Illustrator, artist, author, educator Helen stephens is sat at her work desk in her studio in Northumberland . Art materials in pots, illustrations on the wall.

I graduated from Glasgow School of Art waaaay back in 1994.
I had no idea how to survive as an illustrator. My Dad was a car salesman and he told me that if you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick. So I did just that. I started creating work and banging on doors. It was only later I was told there are particular rules around approaching publishers.

Thank goodness I didn’t know. Naivety is a super power!

Drawing of Helen Stephens Illustrating

I headed to London

(that’s what you did pre-internet days),

folio under arm, pencils at the ready and started showing my work to publishers.

Lots of them liked it and said they’d give me a call when a story came along. But, after a few weeks, there was no call and I got impatient. I decided to have a go at writing my own story. After all, I thought, it can’t be that hard can it?

And so my first book was published in 1998. It wasn’t the best book in the world, but the rest of my career has been an amazing apprenticeship, a creative adventure.

An illustration from the book, How To Hide A Lion. A girl and a lion are Behind The Sofa, drawn in ink and watercolour, humorous, quirky line

I suppose I am best known for
How to Hide a Lion.

It’s won loads of fancy pants awards, been translated into 20 languages worldwide, it’s been adapted for stage and toured the UK, it’s received glowing reviews in the The Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and a few families have actually named their babies after Iris in How to Hide a Lion. I’ve now written and illustrated four books in the How to Hide a Lion series.

Podcasts

I chat to my pals Katie and Tania every week on The Good ship Illustration podcast. If you’d like to boost your illustration work and dig in to finding your creative voice, you’re in luck!

‘Giuseppe Castellano from The Illustration Department talks to award-winning children’s book creator and co-founder of The Good Ship Illustration, Helen Stephens, about the rules she ignored in the early days of her career; why “have fun” might be the most no-nonsense piece of advice illustrators will ever hear; why an illustrator’s work should not be called “imaginative”; and more.’

Helen joins The Substack Soirée. ‘Helen Stpehens Illustrator and Author, sensational human with flair and really cool flags, plus she’s the genius behind the Substack Featured publication: Pencil Pals. This conversation was such a joy and filled with wisdom on finding our way to a fun, easy, doable creative life that co-exists with subscriber growth, engaging with a thriving community and earning an income through Substack.

I love to try new ways of working: some of my books are made by hand on paper, like ye olden days, some are a hybrid of handmade and digital, and recently I made a picture book on Procreate. You can read more about that in my Pencil Pals newsletter, it’s like a cosy chat between illustrator buddies.