the time sits on her hat brim, when I was younger I used to have a pet rat called Giles who would sit on my shoulder.
When I drew the original she didn't have a name either so I asked my Instagram followers for suggestions and one of them suggested Hilda and Pip which suited them so well that nothing else would do after that.
Barnaby
Barnaby is a very friendly pig, he is friends with everyone on the farm and helps Betsy during her adventure.
He was named by a friend of mine after I drew him and asked for suggestions.
Mavis and Vera
Mavis a Vera just love to gossip, they spend most of their time gossiping about the other animals on the farm.
Creating Mavis and Vera
Mavis and Vera were originally drawn in 2021 but it took me until 2022 to decide how they were going to look.
The biggest hurdle was their colouring, they are based of Lavender Orpington chickens who have the most beautiful colours.
It was pretty difficult to get them to have the colouring I wanted and it wasn't until I had added the final ink to them that I was happy.
Don't they look great, the perfect pair of gossiping chickens.
Farmer Brandie and the Goats
Farmer Brandie owns a wonderful farm, full of lots of different animals, including Betsy.
Betsy meets lots of other animals on her adventure including the Goats.
Creating Farmer Brandie and the Goats
Farmer Brandie is the only human character in Betsys' farm adventure. I needed a farmer and I just happen to know one who owns a lot of goats.
The Yummy Soap kindly gave me permission to turn her into an Illustration.
Brandie also kindly sent me some images of her dairy goats for reference.
Rather than a bunch of process photos for this one I've made a little video for you.
The Duckies and the Ducky Fam
The Duckies and the Ducky Fam are more like watercolours than illustrations but I decided to put them into this catagory as I think they would make great story characters. They are based on Indian Running Ducks.
The Mushroom Village
Fairies need places to live and work too.
The mushroom village is my personal favourite and has 14 different locations so far but no story.
