Every fragment is a real species moving through the world with its own survival story.
I have created an all over print tote bag featuring my latest kaleidoscope pattern, Star Kaleidoscope. At the centre sits the sunflower sea star, with the Yangtze finless porpoise radiating outward alongside tarantula hawks and bursts of honey badgers, forming a living system of motion, tension, and unexpected…
Keep readingI’m gonna kill that negative creep!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the relentless creep, that monster in the alleyway of your mind that shows up uninvited when you’re brushing your teeth, when the world isn’t playing fair, when you’re staring at the latest piece you’ve made and the negative voices start whispering. It’s…
Keep readingPermission to push past the invisible fences
There is something quietly unsettling about this Hypno bat piece, where the soft pastel wallpaper feels harmless at first glance until your eyes begin to adjust and the pattern stops behaving, revealing a hidden presence woven through the rhythm of vampire squid and the alien grace of the…
Keep readingGrowing Up – My Visual Dream Journal – Day 162
Day 162 of an ongoing human and machine collaboration, Growing Up captures a fleeting subconscious moment where responsibility climbs steep and heavy while innocence follows close behind, a quiet record of the inner landscape that shifts while most of the world is asleep. This black and white dream…
Keep readingThe honey badger does not give a f**k
There is something quietly magnificent about the honey badger, a small animal that walks through the world with the sort of confidence most humans spend their entire lives trying to borrow. We often move through life carefully, trying not to offend anyone, trying not to take up too…
Keep readingWith curiosity and a bit of resilience you eventually discover your own visual territory
Somewhere in the quiet hours of making art the mind slips sideways and time loosens its grip, and that is usually where I find myself when I am drawing patterns like this coconut crab wallpaper, slowly arranging claws and shells into repeating shapes until the whole thing begins…
Keep readingA few quiet superstitions can actually serve an artist
Superstitions often shape behaviour in ways that protect the work. One of the most useful is the belief that ideas lose power when they are talked about too early. When an artist treats a new idea like something fragile that must be protected, it tends to get finished…
Keep readingA proper old school art supply place
Dreams can be hard to catch, especially when you are trying to do it every day like I have. Sometimes an epic movie plot unspools and leaves a mountain of tangled celluloid on the floor. This image, Twin Moons, was more like a cryptic postcard from the other…
Keep readingA stubborn refusal to accept the expected hierarchy of the wild
The last thing I learned came from an animal most people barely think about, yet it carries the kind of stubborn intelligence that artists quietly admire. The honey badger lives in a world that tries to bite, poison, sting, and overpower it every day, and instead of shrinking…
Keep readingMy Visual Dream Journal
Some of my latest dreams captured with words and recreated with AI. I’ve finally come up with something that resembles those fleeting glimpses into the infinite creative engine of the dream world, blending it with the limitless possibilities of AI. It feels fitting to merge these two worlds…
Keep readingGrowing a Generation That Cares Enough to Protect What Remains
When I make sunflower art it was never going to be proper garden sunflowers turning obediently toward the light. The version that found its way onto my drawing table was the sunflower sea star, a creature famous not just for its sheer size but for the surprising speed…
Keep readingAardvark Wallpaper Greeting Cards That Double as Mini Wall Art
Aardvarks are one of those animals everyone thinks they know, mostly because half the businesses in the old phone books called themselves Aardvark something just to cheat their way to the front of the directory. Now the directories are gone and the poor thing only really shows up…
Keep readingSome endings are less about loss and more about transformation
The Hypno Bat Sunflower Star crawled out of that strange territory where repetition stops being design and starts feeling slightly unhinged, like staring too long at wallpaper and realising it might be staring back. It began as fully hand drawn physical work, built from my original Hypno Bat…
Keep readingMy Visual Dream Journal – Day 144
In my Visual Dream Journal, I frantically snatch at the fleeting scraps of my dreams with the help of AI, preserving the absurd, dark, and beautiful bits before they dissolve into the ether forever. The project is an uneasy handshake between my twisted subconscious and the bizarre digital…
Keep readingI’d be the worst person in the world
I have never liked thought experiments. So let us run the worst thought experiment imaginable. If I could be someone else for a day, I would choose the worst person in the world. Not because it would be enjoyable. It would probably be the most confronting day a…
Keep readingWe search the skies for wonder while stepping over it in the grass.
