I’ve recently been dabbling in a little illustration again, inspired in no small part by the brilliant creative team I worked with on Gloaming. As with Slow Seasons, I was really lucky to be involved in the mood boarding, briefing, developing and tweaking of the design and illustration of Gloaming to ensure the look and feel of the book reflected the words inside. Working with wonderful designer Lucy Sykes-Thompson and talented Edinburgh-based illustrator Flora Dewar was really inspiring, and I’ll be sure to share more of this process another day. Working together has inspired me to recommit to practising illustration myself. It’s something I did as a child and loved - in fact, at one point I wanted to be a writer and illustrator and wrote to my favourite at the time, Nick Sharratt, who wrote back encouragingly (I still have the letter somewhere!). Recently, I’ve been trying to reconnect with those creative things I did as a child that brought me joy and I heartily recommend doing the same as we soon enter the cosier seasons with more time spent at home. Here’s how I went about hand-decorating enamelware with harvest-inspired illustrations.