That's All Folks! (2009–2019)

It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since I first started this blog! At the time I was working Full Time as an In-House Designer at a Book Publihers in London and had just enrolled on a four day Illustration course at Camberwell College of Art, seeing how I felt about going back to study before deciding whether to enroll in the MA course later that year. I started this blog to share what I was doing on the course.



My first post was on Sunday 30 March 2009 and straight away I was sure Illustration was something that I wanted to explore further, and so I ended up quitting my job and starting the MA course at Camberwell in the Autumn (after taking a trip to Melbourne and Sydney in between)!

The course gave me the time to really focus on what I wanted to do with my Illustration work and I think that I started to develop my Illustration style a lot more during this time. And I continued to share my work on this blog! I always found it a good resource to be able to look back over what I'd done, especially in those moments when I felt like I wasn't quite achieving enough. Creativity and Anxiety are strange bedfellows!

I recently took part in an Illustration Fair in Kings Cross, where someone came up to my table and told me that they started following my blog about 10 years ago, so pretty much from when I started it, after her sister suggested that if she was interested in becoming an illustrator, she should have a look online and see what people were doing. It's not often that you get to meet your online audience IRL, but it was definitely humbling to know that someone had been looking at what I was doing all this time!

And so I kept posting work, and even when I wasn't getting much commissioned work, I was still trying to produce work to post on my blog. I think one of the key things to try to achieve as an Illustrator is to remain visible. With so many other people out there trying to make it work, if you drop off of people's radar for too long then it's hard to get back on there. It's part of the reason I named this blog (and my first printed comics collection) Look What I Drawed! It made me think of that kid proudly clutching his painting in his hands and showing it off to his mum on the way home from nursery: "Look what I drawed mum! Look!" (And yes, I know it should be "Drew", as one person once commented criticising my use of grammar. But "Drawed" is funnier! And it's my blog, so I'll spell how I want to! :P ). This blog was the digital equivalent of that. Proudly shoving my latest drawing into people's online faces! (I think this metaphor may have run away from me...)

But over the years, I've been picking up more commissioned work, as well as working more hours at my other jobs, plus the proliferation of various Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter which provide more immediate ways to get people to see my work, and gradually I've been posting less and less on my blog. I've gone from posting nearly 150 posts per year back in 2013 to barely double figures in the last few years. And most of those have begun with an apology for not posting for ages, followed by an endeavor to post more frequently for a few weeks, and then nothing again till the following year. Rinse and Repeat.

My last blog post was almost exactly a year ago on Sunday 25 February 2018. And after thinking about it over the last few days, I think it's probably time that I retire this blog for good.

Anyone who is still Following me on here, please do go and check out and Follow my Instagram page where I regularly post updates and new drawings: www.instagram.com/paulshinndraws. I'm also on Twitter as @paulshinndraws and I have a Facebook page too. And I have a website, which is www.paulshinndraws.com and my comics are also available to buy from my Etsy Shop.

I'm not going to be deleting this page, so it'll still be viewable. And anyone who is only just discovering it now and is bummed that I'm not gonna be posting any more stuff here, you have 858 previous posts to look through, so that should keep you busy for a while!

Like I said, I occasionally like to sit and have a look back through my previous work to remind myself of what I've done before. It's amazing how much stuff I completely forgot I even did. Like this drawing of Ghandi from my first Movillustrations project back in 2012, which seems like an appropriate image to end on:



Thanks for reading and following!

The Line It Is Drawn: Week 379

This week's The Line It Is Drawn was a theme close to my heart: videogames! I was so enraptured with the suggestions made, that I ended up producing three pieces for this week!

Cyclops and Havok in Super Mario Bros (Super Summers Bros?), as suggested by therealAstrozac


Q*Bert meets Doop, as suggested by BigMike20X6


Magik vs Samus from Metroid as suggested by Brian_Cronin (This one was actually an existing drawing I did last year, but it seemed to fit the theme!)

Character Design Challenge: Alice In Wonderland

The Character Design Challenge Facebook page is a monthly creative competition to design a character illustraton based around a theme. This month's theme was Alice In Wonderland, and I drew my design for the Cheshire Cat. Smile!

The Line It Is Drawn: Week 378

This week's The Line It Is Drawn was a fun one: mash-up a comic book character with a famous album cover! Here's Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Daredevil in a homage to the cover of the Gorillaz album Demon Days...

Word On The Street #2

Word On The Street is a weekly column in Time Out where readers Tweet the most ridiculous things they've overheard in London during the week (#wordonthestreet @timeoutlondon) and the best ones get printed in the magazine.

For a long time now, I've been meaning to pick one quote each week to illustrate as a semi-regular personal project, and like a lot of the ideas in my head, I haven't got around to putting pen to paper...until now!

This week's Word On The Street:

'This beer has gone straight to my eyebrows.'

The Line It Is Drawn: Week 377

This week's Line It Is Drawn theme, with the release of the latest Marvel Studios film: Black Panther, was to team-up Black Panther with another comic book character. I chose werehawk1's suggestion for Lockjaw chasing Black Panther...

Word On The Street #1

Word On The Street is a weekly column in Time Out where readers Tweet the most ridiculous things they've overheard in London during the week (#wordonthestreet @timeoutlondon) and the best ones get printed in the magazine.

For a long time now, I've been meaning to pick one quote each week to illustrate as a semi-regular personal project, and putting together some illustration samples that I could submit to Time Out in the hope of getting some work from them. And like a lot of the ideas in my head, I haven't got around to putting pen to paper...until now!

This week's Word On The Street:

'I've eaten peacock. It's just a chicken that wears Dolce & Gabana.'

The Line It Is Drawn: Week 376

With the Super Bowl happening this weekend (apparently!) and quite a big deal being made about what adverts will be shown during half-time, this week's Line It Is Drawn theme was to suggest a superhero and a product and come up with an ad for that product starring that superhero: Superhero Superbowl ads.

I went with dansjostrom's suggestion for The Vision doing an ad for Specsavers:

Happy Birthdays!

My Brother and my future Sister-In-Law have their birthdays just a few days apart. Here's a couple of cards I made for them both:

My Brother has quite a few Funko Pop toys, so I drew this card with him as a Funko toy. By a strange coincidence, his fiancée bought him a custom Funko toy that she got made to look like him. I had no idea!


My brother's fiancée is a big fan of Disney, so I drew her this card featuring Stitch from Lilo and Stitch...

Commissioned work: Leaving Drawings

I was contacted a few weeks ago about a possible illustration job. It's only in the early planning stages and won't be ready to work on until later this month, so I haven't started anything yet, but it's nice to have some work lined up.

But then a few days later I got an email from them asking if I would be able to draw a couple of cartoons of some staff that were leaving, that they could get printed and give to them as leaving presents. They sent me photo references and gave me a brief summary of what they wanted, and away I went. This was a fun commission and they were really pleased with the drawings I sent, which is a good feeling. I hope that the people leaving were happy to get them too.