'You, Me and the Frankie'

Frankie's Tea Party

My drawings for the You, Me and the Frankie series, featuring my little tiger, continued to occupy my time last year and gave me a huge amount of enjoyment. 


I hand-drew the images with a thin black marker on white paper and scanned them to my laptop, then tinkered with them on photoshop, moving elements around and colouring in the images. 


A lovely new cafe opened in Seaford, The Front Room, and they wanted some colouring-in sheets for children; so I created some featuring Frankie.

Re-opening my Pencil Case...

Welcome to my first blog post, and thank you for joining me on this journey! 

Just over a year ago, I was preparing to move from Brighton, on the south coast of England, to live in Istanbul. In preparation for/desperation at the prospect of being without a job in Turkey, I decided to take a leap of faith and simply be what I had always wanted to be - an illustrator. 

So, feeling cautiously excited but decidedly rusty, I began to draw. After a few false starts and some dead ends I started to sketch from life, initially picking pomegranates to focus on. I really enjoyed it but, I have to say, it felt a little like I was back at college making drawings that would stay in a sketch book and not be something that I could ever develop and really run with.

I sat around thinking, drank lots of earl grey tea and then realised that I should start by doing something I really enjoy like drawing for children, creating cute cards - something along those lines. So, I created a small character called Frankie. He is a tiger, and inspired by my favourite stuffed animal; which was a Christmas present from my partner and was therefore seasonally named Frankincense (always known, I might add, as Frankie). The series You, Me and the Frankie was born.

My first piece was Frankie's Alphabet. I loved creating it and - very tentatively - I put it up on Facebook to be ignored by the big wide web. However, a few people noticed it, then a few more seemed to be taking a look, and that was the first the world saw of You, Me and the Frankie.