Hanbury Reflections IMPORTANT

• I think my work doesn't suit a lot of the contexts of the people who spoke at Hanbury, a lot of it isn't very contemporary or concept driven as the artists represented by CIA and other larger creative companies
• This worried me at first but after hearing Chloe from Plum Pudding talk it made me realise that there are other places that have room for more representational work like mine
• After the seminar I managed to speak to Chloe more, one on one and we spoke a bit about the different markets its possible to go into working in children's illustration
• She suggested that my work would be suited to early readers- children aged around 5-8, especially in regards to the image on my business card 
• She suggested looking into the Adventures Of Pug series by Laura James which all have a full colour illustrated cover and internal illustrations in black and white, maybe I could think about making some covers too?
• She also recommended putting some younger children's characters into my folio to appeal it more towards children's illustration and show my range a bit more
• We also spoke about how publishers at London Book Fair had been expressing interest in books aimed at children that dealt with the topic of mental health in a soft way which is interesting as mental health is something I often tall about in my work
• All in all my chat with Chloe has really enthused me, I came away excited to draw some children's characters as character design is something I've been wanted to do more of for a while but I didn't really feel I knew why I would be doing it or what market for
• It was also really interesting to hear that almost all the speakers said they valued originality highly and if your work looked even slightly like something else they won't look at it again- this reminded me to ONLY make things led by me, and not look too much at the work of others around me
• All the speakers also noted how important it was to be easy to work with, in terms of being consistent, considerate, taking direction well and communicating effectively. Although I feel I do most of these things pretty well, I think I need to work on my communication in terms of being clear and precise and also the times at which I respond to things as often I'll answer my emails late at night which doesn't look very professional!

Going forward:

• I will add some children's book character designs to my folio
• Some of these I will focus around discussing mental health in a soft and approachable way, maybe making some roughs for book page layouts
• I will keep in contact with Chloe and get back to her in a few months to show her what I've been working on and hopefully ask for feedback
• I will also look into Oxford university Press and Magination Press who were both looking for books and concepts focusing on mental health issues in very gentle ways
• I'll look into contacting these two publishers and maybe sending them some of my work?
• I'll endeavour to make things and sketch for myself more regularly, as this seems to be important in keeping your work driven by yourself and your own tastes rather than mirroring those of people around you
• Finally I will compile a list of creatives that I feel will be useful to my practice, whether its agents, other makers, publishers etc, so that after university I have a list of people who I can be emailing both to ask for feedback and hopefully consider working with