My alien animals began the way most honest creative work begins, quietly, without a grand plan. Just curiosity poking at the edges of an idea. Around that time the world seemed briefly obsessed with things in the sky. UAP they called them now, which still feels like a…
Keep readingIntegrating work, family and art in a way that is sustainable.
My Hypno Bats are probably still out there somewhere, suspended in the digital ether. Hundreds of them. Different colours, slight variations, small evolutions of the same strange creature. I minted them across multiple NFT platforms during the boom, when it felt like artists were being handed a new…
Keep readingMake a body of work that feels undeniably yours
If I could sit down with my teenage self, the kid who loved animals but was already learning to dilute himself to fit in, I would not tell him to be realistic. I would tell him to be precise about what he is refusing. Do not give up…
Keep readingThe Yangtze finless porpoise lives in one of the busiest rivers on Earth
Cargo ships grind overhead. Industry churns the water into a permanent murk. It is nearly blind, so it listens instead. It sends out sound and reads the returning echo, building a picture of the world from vibration rather than spectacle… and speaking of spectacle… What bores you? Rows…
Keep readingMost artists underestimate how much water they need
Especially those trying to cross that fragile invisible threshold between surviving and thriving. The brain is mostly water, and every idea begins as an electrical event moving through that internal ocean. When the water level drops, the signal weakens. Thoughts fragment. The deeper images become harder to reach.…
Keep readingHow artists cross the invisible line between being overlooked and being undeniable
The aardvark is not a celebrity species. It does not make headlines. It lives in the margins, working the night shift, shaping ecosystems while the world sleeps. Most people could live their entire lives without ever thinking about one. Turning it into wallpaper felt like correcting an imbalance.…
Keep readingThe Hypno bat has stayed with me from the beginning, like those old sneakers
The Hypno bat has never felt like a single finished artwork to me. It behaves more like a living organism that keeps shedding its skin and growing a new one. This latest version carries the fingerprints of another visual language that has been emerging through my Visual Dream…
Keep readingS is for Sunflower Sea Star – Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet
The sunflower sea star is one of the largest sea stars on Earth, capable of growing up to a metre across, moving with eerie speed along the ocean floor on thousands of tiny tube feet. It is not a passive ornament. It is a hunter. It keeps sea…
Keep readingVisual Dream Journal — Day 137: Take Cover
You know how during a solar eclipse you can make a pinhole camera inside a cardboard box so you can safely witness something too bright and overwhelming to look at directly. This felt like that. Only instead of an eclipse it was an intense meteor storm ripping through…
Keep readingA “hidden wonder,” quietly going about their work while the world fixates on myths.
Ever known a blood-sucking corporate executive? Or maybe one of those energy vampires who leaves you drained by the time they walk out the door? Well, I’ve got a gift idea that’s subtle, pointed… and entirely stylish: vampire bat wallpaper socks. Before you dash for the checkout, though,…
Keep readingWho Are the Art Police?
My Vampire Bat began the old fashioned way. Pen scratching across paper. Ink staining fingers. I used three reference photographs, fed them into AI to generate a symmetrical guide because bats, like leaves and lungs, carry that mirror language of nature. Then I drew it by hand in…
Keep readingIs it too scary for my Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet kids book?
