Behind the scenes of an illustration commission

One of my favourite parts of working as a commercial illustrator is seeing how an initial idea develops into a finished product.

For my latest commission with Relish, I was asked to create five new garden-inspired illustrations for their latest Aquapaints collection, Garden Wonders.

The process began with pencil sketches, developing the compositions and deciding how the different elements would work together.

Rather than painting each scene as one complete illustration, I painted the individual elements separately in watercolour — birds, flowers, bees, foliage and vegetables — often at a larger scale so I could capture the detail and character I wanted.

Once the paintings were complete, I scanned the individual elements and brought them together digitally in Photoshop, building each composition layer by layer to create the final print-ready artwork.

And then came the particularly rewarding part: seeing those original watercolours transformed into the finished Garden Wonders Aquapaints collection.

This is now the fifth Aquapaint collection I've illustrated for Relish, and my eighth commission with them overall.

It's a wonderful example of how a traditional, hand-painted illustration can be developed and adapted to create a product with a very different purpose — in this case, a calming and creative activity designed for people living with dementia.

I'm incredibly grateful to the Relish team for continuing to trust me with these projects, and I always love seeing where the artwork eventually ends up.