Arts
**The Good Ship Illustration**

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)

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Latest Episodes:

Bask in your weirdness! 🚢 | Find Your Creative Voice Mini-Series #1 Sep 11, 2023

Show notes

Bask in your weirdness. What to do if the voice that’s emerging isn’t the one you like?
WELCOME to our 5-part mini-series, all about finding your creative voice. This week we're dropping one episode a day, where we tackle that ol' chestnut: how to find your creative voice. We've answered questions, and created actionable steps for each episode.
Want a fillable workbook? YOU'RE IN LUCK! We've made one for you to download here.
https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/workbook
p.s. The doors to our 8-week online course Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag are now open. We'd love to have you sailing with us. Read all about it here.
Doors close for this live round on the 15th of September 2023 and we are STRICT. Don't miss the boat!

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 🎙

HELP! I don't think I have a style - Message in a bottle Jun 21, 2023

Show notes

We’re here to offer no-nonsense advice for illustrators and image-makers navigating a creative career

Here are 3 things you need to know:

At The Good Ship, our big mission is to help illustrators and image-makers navigate a creative career.
There are 3 of us - Tania, Helen and Katie - and we are the Goldilocks (3 bears!) of illustration, covering 3 areas and eras of the industry.
We believe your creative work should feel good, make you money, and leave you feeling confident to fly your freak flag!

Stuff we talk about in this episode:

Style is like the zodiac
How to find out who you are
Finding your uniqueness
Hiding away from social media.
Creating a stronger identity and finding your creative voice.

p.s. if you like this episode, you might love our course "Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag".
You can read all about it here.

Our most weird and wonderful illustration jobs ft. sausages Jun 21, 2023

Show notes

We’re here to offer no-nonsense advice for illustrators and image-makers navigating a creative career

Here are 3 things you need to know:

At The Good Ship, our big mission is to help illustrators and image-makers navigate a creative career.
There are 3 of us - Tania, Helen and Katie - and we are the Goldilocks (3 bears!) of illustration, covering 3 areas and eras of the industry.
We believe your creative work should feel good, make you money, and leave you feeling confident to fly your freak flag!

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In this episode we talk about:

Katie somehow stumbling her way from local beer sketching jobs to Google HQ
How Helen (almost) became the face of sausages
Tania's magical jobs in Hong Kong (feat. Bryan Ferry)

Art qualifications... do you need 'em? - Message in a Bottle Jun 21, 2023

Show notes

We’re here to offer no-nonsense advice for illustrators and image-makers navigating a creative career

Here are 3 things you need to know:

At The Good Ship, our big mission is to help illustrators and image-makers navigate a creative career.
There are 3 of us - Tania, Helen and Katie - and we are the Goldilocks (3 bears!) of illustration, covering 3 areas and eras of the industry.
We believe your creative work should feel good, make you money, and leave you feeling confident to fly your freak flag!

In this episode, we talk about:

The (un)importance of qualifications in art
The importance of having a masters
Stamps of approval
Choosing yourself
Gatekeepers
Be a punk

Did you like this? You might love Art Club too! Come on over to Instagram and be our internet pal. We host pop-up art clubs every now and again and our entire back catalog is on there too.
We're @thegoodshipillustration
https://www.instagram.com/thegoodshipillustration/

Substack for Illustrators! Message in a Bottle Jun 21, 2023

Show notes

We’re here to offer no-nonsense advice for illustrators and image-makers navigating a creative career

Here are 3 things you need to know:

At The Good Ship, our big mission is to help illustrators and image-makers navigate a creative career.
There are 3 of us - Tania, Helen and Katie - and we are the Goldilocks (3 bears!) of illustration, covering 3 areas and eras of the industry.
We believe your creative work should feel good, make you money, and leave you feeling confident to fly your freak flag!

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In this episode we let Helen get REALLY excited about Substack. She shares all of her top tips to get you excited to start writing, sharing and hitting publish tooo.
We're on Substack! Come and say hello
Helen's Substack, Pencil Pals
Katie's Substack, Katiedraws (and writes)
(Tania doesn't have one yet, but don't worry... we'll keep peer-pressuring her until she starts one too.)

Using kids as inspiration for picture book illustration - is it a good idea? - Message in a Bottle May 06, 2023

Show notes

Wahooo, another picture book podcast!
The Picture Book Course
If you're listening to this and you're interested in making picture books, you've listened at a brilliant time...
The Picture Book Course doors are now open!!
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

It's an eight week course and the cover creating your own picture book. Making your best picture book work ever.
We'd love to have you on board :) Read all about the course here.
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For this episode we've got three brilliant questions sent for our Message in a Bottle series.
This episode's messages in bottles:

Is it a good idea to use your own children as inspiration for a picture book?
-from Katherine Steel
Development work: how do you tackle it?
-from Adam Ming
Which way should your picture book character face?
-from Sandy

Thanks for listening!
Lots o' love
-Good Ship

p.s. If you're listening to this later, when the doors are closed, you can join the waiting list and we'd love to have your sailing with us.
p.p.s We are doing some extra special pop up Art Clubs this week on Friday! Come along and join in on Instagram. We're @thegoodshipillustration.

Picture Books, drawing and storytelling: Emma Carlisle chats to The Good Ship Illustration Oct 03, 2022

Show notes

We had a brilliant chat with Good Ship pal, Emma Carlisle on aaall of the things:

The importance of bad drawings
Tackling social media as an illustrator
Studying an MA in illustration
Finding out what you're interested in
PICTURE BOOKS!
Mental health and creativity
Drawing from life and filling sketchbooks
Getting discovered
...aaand lots more

Meet Emma and learn more about her work here https://www.emmacarlisle.com/
p.s.
DOORS ARE OPEN RIGHT NOW to our big juicy Picture Book Course!
If you are ready to get your picture book made and out into the world, now's your time! But be quick - doors close on Friday 7th October 2022.
Read all about it and join here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/PB
We'd love to have you sailing with us!

x Helen Stephens, Tania Willis & Katie Chappell

Figuring out where YOUR illustration work fits - Message in a Bottle Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

In this episode we answer the questions:

How do I know if I'm an illustrator or not?
How to navigate "The Gap" (see quote below!)
How to keep the magic and energy in your finished work

The Gap
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
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Right now we have two courses, and the doors open again very soon...
The Picture Book Course
Find out more about The Picture Book Course here!
Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag
Find out more about Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag here!
p.s. Got a question for the podcast? You can send your questions to goodshipillo@gmail.com and title it 'message in a bottle' so we know what it's about.

Getting started as an illustrator - Message in a Bottle Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

In this episode we answer the questions:

How do I get started as an illustrator (even if you're not a young thing fresh outta art school.)
How to get your first big break as an illustrator.
Do I need an illustration agent to be successful?

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