My Vampire Bat did not feel evil as I drew it. It felt precise. Ancient. Efficient. A survivor doing what it has always done, long before humans arrived with their stories and fears and misunderstandings. We have turned Vampire bats into villains, but the reality is far less…
Keep readingI would happily create until I am cold in the soil
The Hypno Bat Electric Eel pillows are finally out in the world. A soft square thing that carries a bit of voltage in it. Camouflaged and blending into electrical eel currents, symmetry pulling against itself, light and dark circling each other like they are negotiating a truce. It…
Keep readingDon’t be a jerk and the machine keeps humming
What if Earth was a machine? An absurd, over-engineered piston-and-belt nightmare buried under our feet, groaning, humming, probably grumbling about humanity’s idiocy. And like every machine, it’s needs stuff. It demands maintenance. It spits warnings. You don’t just floor the throttle and hope nothing catches fire. This is…
Keep readingAn artist’s digital home base
The sunflower sea star is one of the strangest, most beautiful things in the ocean. All arms, symmetry and quiet alien grace. And it’s been getting wiped out by star wasting disease. They don’t just die, they fall apart. Arms drop off. Bodies collapse. Not because of one…
Keep readingWhy Some Artists Thrive While Others Burn Out (And What Patterns in Nature Teach Us)
They’re small, elusive and deeply connected to their ecosystems. They don’t dominate the forest, they harmonise with it. For animal lovers, they carry that quiet magic, half myth, half biology. For me, they’re exactly the kind of species that belongs in Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet, because they…
Keep readingThis Vampire Bat Would Look Great Hanging in Your Castle
There’s something about a vampire bat that hits three of my favourite nerve endings at once: art, animals and old-school horror. So when #Inktober threw up the prompt Pierce, my pen immediately went for fangs. This illustration is a straight-up love letter to the weird, the nocturnal and…
Keep readingTrade short term sugar highs for long term soul fuel
If I listen carefully underneath all that orchestrated noise I hear sugar’s siren song, like the call of the Hypno Bat, saying diabetes is great, death is cool, everyone loves a dead artist, that’s when they finally make sure you get famous, right when you’re no longer here…
Keep readingFear shrinks your world. Fascination expands it
Fear that you’re behind. Stress that you’re failing. Overwhelm that you’ll never catch up. None of that comes from the forest, the ocean, the stars, or even your own thoughts when they’re left alone long enough to breathe. It comes from the glowing rectangle we voluntarily press against…
Keep readingThis is going to change art forever!
I want to say it’s print on demand. It looks like freedom for artists. No stock, no warehouses, no gatekeepers. Just upload your work and suddenly you’re a business. Except it’s still a gate. Same system, new costume, worse terms, thinner margins. You might make twenty cents on…
Keep readingWhat does your perfect day as an artist look like? Here’s mine
I wake up before sunrise arguably the best time of day. No alarm. No doom-scroll. No corporate sirens screaming productivity into my skull. Just light, breath, birds, and the quiet hum of a day that hasn’t been ruined yet. My phone is nowhere near me. It’s off. Dead…
Keep readingTime strips your illusions and hands you something better
When I was younger, I thought life events happened to me. Now I see they happen through me. Like storms through a forest. You don’t stay the same tree. You bend. You lose branches. You grow moss in weird places. Sometimes lightning hits and suddenly you’re on fire, spiritually speaking, while everyone…
Keep readingSlow Art in a Fast World
Something that has lived on my to do list forever is publishing my kids book, Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet. As you can see, I’ve created an entire universe of merchandise, t shirts, mugs, pillows and stickers, but you know what I don’t have? The book. The one…
Keep readingFrom Dream Creatures to Homegrown Realness
I’ve always had a fascination with the octopus, a kind of beauty horror combination, so it’s no wonder they make regular appearances in my dreams. Their ability to camouflage, solve problems, and just how utterly alien they are fascinates me. People seem obsessed with the idea of discovering…
Keep readingFrom Tape Drives to the Creative Takeover
I’m drawing a brocket deer, tiny, shy, and endangered, and it hits me how much it feels like artists today. Both live in worlds where everything is sacrificed to the god of money and convenience. Forests get bulldozed, attention spans get mined, and creativity gets undervalued. The brocket…
Keep readingAfraid of Flying, Afraid of Falling: Art, Ethics and Avoidance
I keep making patterns. Forests of patterns. Kaleidoscopes of creatures. Crowns spinning into infinity. This new crowned eagle t-shirt pattern is bold, rhythmic, a little hypnotic. The kind of shirt that quietly says, I notice things most people walk past. I love how patterns in nature feel like…
Keep readingCrowned Eagle Wallpaper
This crowned eagle wallpaper gives my obsession with nature’s hidden patterns a new digital form, feathers becoming rhythm, crowns becoming symbols, and repetition turning into meaning. It’s a 1/1 piece. No copies, no factory vibes, just one strange, beautiful rebellion living on-chain.
