This week we're pulling up a chair at Helen's kitchen table to finally spill the beans on Salty. Salty Dog and Pals is the book that started as The Picture Book Course branding and somehow ended up as a 2-book deal with Walker Books.

The big question: How do you write a zillion short stories with your pal in 10 sessions flat?

We chat about the origins of Salty (and which printmaker Bernard the duck is named after), the brilliant questions from the editors at Walker Books, why Kitty is basically Tania 😆, and the Nissen Hut story that didn't make it into the final draft no matter how hard we trieeed!

p.s. Salty Dog & Pals (Helen & Katie's new picture book) is now available to pre-order and will be in shops from May. To say thank you, all pre-orders get access to a picture book MASTERCLASS. 

You can sign up for your free picture book masterclass here: 

https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/salty-dog-and-pals-the-storm-other-stories

It's instant access, so no need to wait.

(And if you've already pre-ordered, thank you!)

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

00:00 – Where did Salty Dog come from? 

01:00 – From course mascot to Walker Books character 

03:00 – Bernard the duck, and colour palette chat 

05:00 – The thumbnail template that started it all 

07:00 – The Jarvis format: not a picture book, not a chapter book 

09:00 – Writing at the kitchen table: how it worked 

11:00 – The Walker Books character questionnaire (we read it out) 

13:00 – Who is Bernard, really? (William Hanson + Cameron) 

15:00 – Kitty is Tania (reckless, chaotic, beloved) 

17:00 – Lindisfarne, upturned boats + Helen's grandparents' Nissan Hut 

20:00 – The story that was too violent to make it in 

22:00 – Titles first, stories second 

24:00 – What the editors actually did (magic, basically) 

26:00 – Procreate vs paper + the cover saga 

28:00 – Pre-order Salty Dog and Pals + free masterclass! (You can sign up for your free picture book masterclass here.)

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 🎙

This week we're dragging ourselves away from our hypothetical gardens and custom urn businesses (lol) to have a proper sofa-chat about the big question: what would you do if you weren't an illustrator?

Specifically: Is your identity too wrapped up in your work? What happens when things go quiet on the work front?

COMMUNITY IS MAGIC. 

That is all. 

Happy listening.

p.s. Salty Dog & Pals (Helen & Katie's new picture book) is now available to pre-order and will be in shops from May. To say thank you, all pre-orders get access to a picture book MASTERCLASS. 

You can sign up for your free picture book masterclass here: 

https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/salty-dog-and-pals-the-storm-other-stories

It's instant access, so no need to wait.

(And if you've already pre-ordered, thank you!)

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

00:00 – What would you do if you weren't an illustrator? 

01:00 – Tania's custom urn business plan (trademark pending) 

03:00 – Katie's nanny agency pivot 

05:00 – The famine panic spiral ("day three with no enquiries: my life is over") 

06:00 – Identity and rejection: when your work IS you 

08:00 – Service illustration vs the author-illustrator beast 

10:00 – Picture book advances, royalties + why multiple income streams matter 

12:00 – Artist dates and keeping your ideas fed 

15:00 – The real deal: what makes author-illustration different 

16:00 – Katie & Helen's picture book Salty Dog & Pals (!!!) + the Walker Books Irish jig 

18:00 – Live illustration: when the job you loved becomes just a job 

20:00 – Community as salvation 

22:00 – Good Ship origin story + the Christmas fair era 

24:00 – Isolation is corrosive (and what to do about it) 

25:00 – Finding your people: local groups, Instagram communities + Pencils on Toast

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 🎙

This week we’re wrapped up in some blankets havin' a proper sofa-chat about Instagram.

Specificallyyyy:
Should your Instagram be your portfolio?

What's the difference between a snazzy website folio and the mad addictive world of social media? 

We also get into showing your human face, illustrators following illustrators, AI-era credibility, and why you absolutely do not owe the algorithm/tech bros your nervous system.

