How do you make picture books if you secretly hate writing? Can you REALLY just punch holes in a bit of paper and call it a finished illustration?! 👀

This week we’ve got a proper treat for you.

This is part 1 of our chat with illustrator and picture book maker Chris Haughton! (Katie wasn’t there, but Helen and Tania held the fort and asked him all the juicy questions.)

Chris shares his brilliantly wonky career path from graphic design to editorial, picture books and his latest deep dive into the History of Information.

A total freak-flag project that he's been obsessed with for nearly 20 years.

Chris tells Good Ship:

• How he ended up with a wildly colourful, unmistakable illustration style, even though he "couldn't do colour"
• How 10 years of editorial work shaped his picture book voice
• What hiding Mummy Owl in a picture taught him about storytelling
• Why your first sketch is usually the best one
• Drawing peas and chopsticks with hole-punch confetti (amazin')

🚨 This is just Part 1! Subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2.

Part 2 will be released next week (on Friday 25th July.)

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro from Katie, Helen & Tania
01:00 - Chris introduces himself and how his style evolved
05:30 - The origin of A Bit Lost and hiding things in the background
08:00 - How a greetings card turned into a picture book idea
10:00 - Chris' obsession with the History of Information
14:00 - Drawing as a form of information technology
17:00 - Chris’s brief stint as a live scribe (!!)
21:00 - Publishing headaches when your audience is "everyone"
24:00 - Finding your style vs getting stuck in a style
27:00 - Undo button = illustrator superpower
31:00 - Hole-punched peas

Links an' stuff we mentioned:

• Chris Haughton's website: https://chrishaughton.com
• The History of Information, Chris Haughton's book
• History of Information lectures from UC Berkeley shared here via InfocoBuild
• Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag course from The Good Ship Illustration
• Katie’s Live Illustration course

Byeeee for now!
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Welcome to The Good Ship Illustration - the podcast for illustrators who are quietly working away in their sketchbooks thinking… “is it just me?”

…it’s not just you!

We’re Helen Stephens, Katie Chappell and Tania Willis - three full-time illustrators from three different corners of the industry (and three different age brackets ). We live in the same seaside town in the UK and started having cuppas and chats… and accidentally became illustration agony aunts.

Now we record those chats for you! We answer your questions about confidence, tricky clients, pricing your work, creative block, picture books, publishing, and everything in between.

✨ New episodes every Friday. ✨

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and do send us your questions!

P.s. Fancy some freebies? Head to thegoodshipillustration.com for colour workshops, picture book templates, and other treats.

Byeeee for now!

x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

🚢🚢🚢

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Emily asked us why backgrounds can be so overwhelming. So in this episode, we share lots of low-pressure ideas to make them doable (maybeee even fun).

Please enjoy Tania nearly falling asleep under a weighted blanket 🤣

Podcast Episode Highlights:

• How to stop overthinking it
• Colour tips and some good stuff Chris Haughton taught us
• NO ZOOMING IN ALLOWED 😠
• John Burningham
• Old Lady Baby

(rough) Timestamps:
00:00 – Emily’s question: “Backgrounds scare me – help!”
01:00 – The Chris Haughton breakthrough about colour
03:00 – Tonal tips: how to make your characters stand out
04:00 – Thin lines, wobbly pens, and keeping backgrounds soft
06:00 – The menace of digital zoom 😬
07:00 – Backgrounds = hints, not homework
08:00 – John Burningham, cut-out characters and painterly skies
10:00 – Embracing imperfection and storytelling over polish
11:00 – Blindboy’s advice: fail on purpose
13:00 – Art Club, recycled drawings, and happy accidents
14:00 – Upcoming Art Club news & picture book course teaser
15:00 – Weighted blankets, fancy deodorant, and Aesop air freshener 😌

Links & stuff:

• The Picture book course details: www.thegoodshipillustration.com/pb
• Make sure you're getting our emails for Art Club invites: Scroll to the bottom here

Bye bye bye
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

“Can you just do it for free?” NO.
In this week’s episode, we’re talking about working for free, how to say no without guilt, and why having nice strong boundaries won't ruin your career (we promise).

Tania shares a BRILLIANT script for saying no to unpaid work. Thank you Taniasan, we luv ya.

Other good bits of note:

• How to stop feeling bad about saying no to cheeky requests
• How charity auctions can be a smarter way to give back
• Free pitching: where to draw the line
• That time Katie backtracked on a call (and the world didn't end)
• What to say when a client demands an answer right nowwww
• The biggest myth of all: “If you say no, they’ll never ask again”

Timestamps:
00:00 – Biscuits first. We have our priorities in order 🤣
01:00 – “How do I say no to free work… nicely?”
02:30 – Quotas, boundaries, and rude assumptions
04:00 – Saying no to friends and students
06:00 – Turning FAQs into blog content
07:00 – A better way to support charities (without giving away your time)
08:00 – “I used to worry people wouldn’t like me if I said no…”
10:00 – Paid development work in picture books: what’s normal?
12:00 – The pitch trap and how to avoid it
13:00 – Katie’s mural pricing wobble (and recovery!)
14:00 – The power of taking your time to decide
15:00 – You’re not being too picky. You’re just not people-pleasing anymore!
16:00 – On "playing": why your language matters

Oh! While you're here...

• You can join the Picture Book course here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/PB

Taraaa,

x Good Ship

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

When your project goes a bit pear-shaped you might wonder if that’s just how the illustration industry is.