Keep readingTime to Create a Seemingly Meaningless Bat
Real art doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It grows in micro moments. In the car. Between jobs. While the kettle boils. In those quiet five minutes before sleep when your mind finally loosens its grip and lets something real through. If you can learn to love those small…
Keep readingWe’ve Dropped the Ball with the Yangtze Finless Porpoise
The Yangtze Finless Porpoise is one of the strangest, rarest, most quietly magical animals on Earth and one of the most endangered. It is the only known freshwater porpoise in the world, living exclusively in China’s Yangtze River, a waterway that has basically been turned into a liquid…
Keep readingThe Only Smart Way to Spend Lottery Money (If You’re an Artist)
Time to make art without squeezing it into the cracks of exhaustion. Time to explore ideas that don’t have an immediate ROI. Time to fail gloriously in peace. Which brings me to my latest dream journal artwork mug: Free Hugs — where I’ve befriended a Komodo dragon. Yes, a real…
Keep readingCan a Tapir Teach What Self-Help Books Can’t?
This tapir illustration came from my Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet take on the #Inktober prompt “trunk.” Yes, elephants are the obvious choice, and I adore them, especially after seeing baby ones swim like wrinkly little submarines of joy. However i wanted this prompt to be all about…
Keep readingWhat’s wilder — your walls or your family traditions?
Some people hang soft pastels and polite florals in their lounge rooms. I hang wild animals that look like they’re about to chew through the wall and escape into the house. My latest artwork, Wolverine Wallpaper, is exactly that kind of beautiful menace. A vortex of striking blue…
Keep readingA Contagion of Creativity
It all started back when NFTs were booming and everyone was suddenly a digital artist, a collector, and a crypto prophet. I minted my first ever NFT, a Hypno Bat, and sold it for $20. Twenty bucks. Not life-changing money, but mentally? That was massive. I remember thinking, Hang…
Keep readingC is for Crowned Eagle — and this one marks a turning point for me.
This illustration came out of Inktober, from the simple act of drawing every day whether I felt inspired or not. The prompt was “crown,” and this lovely eagle emerged, but more importantly, my style did too. My lines tightened. My confidence showed up and I started drawing in…
Keep readingVisual Dream Journal — Day 133: “Big Trouble”
This dream drags up old memories of being a kid and fishing in places I definitely wasn’t supposed to be fishing. Not because it was dangerous. Not because it hurt anyone. But because somewhere, some adult decided that joy in the wrong postcode equals crime. Add a fishing…
Keep readingIs Your Leadership Style… Tarantula Hawk?
