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A drawing by Helen stephens of a dog called Salty sat at a breakfast table making notes in a sketchbook.
A drawing of a dog by Helen stephens. The dog is holing a laptop and sheets of paper. The words say paper verses digital
A drawing by Helen stephens of Salty dog playing a whistle while three ducks follow him
Drawing by Helen stephens of a dog counting his money, with a piggy bank.
An illustration by Helen stephens of a dog hiding in his bed with the word pitfalls over his head.

The Good Ship Illustration

Three women who are illustrators dressed in rain coats on a beach holding up flags that say Good Ship Illustration.

I’m one third of The Good Ship Illustration where we offer no-nonsense advice for illustrators and image makers navigating a creative career.

Me and my good pals, Katie and Tania used to get together round the kitchen table and chat about what we were working on. We loved picking each other’s brains about what it’s like to work in each other’s discipline, what are the contracts like, how do you get work, what are you paid? You know, finding out all the nitty gritty about each other’s illustration careers. It was really interesting, and we thought, wouldn’t it be great to share this with a bigger audience? And so we started The Good Ship Illustration.

We have two courses:

Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag and my Picture Book Course

Good news, the Business Course is coming soon!

Bask in your weirdness and follow your creative dreams.

Want to be part of an online community, full of fellow creatives?

Build your illustration career and make your best creative work ever?

It's time to discover how good it feels to truly be yourself in your work!

Illustration by Helen stephens of a dog with a hot that says salty on it blowing a Cazoo while three ducks follow along.

Picture Book Course

I wrote a picture book course!

  • Want to create books that small people and their grown-ups absolutely love?

  • Curious to see if there’s a your-picture-book-shaped hole in the world?

Good news… there IS!

The world *needs* your picture book.

Salty is ready to set sail with you on an 8-week adventure…

An illustration by Helen stephens of a group of children watching ET on television on a VHS video player.

#childhoodillustrated

I was new to Procreate, I hadn't tried it before, and I always like to learn on the job.

So I set myself a brief to draw some of my childhood memories. I enjoyed it so much: one memory led to another, and another, and another... I started sharing them on Instagram, and folks started joining in with their memory drawings too.

So I started a hashtag #childhoodillustrated. I've made a free downloadable mini-course, all about how to take part...

Helen and Tania Willis at Art Club

Good Ship Art Club

Every Friday since the start of lock down we have been going live on Instagram for an hour of fun, low pressure drawing. Our daft tasks against a timer leave no room for perfectionism! The perfect way to spend an hour on a Friday night.

We now do special pop-up Art Clubs and the BEST way to find out when the next Art Club is happening is to subscribe to our emails or check the recent posts on our Instagram profile @thegoodshipillustration).