I’m 10 years into this wildlife-related adventure now, though its beginning still feels strangely recent – as most long journeys do when you look back on them.
Leaving aside my childhood obsession with non-fiction animal books, it all really started when a colleague (thank you Paul O'L!) showed me a brush-like marker he’d brought back from Japan. I tried it once, and drawing with it felt so effortless and satisfying that I simply couldn’t stop. He kindly gave me the marker, and soon after, I bought a few more myself.
Back then, by day, I was designing witty social media content for one of Ireland’s major businesses. At night, I was relaxing my brain by drawing animals. Only a few days later, a thought appeared: maybe I could turn this into something bigger – my own non-fiction book about animals.
That idea eventually became Dr Hibernica Finch’s Compelling Compendium of Irish Animals, the starting point for all the books that followed. Looking back now, it really has been quite an adventure. Countless hours spent refining drawings, layouts, and text – always trying to give the best version of myself at the time, out of respect for the future readers holding those books in their hands.
Today, during one of the workshops I’m facilitating as part of my current book tour, a girl asked me if I was proud of myself. I told her no – not because I dislike what I do, but because drawing and making books have become such a natural part of my life that I rarely stop to measure it – and I know well enough that, with time, I’ll probably look back at what I make now and see mostly all the things I could have done better. But at the moment, I simply keep going, curious about what the next brushstroke or idea might become :)
Do you ever look back at the beginning of your creative or professional journey and realise how much of it began with something tiny and completely unplanned?