Show off your love for unique and uncommon animals with this playful “I’m an Uncommon Animal” Tarantula Hawk design! When someone asks, “What uncommon animal are you?” you can proudly answer, “A tarantula hawk!” Did you know the tarantula hawk has one of the most painful stings in…
Keep readingPotato Power – My Visual Dream Journal – Day 132
I was in a massive cathedral with stained glass so high I don’t recall seeing the floor. Below me, some bloke on a dodgy ladder was throwing potatoes at me. Not a rock. Not a brick. Potatoes. Which somehow made it more sinister. At first it feels funny,…
Keep readingI’m an Uncommon Animal – Wolverine T-Shirts
Not your average cute critter, this design features an original hand drawn Wolverine that will appear in my kids book More Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet, paired with the words “I’m an Uncommon Animal,” made for outsiders, wild spirits, and anyone who refuses to be mass produced. When…
Keep readingDreaming of a Digital Detox
Day 131 of my visual dream journal probably connects more than I first realised to how I’ve been thinking about the way I communicate online. Lately I’ve been working on deleting all social media apps from my phone. Not quitting the internet, not disappearing from social media, just…
Keep readingNature’s Art Gallery Featuring the Tarantula Hawk
I’ve just finished a new artwork, and I’m still deciding whether I’ve captured something quietly magnificent or something no child should ever meet on the page. The Tarantula Hawk is not a gentle creature. Even drawn in soft psychedelic colours, it carries an intensity that refuses to be…
Keep readingBlending In, Standing Out, and My Visual Dream Journal
She towers above the crowd, head and shoulders rising like a silent signal that she doesn’t quite belong. Her posture calm, her expression unreadable, at first glance she’s just another figure, but the world around her seems to shrink in comparison. That’s the dream journal artwork I call Blending…
Keep readingI’m an Uncommon Animal – Dodo Bird
I’ve just dropped a new t-shirt: the I’m an Uncommon Animal dodo edition. A little extinct bird that once strutted around like it owned the world, now gone. A tragic but fitting mascot for our modern creativity: easily distracted, overrun by convenience, and at serious risk of disappearing. Wear it…
Keep readingTarantula Hawks, Deadly Snakes, and Big Skies: Own a Piece of Nature’s Wild Pattern
My latest piece, the Tarantula Hawk Wallpaper—25 editions on ZeroOne—is out in the world, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a celebration of one of nature’s most metal insects. Gorgeous, deadly, and terrifying. I love turning creatures like this into patterns, making the uncommon common, giving people a…
Keep readingWhere Emotion Meets Technique, Mark Sibb’s Artistic Breakthrough | Fork in the Road Podcast
Mark Sibb shares how his artistic journey began during the COVID lockdowns and evolved into a thriving creative career rooted in personal expression, community, and experimentation. From navigating the balance between commercial work and creative freedom, to discovering that his style emerged not from seeking perfection, but from…
Keep readingDon’t Let Your Creativity Go the Way of the Dodo
Meet my Dodo.I originally created this little extinct oddball for Inktober, but it’s since taken on a life of its own… ironic, I know. The Dodo will likely flap its way into my next kids’ book, More Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet. There’s something about its stubborn, slightly bewildered face…
Keep readingStreaming & Survival: Virg on Becoming a Thriving Artist in the Digital Age | Fork in the Road Podcast
Musician Virg pulls back the curtain on the realities of being a modern musician in the digital world. From her childhood discovery of synthesizers to the creation of her Italian single Martini, Virg takes us deep into her creative process, her cultural identity and Italian music, and the…
Keep readingInktober Day 28: Skeletal
In the deepest parts of the ocean lies a creature that turns bones into life. The Bone-eating snot worm (Osedax) doesn’t have a mouth, stomach, or eyes. Instead, it uses root-like structures that secrete acid to bore into whale bones on the seafloor, dissolving them to extract nutrients…
Keep readingInktober Rivals: Tiny Mosquitoes and the Everyday Rivalry of Making Food vs Making Art