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

 00:00 – Blankets
 01:00 – Instagram as a folio: should it be?
 03:00 – The golden algorithm years (remember those?)
 05:00 – You don’t own Instagram
 06:30 – Portfolio pressure vs social sharing
 08:00 – The 360° artist: personality, process + presence
 10:00 – AI, visibility + being human
 12:00 – Showing your face. Do it!
 14:00 – Content creator burnout (no fanks)
 16:00 – “Held hostage by consistency” rebellion
 18:00 – Who is Instagram actually for?
 20:00 – Community vs clients
 22:00 – Annuals, competitions + the old-school ways
 24:00 – Bologna Book Fair chat
 26:00 – Books as permanent portfolios
 28:00 – Sales pages vs old-school static folios
 30:00 – Final takeaway: use Instagram, don’t let it use you

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 🎙

This week we roll headfirst into the interestin' world of aphantasia.

It all started with conversations inside Find Your Creative Voice and The Picture Book Course - when Good Shippers were telling us, “I can’t see ANYTHING in my head.” Which sent us down a rabbit hole of aphantasia, imagination. And does everyone experience it the same way?

Nope.

In this episode, we chat about:

• What aphantasia is
• The “apple test” 🍎
• Emotional memory vs visual memory
• Why some creatives need reference and others work 100% from imagination
• Whether Google has made our “mind palace” lazy
• Not being able to picture things can be a creative advantage. We promise.
• Smells, textures, music and sensory imagination
• Synesthesia (colours for days of the week?)
• Why your wobbly memory-bike drawing might be better than a perfect diagram
• How imagination changes from childhood to adulthood
• Blind drawing experiments we neeeeed to try at Art Club

Timestamps for our timestamp fans

00:00 – Elephantasia? Aphantasia? However you say it…
02:00 – The apple spectrum and vivid vs blank imagery
03:00 – Reading fiction without mental pictures
05:00 – Emotional memory and creepy seaside steps
07:00 – Mental collage vs drawing from scratch
10:00 – Drawing bikes from memory
11:00 – Why aphantasia might make you a better designer
14:00 – Idioms, haystacks and giant bears
16:00 – Smells, lemons and sensory imagination
17:30 – Synesthesia and coloured weekdays
20:00 – Wolves, dreams and Google as reference
23:00 – Teenage bedrooms and peak memory moments
25:00 – Is creativity in your head or your hands?
28:00 – Blind Art Club challenge incoming 👀

What about you?

Can you see the shiny apple? Or is it more of a murky apple-shaped idea?

We’d genuinely love to know. Come over to Instagram and tell us how your brain works. We're nosy.

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 🎙

Permission to play can change EVERYTHING!

This week we’re chatting to Anna Mac - artist, printmaker, illustrator, product designer, sleep counsellor, mum of twins, and hardcore Good Shipper who's been sailing with us since 2020.

In this episode, we talk about scenic creative routes, why permission to play can change everything, creative voice vs paying the bills, and why sometimes felting a jumper is juuuust what your brain needs.

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

00:00 – Intro + course news
01:00 – Anna’s background: fine art, printmaking + retail product design
03:00 – Social work → creative rediscovery
05:00 – Sweden influence + graphic print inspiration
06:00 – Lockdown pivot + 100 day project energy
07:00 – Finding creative voice even when you’re already “successful”
09:00 – Taste is everywhere (home, clothes, environment)
11:00 – Confidence, feedback and trusting your own eye
13:00 – Agent life + picture book submissions
14:00 – Balancing creativity, family life and part-time sleep counselling
16:00 – Creative hobbies that are just for you
17:00 – Creativity as a way of being (Rick Rubin chat)
19:00 – Personal manifestos vs New Year’s resolutions
21:00 – Listening to your gut when making work
23:00 – Journalling + morning pages (ish, not perfectly)
25:00 – Visual diaries and recording life through drawing
27:00 – Stories we tell ourselves about who gets to be creative
28:00 – Rejection collections + persistence mindset
30:00 – Rejection rituals (tea, brownie, gallery trip recommended)
31:00 – Creative voice is never “finished”
32:00 – Lifetime access + coming back to learning later in life

Stuff mentioned:

Anna's website - www.annamacstudio.com 

Anna's Instagram - @annamacstudio

Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag course
The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
The Creative Act – Rick Rubin

Good Ship Illustration Monthly Numbers Tracker (freebie) - To help you keep on top of your monthly numbers and track progress in your creative career.

