last summer, I was recommended to the owner of pub and cafe up the Northumberland coast at Beadnell. His idea was to give the kids something fun and educational to do while eating out with parents. Not something I had done before but had been on ‘MY LIST’ which was an evergrowing beast full of all sorts of things I could do with my artistic skills. I would often be told by someone “you should draw this, or make something like that..”. All great ideas but Just not enough time to explore everything until you have to - which is what happened with the colouring sheets.
I did two to start with, collecting images and ideas from places in that area, castles, fishing boats, lighthouses and sealife were just some of the things I included in them along with a few simple quizzes.
Of course all my artwork starts with an outline after the initial sketch for layout is approved, and it’s the element of the job that takes longest because it involves research, sizing, line thickness, positioning etc, all of which involves lots of fiddling around until it’s how I want it. Which is why didgital artwork is great as you can do all that fairly easily unlike working on paper with pencil and eraser. So after several hours working the first draft I had completed what I considered the best layout, and thankfully the client agreed.
Normally I would be playing around with colours by that stage and felt a little odd that once I’d tidied up the lines and prepared for print it was finished - all but emailing the files to the client’s printing company to be put onto A3 sheets. I do have to admit I did run a couple off for me to colour - for quality control purposes obviously. The sheets were a huge success and a few weeks later I received another email asking for a further two designs as they wanted to expand into new premises.
I had intended to make contact this spring to see if he wanted any new ones for this summer, but then came along Covid-19 and I expect he still has quite a lot of last years piled up waiting for the hoardes of visitors to arrive from all over the world in any other year. The ripple effect of this dreadful pandemic stretches far. Fingers and toes are now crossed that the tourism industry has an Indian Summer and can begin to recover the best they can.
Are you a business who could use a bespoke kids activity sheets to entertain the little ones while parents and carers do what they need to do? Or how about a quirky quiz sheet, a treasure hunt, or Christmas colouring competition/calendar to raise funds for a good cause?
I’d love to chat about how we could work together to do this.