Some rivals you can reason with. Others you can’t even see coming. Enter the mosquito, humanity’s deadliest enemy. Forget lions, sharks, or snakes… this tiny airborne vampire has taken more human lives than every war in history combined. It doesn’t roar. It whispers. It hunts in silence, armed…
Keep readingArctic Fox vs. The Artist: Inktober Day 19 and the Cold Truth About Why I Won’t Quit (Even When It Makes No Sense)
Meet the Arctic fox, the true master of survival at the edge of the world. This small predator is built for extremes, with fur so insulating it’s been recorded as the warmest of any Arctic mammal. In winter, its coat turns pure white to vanish against snow and…
Keep readingInktober Day 18 – Deal: The Daily Drawing Deal That’s Changing My Art and Helping Save Animals
In the coral kingdoms of the reef, one tiny creature runs the most important business under the sea: the cleaning station. Meet the Cleaner Shrimp, nature’s underwater negotiator. The deal is simple: predators promise not to eat them, and in return, the shrimp gets to climb right into…
Keep readingInktober Day 17: Ornate
When it comes to intricate design, nature’s got the edge. Meet the Ornate Box Turtle, a North American original dressed in golden lines and dark spirals — like a living mandala carved by sunlight and soil. Each marking is a fingerprint of survival, a story etched over decades…
Keep readingFrom Graphic Recording to YouTube Success: Raheem Nelson’s Creative Journey | Fork in the Road Podcast
In this engaging conversation, Raheem Nelson shares his journey as a graphic recorder, photographer, and vlogger, emphasizing the importance of style as a form of self-expression. He discusses his recent achievements, including a magazine feature and his approach to YouTube content creation. Raheem offers valuable networking tips for…
Keep readingInktober Day 16: Blunder
Ah, the Dodo — nature’s most famous “oops.” Once strutting proudly across Mauritius with not a single predator to fear, this plump, flightless bird had no idea that humanity would turn out to be its ultimate blunder. Within less than a century of our arrival, it was gone,…
Keep readingInktober Day 15: Ragged – Ragged-Tooth Shark
Meet the Ragged-Tooth Shark, a calm hunter with a grin that could star in a horror film. Those jagged teeth are perfectly designed for gripping slippery prey like fish and squid. Each tooth is long, thin, and needle-sharp, and when one falls out, another slides forward from the…
Keep readingInktober Day 14: Trunk
That little trunk says it all. Meet the Tapir, a rainforest survivor straight out of the Ice Age, equipped with a short, flexible snout that works like a snorkel and a fruit picker all in one. It’s how they sense the world, plucking leaves, foraging in the undergrowth,…
Keep readingInktober Day 13: Drink
Meet the Thorny Devil, the desert’s spikiest survivor and one of nature’s strangest drinkers. No bottles. No bowls. Just skin. Every groove and channel in its scales pulls in precious water, from rain, dew, or even damp sand, and funnels it straight to its mouth. It doesn’t just…
Keep readingInktober Day 12: Shredded
If you’ve ever watched An American Werewolf in London and winced through that transformation scene, skin tearing, bones cracking, pure primal chaos, you’ve already glimpsed the spirit of the Wolverine. It’s nature’s own were-creature: short, stocky, and absolutely unhinged when hungry. When it hits the scent of prey,…
Keep readingInktober Day 11: Sting
Meet the Tarantula Hawk, part beauty, part nightmare, all purpose. With a sting ranked among the most painful in the natural world, this wasp doesn’t fight for sport. It paralyzes a tarantula, drags it underground, and lays a single egg inside the still-living host. When the larva hatches,…
Keep readingArt as Activism: Visual Strategist Zed Anwar aka Zedtrafficker | Fork in the Road Podcast
In this conversation, Zed Anwar, also known as Zedtrafficker, shares his creative journey from the NHS to the world of advertising and NFTs. He discusses the challenges of being an artist, the importance of activism in his work, and how art can drive social change. Zed emphasizes the…
Keep readingFrom Corporate Job to Full-Time Musician | TortureTwinn’s Andrew Devin on the Fork in the Road Podcast
I sit down with Andrew Devin, the creative force behind TortureTwinn, for a raw and inspiring conversation about music, film, social media, and choosing passion over comfort. We talk about: 🎶 Wearing your influences on your sleeve – musically and cinematically. 📲 Going all in on social media…