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

Anna is an illustrator who works from her home studio in Perthshire, Scotland.
She has a background in fine art and printmaking and spent several years creating design-led product collections for the retail market.  Client commissions included heritage retailers and international buyers, and her work has sold in shops and galleries in the UK and abroad.
Anna combines printmaking techniques, drawing and collage to produce her work, with a focus on children’s illustration.  Anna also loves to work with lino, and she uses this approach to create prints and book covers.

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 🎙

Here's the audio replay from our AI workshop last week. There are slides too - the full replay with slides is available to watch HERE (but it goes away today. We're putting the workshop inside Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag.) There's a PDF handout to download there too. Go grab it before it disappears!

https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/aiworkshop 

The audio isn't perfect, but neither are we 😅

🚢 In this episode we cover:

• Why brands are craving human-made work more than ever
• The weird, wonky human stuff AI can’t copy
• Copyright, licensing, and why clients still need real illustrators
• How your life experiences = your creative advantage
• Prompts to help you find your “brain treasure” ideas
• What you *can* control

Timestamps

00:00 Workshop intro + why everyone is panicking about AI
01:00 The good news
04:00 Why companies still need human illustrators
07:00 The “AI ick” and why audiences can feel it too
10:00 The power of personal voice and life experience
12:00 Human prompts to help you mine your own ideas
15:00 Anti-AI backlash in branding and marketing
17:00 Obsessions, hobbies, and niche interests = creative gold
20:00 Why we don’t teach “house style” illustration
23:00 Copyright, campaigns, and protecting creators
26:00 How AI is (and isn’t) affecting different illustration fields
29:00 Advice for grads and early career illustrators
32:00 Radical incrementalism and not fixing everything at once
35:00 Finding community without spending loads

Links & things mentioned

• Justice for Creators campaign (their AI report is on there too)
• Association of Illustrators resources
• Creative Lives in Progress
• Good Ship Art Club + freebies
• Our full AI workshop replay

Aaand last but not least... Find your creative voice!

• Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag - a shiny new live round begins on Monday the 16th Feb. 
• When you join on or before Valentine's Day, our gift to you = an instant download of our mock briefs PDF so you can start your portfolio building straight away, no faffing about and waiting. 
• Read all about it here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/freakflag 

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 🎙

Pssst, while you're here... On Tuesday 10th February 2026 we're running a live workshop! https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/aiworkshop 

Standing out in a sea of robots: being an illustrator when AI is everywhere

This workshop's perfect for you if you:

• Call yourself an illustrator, image-maker (or want to)
• Feel a bit wobbly about AI and what it means for your style and creative work
• Want to stand out in a sea of slop 
• Know you're brilliant, but struggle to articulate what makes you different
• Are ready to stop worrying and start being more unapologetically YOU.

Let’s get weirder, eh? 🤖

------------------------------------

OK! On with the show(notes)!

"Unfortunately, I was good at maths."
-Tara Tayyebi Fard

Tara is a Persian illustrator, humorist, architect and violinist currently based in Belgium.
She grew up reading stories, playing music, keeping a stack of diaries, and offending people by drawing them all fat.
Tara spent most of her adult life studying and working in architecture, and has been whining about it ever since. She now holds a masters degree from Amsterdam School of Art, which she happily keeps in the depths of her wardrobe.
In 2023, Tara jumped aboard the Good Ship Illustration, rediscovered her love for drawing and gradually started her career as an illustrator. Two years later, she signed with her agent, Lucie at Luddington Creative; working on picture books, doing commissions, live event illustration and making personal work.

Tara pivoted to a career in illustration after 10 years of being an architect.

In this episode, we chat to Good Shipper Tara about finding her creative voice, why being properly herself is what led to her dream clients, why being unsuccessful can be weirdly freeing, aaaaand **deep breath** how consistency and creative jealousy can be big flashing neon signs to help you figure out what you DO want to do.

