Two weeks ago I had a big Summer Studio Sale to make a bit of space for new work (and to sell things of course).

I covered the walls of my studio with old illustrations,which had been lurking in portfolios stuffed behind my drawing board.
Although I haven’t been working with such thick outlines and bright colours much recently, it was good to see everything up together. I also found some etchings that I’d done years ago in a print studio in London, and a huge pile of rather silly mono prints. It reminded me how much I love printmaking and how I’d like to experiment more with prints in the future.

I put up some of my more recent ink illustrations too, but I was surprised to find that I kept quite a lot of them back at the last minute, as they just felt too newly-done to sell. I don’t usually feel like that, but I think it was because a lot of the illustrations were about my family life, and I just wanted to hang on to them.

It was a very busy day and I sold lots of paintings – it was easy to part with the old ones and great to know that they were going on people’s walls. I did sell one of my favourite family illustrations – to a very dear friend. This moment in the bathroom trying to clean two of my children’s teeth one morning reminded me that it’s not all about rushing out of the door to get to school on time…