Keep readingThe Power of the Pangolin
This sketch grew out of 2020, a year when fear consumed me. It seeped through my walls, through my body, until even breathing felt impossible. I forced air in and out using Wim Hof breathing techniques, as if training to survive the inevitable. I cracked under the weight…
Keep readingHow Aoife O’Dwyer Found Freedom as a Full-Time NFT Artist | Fork in the Road Podcast
In this episode of Fork in the Road Podcast, I sit down with full-time NFT artist Aoife O’Dwyer, whose work explores the gaps in human perception — not just in her art, but also in how she showcases it in the world of Web3. We dig into:What it…
Keep readingSculpting Surreal Beauty and Darkness: Chris Choi’s Artistic Journey | Fork in the Road Podcast
In this episode of Fork in the Road, I chat with Chris Choi, the artist behind Mecha Panda, about his incredible return to art after a decade-long break—and how he taught himself to sculpt. We talk honestly about: If you’re an artist navigating your own path—or curious about…
Keep readingAre You Seeking Security or Adventure? (Featuring the Zorilla)
Meet the zorilla, nature’s punk rock skunk. A creature so well-defended, even lions think twice. Its secret weapon? A super stinky spray that sends predators running for the hills! This stinky little beast may look cute and sleepy with its midnight fur and moonlit markings (as seen in…
Keep readingMy Visual Dream Journal – Day 103 – The Staring Contest | Collect NFT on ZeroOne
What gets better with age? Most people say wine or wisdom. But like it or not, for me It’s AI, and more specifically, AI art. It’s evolving fast, learning from every pixel, prompt, and mistake. But as AI gets better with age, so does every artist, we just…
Keep readingZ is for Zorilla – A strangely comforting pattern in nature
Bring some wild style to your space or wardrobe with this eye-catching Z is for Zorilla pattern! Featuring a bold, graphic black and white illustration of the elusive Zorilla (striped polecat) in a hypnotic kaleidoscope layout on a soft purple background, this design is perfect for animal lovers…
Keep readingHow Drained Eye Built a Full-Time Art Career | Fork in the Road Podcast
Want to become a full-time, financially thriving artist? In this episode of the Fork in the Road art podcast, we chat with Jason Sanders (aka Drained Eye) about how he turned his passion for art into a sustainable, creative business. We cover:🧠 Why you should start selling your…
Keep readingMy Visual Dream Journal – Day 100
I’ve finally done it. I’ve recorded 100 of my dreams into a visual dream journal—with the strange and powerful help of AI. It’s been a journey into the absurd, the profound, and the surreal. What struck me most along the way is just how perfectly matched the randomness…
Keep readingFrom Zorilla to Zzz’s: The Moon Phases Wallpaper That Became a Dreamy Throw Pillow
Every letter of the alphabet in my Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet series comes with its own hidden world — and for the elusive Zorilla, that world is bathed in moonlight. When I was illustrating the nocturnal Zorilla — a skunk-like creature with a name that sounds made-up but is…
Keep readingThriving as a Kids Book Illustrator with Chelsea Wade — Fork in the Road Podcast
I sit down with Chelsea Wade — a kids’ book illustrator known for her love of animals, unique South African wildlife patterns, and vibrant visual storytelling. Chelsea shares her journey from art school to self-taught success, teaching English abroad, and eventually co-creating her first children’s book with a…
Keep readingQuick Way from my Visual Dream Journal Day 98 – NFT on ZeroOne
My favourite historical figure?Without hesitation: Salvador Dalí, the moustachioed maestro of the surreal. And it’s no surprise, really. His obsession with dreams, the subconscious, and the bizarre feels deeply aligned with my own creative practice, especially in my Visual Dream Journal project, like the piece “Quick Way”, where I recount my…
Keep readingI’m an Uncommon Animal – Wearing Conservation, Curiosity, and Creativity. My Babirusa T-Shirts
There’s something proudly different about my “I’m an Uncommon Animal” t-shirts. With a bold red Babirusa front and center and those wonderfully wonky tusks crisscrossing like nature’s exclamation mark, these tees are more than just wearable art—they’re conversation starters, identity shapers, and miniature love letters to the weird and…