Well, this week we’re talking all about what's good, bad, and normal... and whether there are red flags you should look out for in your illustrator-publisher relationship.

Highlights:

• Why it's never okay to get feedback on a Friday and be asked for a full redraw by Monday 🙃
• What’s typical in the picture book process (roughs, colour roughs, final art, etc)
• When changes are fine… and when they’re totally out of order
• How to set better boundaries (and how to stick to them)
• Our own early-illustration-career experiences, and what we'd do differently now

Timestamps:
00:00 – Is this normal? A horror story from an illustrator
02:00 – Unrealistic deadlines & being pressured to work weekends
05:00 – When publishers ignore your roughs completely
06:30 – What a healthy picture book workflow looks like
09:00 – Final artwork and why changing it is a big deal
12:00 – Bologna book fair: what gets shown
14:30 – When you can trust your publisher/designer (and when you really can’t)
16:00 – Agents behaving badly
20:00 – Why this doesn’t mean all of publishing is bad!

#NotAllPublishers

Links an' that

• Our picture book course doors are opening SOON! Keep yer eyes peeled and grab the freeebies here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/PB
• Got a question? Send it our way and we might answer it in a future episode!

Bye for now!
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Have you ever looked at your own work and thought… egh? When you work so hard to find your style* it can feel rubbish to realise you don't even LIKE IT 😅.

*We're not big fans of the word style...but we have to use it so you know what we're on about. We have a WHOLE ENTIRE COURSE about finding your creative voice & flying your freak flag.

This episode is allll about not-holding-the-bar-of-soap-too-tight.

It's also about:

• What to do when your style feels a bit too safe or mainstream
• Why being too “good at drawing” can trap you
• How to bring more you into your work
• Whether you need to know colour theory to be a proper illustrator

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Lisa's brilliant question: “What if I don’t like my style?”
01:00 – Mainstream, safe, and not-quite-right: spotting the signs
03:00 – Flying your freak flag vs. pleasing the market
05:00 – Chris Haughton’s unusual route into publishing
07:00 – Why being “good at drawing” isn’t always helpful
09:00 – Getting stuck in the gun-for-hire trap
11:00 – Why clients want you, not your many styles
12:00 – Freya asks: do you need to know the colour wheel?
14:00 – Digital colour vs. painty messes
17:00 – How limitations can make your colour sing
20:00 – Create a family of colours (and avoid shouty guests)
21:00 – Final thoughts: soap metaphors & colour play

🔗 Links mentioned:

• 🎨 Our free genius colour workshop – grab it here!
• 🐘 Emma Tripolone’s fab work (Emma was one of our 1:1 mentoring winners from...
• 🚢 The Freak Flag course!
• 📚 Chris Haughton – Good Ship pal, designer and children’s book author-illustrator. We love 'im.

Plus, coming soon we have a Chris-Haughton-treat for your ears. Stay tuned for that.

Byeeee for now!
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Quick note before we start:
In this episode we use the words "women" and "creative women" but we know these things don’t just affect women, and not everyone relates to binary gender labels. This chat is based on our lived experience and isn’t meant to exclude anyone. You’re always welcome aboard, however you identify. WE LUV YA.

xx Good Ship

How many unfinished online courses have you signed up for and then abandoned or forgotten about them?

👀

Yep, us too.

Oh well.

In this episode, we’re talking about why creative women often don’t finish - or even start - the online courses they sign up for.

Before you run away, please know this: it’s not laziness. It’s ✨life✨. And maybe the course still helped by osmosis, even if you only managed to watch one video.

• The guilt of not finishing courses (and why it’s rubbish)
• How art courses can still be useful EVEN if you just skim them
• Community, confidence, and cheerleaders
• Why we’ve never ever chased people to “complete” our Good Ship courses
• Our 1:1 mentoring competition winners (congratulatioooons Rachael, Emma, Jacqui & Catiebell!)
• Bias in picture books
• Thoughts on why creative women sign up more than men

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Soooo… do you finish your art courses?
• 01:30 – Skimming, skipping, and still getting value
• 03:00 – Courses as permission slips and energy boosts
• 04:00 – Lifetime access = a soft place to land
• 05:30 – The joy of community (and a few sneaky sales mentions)
• 07:00 – Meet the new picture book mentees!
• 08:00 – Why women take more courses (and don’t finish them)
• 10:00 – Editorial vs picture book world: who gets seen?
• 13:00 – AI, weird shall illustrations, and missing credits
• 14:00 – Where are all the obvious places illustrators get seen now?

See you soon!

x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania) 🚢

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

BE MORE WONKY

In this episode:

• Why quick sketches usually have more life in 'em than polished pieces
• How perfectionism kills creativity
• Beware of the pause button (when you're doing graphic recording / live illustration)
• What to do when you're scared your work isn’t “worth the money”
• Tips for keeping final artwork fresh and loose
• Human vs AI: what if the secret is just… being wonky?

Timestamps, if you're into that kind of thing

• 00:00 – Can sketches be “the” illustration?
• 01:00 – The gap between sketch and final art
• 02:00 – Helen’s owls
• 05:00 – What kills good work
• 06:00 – The hourly rate mindset
• 07:00 – Simple marks 4eva
• 08:00 – Sketchy = human (and that’s a good thing)
• 09:00 – Tips for keeping your work feeling fresh
• 10:00 – Live illustration = brave, imperfect, magic
• 11:00 – Be more human, more wonky

Byeeee for now!
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania) 🚢

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