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

00:00 – Intro + free workshop mention
02:00 – Architecture → illustration pivot moment
05:00 – Childhood clues + diaries + sketchbooks
08:00 – Being annoyed = excellent character research
09:00 – 60 weeks of Substack and what that builds
10:00 – Illustration loneliness vs illustration community reality
12:00 – Making work when the world feels a bit bleak
14:00 – Commission hamster wheel vs personal work
15:00 – Dream clients happen when you show your actual personality
17:00 – The “what you love / what you’re good at / what pays” overlap
19:00 – Planning for creative brains (menus > rigid schedules)
23:00 – Creative jealousy = useful information, not failure
26:00 – The regret test (8-year-old you vs 80-year-old you)
27:00 – Can illustrators make money? Also: you can be bad at any career 😌

Stuff mentioned:

Tara's Substack: https://substack.com/@tarastimeout
Tara's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tara.tekentafel
Tara's website: https://www.taratayyebifard.com/

Good Ship Illustration Monthly Numbers Tracker (freebie)

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 🎙

Are you joining in with #WalktoSee?

In this episode, we chat about how our Helen's hashtag Walk to See started, how it works, (there are basically no rules 😆), and why monthly prompts are muuch gentler on the brain/energy levels than daily prompts.

In this episode:
00:00 What Walk to See is
01:30 The only “rule”
02:30 Why the format changed
03:30 How often you actually need to draw
04:30 January’s prompt
05:30 Interpreting “wet”
06:30 Why daily challenges can be a bit much
07:30 Community stuff
08:30 Being seen on Instagram
09:30 Sharing / being shared
10:30 Drawing in the rain
11:30 Drawing in the dark
13:30 Walk to See GIFs
14:30 How to get a gold star
15:30 Imperfect drawings

How to join in:
Draw something from life <-- that's the only rule!
Take a photo.
Share it on Instagram using #WalkToSeeWet to join in with February's walk to see!

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 🎙

Ahhh this ol' chestnut. You know it. We've aaall been there. You sit down...you need to work. But you get absolutely nowt done. Instead, you do absolutely everything else... then panic-work at the last minute, or just never get round to it.

You're not alone! 

Most illustrators we speak to will have their own weird and wonderful tricks to get into work mode.

In this episode, we talk about fear, procrastination, perfectionism, and all the daft (+ useful) ways we trick ourselves into starting anyhoo.

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:
00:00 – Bribery
02:00 – Fear & perfectionism
03:00 – The 20-minute rule
04:00 – Drip drip drip
05:00 – Warming up still counts!
06:30 – Calling it “the bad version”
07:30 – Drafts & sleeping on it
08:30 – Why big projects feel terrifying
09:30 – HAVE FUN OR ELSE
11:00 – Tell the logical bit of your brain to shhhhh
12:30 – Tricks for focus that work
14:00 – You like drawing, remember? 😅
15:00 – Keeping the life in your work
16:30 – Spread yourself aboot (don't put too much pressure on one bit of work)
17:30 – Your tricks - please share what helps YOU! 

We are nosy. We want to hear what helps you concentrate and get some creative work done.

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 🎙

Let’s talk about the big hairy thing that no one really wants to talk about… copying.

In this episode, we discuss inspiration, and how social media has changed things so much for illustrators. Trying on someone else’s illustration hat for too long can derail your creative career.

This one’s especially for you if you’ve ever felt like someone's getting a bit toooo inspired by your work, or you've though
“Ach, easy peasy. I could do that style!”
(And then felt a bit weird about it.)

We talk about:

• Why illustrators now mostly look at other illustrators for inspiration (and why that’s tricky)
• How social media has changed taste, trends, and originality
• The danger of trend-based work and being easily replaceable
• What actually makes a personal creative voice memorable
• Why copying someone’s style can feel successful… until it doesn’t
• Rebecca Green, ethics
• Being inspired vs copying and where that line really is
• Don't sand off all of your personality!
• Typos, wonkiness, we luv 'em
• A human made the work
• What to do if you think you’ve been copied (or fear you have)
• Authenticity 4eva

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 🎙