Keep readingBabirusa Wallpaper Now on Zeroone – Only 10 NFTs Available
I’ve just released something a little wild: Babirusa Blue, a repeating wallpaper pattern featuring the amazing and unusual Babirusa — and it’s available as an NFT on the Zeroone platform. This isn’t just digital art. It’s possibly the only Babirusa wallpaper in existence — and there are just 10 editions available. Why the Babirusa? The Babirusa…
Keep readingPig-Headed Determination
If I had to pick my favorite thing about myself, it’s probably my pig-headed determination. Now, that might not sound elegant or poetic—but let me tell you, it’s been the engine behind everything I’ve created. The kids’ books, the patterns, the podcast interviews, the oddball t-shirts, the animal…
Keep readingHow Do I Want to Retire? With a Mug, a Mandate, and a Mandarin Tree
I’ve well and truly shot myself in the foot. I chose a life of creativity — which, let me tell you, sounds romantic on a podcast but looks a lot less charming on a superannuation statement. I’m 51. I have no retirement fund. Not a cent of super.…
Keep readingWhat’s the Oldest Thing I Use Daily? My iPhone 8 Plus, a.k.a. My Portable Art Studio
Let’s get one thing straight: old phones are still pretty damn good. I’ve been using my iPhone 8 Plus daily since I inherited it from my dad when he passed away in 2020 (friggin miss you, Dad). And honestly, I’m still not convinced I need to upgrade. Sure,…
Keep readingQ is for Queen Charlotte Goshawk – Limited Edition Art Prints Now Available
I’m excited to share the latest limited edition artwork from my Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet series – Q is for Queen Charlotte Goshawk. There are just 10 hand-numbered limited edition prints available, each one celebrating this incredibly rare and elusive bird of prey. Like much of the series, this piece is a…
Keep readingThe Things I’ll Never See
There are places in this world I’m almost certain I’ll never visit. Not for lack of interest, but because some of them would definitely kill me. Take the bottom of the ocean, for example. There are creatures down there that live in total darkness, in water so pressurised…
Keep readingFavourite Parts of the Day
One of the things we do as a family is go around the table at the end of the day and share our favourite moments. It might be something big, but more often than not, it’s something small — like spotting a funny cloud, getting a good parking…
Keep readingY is for Yeti Crab – Limited Edition Print
Meet the Yeti Crab — a deep-sea enigma wrapped in fuzz and glowing mystery. This yellow crustacean feels like it’s crawled out of a deep-ocean fairytale, equal parts bizarre and beautiful. With hairy claws that farm their own food, a face only a deep-sea mother could love, and…
Keep readingHow Kids Quietly Reintroduce Us to Ourselves
Today we collected leaves, feathers, and bits of bark on our walk, nothing special, just things that caught our eye. Back home, we made a simple bark canvas together, arranging the pieces into something that felt like art. It wasn’t polished or profound. But for a moment, it…
Keep readingWhat Does It Mean When You Dream of a Man in a Mammoth Costume Drinking Tea?
It’s Day 87 of my visual dream journal, and “Mammoth Man” arrived unannounced from the subconscious fog, a scene too peculiar to ignore, too poignant to fully explain. I didn’t draw this piece by hand. I used AI to recreate the surreal theatre of my dreams. I see…
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Discover what’s at the Fork in the Road between starving and thriving artist.
I’m Andy, and I’m a kids book illustrator obsessed with the concept of how you can change course from that of the starving artist to the path of the thriving artist.
I believe all the answers are out there right in front of us in the artists we know and love. Because as they say success leaves clues, so I’m planning on becoming part detective and part guinea pig. As each week I’ll be interviewing artists that are making money, surviving and thriving on my ‘Fork in the Road’ Podcast (The fork in the road between starving and thriving artist) that is.
Then i’ll be implementing the key take aways from each interview and road testing them in my own creative practice to see if it can move the needle and direct artists on to the road to success.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 