This is old news now, but earlier this year I did the cover design for the latest short prose and poetry anthology from Catchfire Press, ‘Home is the Hunter’, all about what it means to make a home in the local Hunter Valley region.

I couldn’t have created these graphics without permission from Greg and Silvia Ray to use their incredible archive of old photographs, which brought a real authenticity and sense of local history to the cover.

The design brief was to use a selection of old photos, but still keep it current, and to celebrate the diversity among residents of the area (being a local myself helped me get into the right mind frame!) I had a lot of fun picking samples from my personal paper collection to use as backgrounds. It’s not often that I work purely with photographic elements, it felt weird to complete a project without ever picking up a pencil!

This isn’t the first time I’ve collaborated with Catchfire Press. I also created the cover for their ‘Watermark’ anthology back in 2014, and I did both cover and interior illustrations for a poetry collection by Bradley Garrett at their self-publishing imprint, Koel Koel. Special thanks to Michael Jameson, my ‘handler’ on all these projects, who has always been incredibly easy to work with.

‘Home is the Hunter’ is available locally from Cooks Hill Books, Macleans Booksellers, and Harry Hartog.

At the moment I’m working on two comics for two different writers, a children’s picture book for a mother-daughter writing team, a greeting card design for an animal chaity, and a web banner for a team of podcasters – not to mention the usual flotsam and jetsam of self-promotion and personal projects. I forgot how hectic this time of year always is. October/November hits, and suddenly my workload doubles while time moves at turbo-speed! Renovations to my house and studio haven’t helped, though they’ve certainly made things interesting!

Speaking of this time of year, there are several seasonal greeting cards available currently (and all year round) at my Etsy store. Click a thumbnail to view each product in-store:

Many of them have part of funds from sales donated to charities such as World Vision and UNHCR. Head to my store for a full range of cards available, and check back every so often, I’ll probably put up new ones closer to Christmas!