A New Season: Stepping Into Life As A Full-Time Artist.

As September slipped quietly into October, I found myself reflecting on just how different the beginning of autumn has felt this year.

September has always felt like a new beginning.

For more than twenty years, it meant returning to the classroom: freshly sharpened pencils, carefully prepared displays, new names to learn and that familiar mixture of excitement and nervous energy that arrives with the start of another school year.

But this September was different.

While autumn began to make itself known in the turning leaves, cooler mornings and softer light, I was also moving into a completely new season of my own. For the first time, September didn’t mean returning to school. Instead, it marked the beginning of my life as a full time artist and illustrator.

Now, as October arrives and autumn settles more deeply around us, that change is beginning to feel real.

It feels exciting and, above all, incredibly freeing.

There is something rather lovely about no longer measuring my year in school terms. My days now have a different rhythm: sketchbooks, paints and brushes, commissions waiting on my desk, photographs gathered on woodland walks and ideas scribbled into notebooks before they disappear.

Since what would have been the beginning of term, I have already attended an arts and crafts fair, surrounded by my paintings, prints, books and gifts. There is always something special about meeting people in person and seeing them connect with a particular animal, painting or story.

I have also completed two rather unusual watercolour commissions, a lobster and a collection of oysters, which will soon be framed and sent across the Atlantic to a beautiful coastal home in Maine, New England. They were something a little different for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed capturing their shapes, colours and textures, finishing the oysters with delicate touches of pearlescent paint.

My work is travelling even further afield too. I am currently illustrating a short story for a client in Minnesota, working through the initial storyboards before developing the finished illustrations. Alongside this, I am continuing with my much loved pet portraits and other personal commissions. Each project is completely different, and I love the variety this new chapter is already bringing.

My 2027 Wildlife Calendar and accompanying diary have also now launched, filled with some of the British wildlife I love to paint, from red squirrels and dormice to foxes, badgers and pine martens.

Although there is plenty happening behind the scenes, I am trying not to rush through this new beginning.

I loved the fresh, crisp air and golden light of September, and now October is beginning to bring richer colours, cooler days and that unmistakable feeling of autumn settling across the landscape.

I am still working in my seasonal sketchbook, capturing small details from the natural world. Some of these pages were created among the forests of the Cairngorms, a place that always encourages me to slow down, breathe a little more deeply and look a little more closely.

I have so many exciting plans for the months ahead that I sometimes wonder how I will fit them all in! There are new paintings I want to create, workshops and nature inspired experiences I would love to develop, stories waiting to be illustrated and so many ideas for helping others reconnect with their own creativity.

But among all those plans, there is one thing I want to continue making time for:

To be still and notice.

To notice the air changing and the light softening. To notice the leaves turning from green to gold, russet and red. To watch the birds and wildlife preparing for the colder months, while some of our summer visitors begin their long migrations once again.

Perhaps that is what this new season is really teaching me. Moving forward doesn’t always have to mean rushing. Growth can be quiet. Change can unfold gently. We can follow a new path while still pausing to appreciate where we are.

I don’t know exactly where this new chapter will lead, but I know that it feels right. After so many years of helping children discover their creativity, I am finally giving myself the time and space to fully explore my own.

As October begins, I feel as though I am standing at the start of something new, not with every step mapped out, but with plenty of ideas, a hopeful heart and a paintbrush in my hand.

And I am so excited to see what comes next.

“There is a quiet kind of courage in allowing one season of your life to end, and trusting yourself to step into the next.”