Coostie Design Studio

Coostie Design Studio Illustrator and designer, inspired by nature and the North. Commissions taken for original illustration, art or design for your home or business.

Range of eco-friendly art prints and gifts also available. See my website for more.

Medieval Berwick is gradually coming to life on my drawing board. 🖤I'm working on a series of illustrated panels for the...
04/06/2026

Medieval Berwick is gradually coming to life on my drawing board. 🖤

I'm working on a series of illustrated panels for the Medieval Timeline Wall at the new Living Barracks Museum here in Berwick — a commission with that traces the town's history from its days as Scotland's most prosperous trading port through centuries of conquest, reconquest and general turbulence.

The project team have gone with my 'Medieval-inspired' concept and I had a great chat with the museum designers about exactly how the back-lit Timeline Wall will work and the subsequent requirement for more texture and shading to reduce areas of white space, which will otherwise be blindingly bright. It's a genuinely interesting puzzle, balancing the historical illustration style with the technical constraints and you can see how very much can change from rough concept sketch to developed artwork!

I've been re-working my initial panel to this tightened brief and then just six more panels to go...

A quick update on my Drawn to Nature at Hepple Wilds full-day workshop, which was due to run this Friday 5th June. 🌿We h...
03/06/2026

A quick update on my Drawn to Nature at Hepple Wilds full-day workshop, which was due to run this Friday 5th June. 🌿

We haven't had enough bookings for it to go ahead, so we've made the decision to postpone it to 16th October, when the Hepple landscape will have its own particular magic, and we'll have had more time to give the workshop the attention it deserves in terms of planning and promotion.

Hepple Whitefield is a privately owned estate in Northumberland National Park where 4,000 acres are being carefully and ambitiously rewilded — peat bogs restored, wetlands created, Exmoor ponies and Longhorn cattle introduced, fences removed, and a whole ecosystem slowly encouraged back to health from the ground up.

It's a genuinely special place to spend a day drawing, and I want to do it justice!

Thou shalt have a fishy, on a little dishy, thou shalt have a fishy, when the boat comes in. 🐟My Fishy Dishy range was i...
03/06/2026

Thou shalt have a fishy, on a little dishy, thou shalt have a fishy, when the boat comes in. 🐟

My Fishy Dishy range was inspired by the North East folk song "Dance to your Daddy" and features herring illustrations, hand-drawn in pen-and-ink in dark grey, on a soft blue-grey background. Available as a tea towel, A3/A4 prints, square card, fridge magnet and wooden coasters.

Abbi at Puddles in Berwick has had some of these items in her new sea-themed window for the last week now and has just placed a reorder, so they're clearly catching people's eyes! If you've been past the shop and spotted them — or if you've been tempted online and not quite got round to it — the full range is in the shop now. Link in bio. 🐠

(Puddles is at 18 West Street, Berwick-upon-Tweed, by the way — well worth a visit if you're in town.)

A question I get asked a lot: "Do I need to be able to draw to come to one of your workshops?"The answer is no — and I r...
01/06/2026

A question I get asked a lot: "Do I need to be able to draw to come to one of your workshops?"

The answer is no — and I really mean that, not just as a reassuring thing to say to get people to book.

Green Sketching isn't about making beautiful pictures. It's about slowing down, going outside, and noticing what's around you through the act of drawing. The sketches are almost beside the point — it's the looking that matters.

I’ve written a behind-the-scenes blog post about what actually happens at one of my Introduction to Green Sketching workshops — the exercises, the atmosphere, and some words from people who've been along. The link is in my bio if you'd like a proper look before deciding. Or just drop me a DM with any questions you have.

The next one is in Berwick on Thursday 19th June — a relaxed few hours outdoors, all materials provided, no experience needed. Spaces still available. 🌿

Castle Parks Berwick Berwick Style & Culture Magazine Visit Berwick-upon-Tweed

I've just published a new blog post and it's a bit of a personal one. It's about imposter syndrome, long and winding car...
28/05/2026

I've just published a new blog post and it's a bit of a personal one.

It's about imposter syndrome, long and winding career paths, and how nearly 20 years working in history, heritage and communications turned out to be surprisingly good training for becoming an illustrator.

It's also about a Georgian maid costume and why I still believe that drawing is a skill, not a talent — and what that means for anyone who thinks they can't draw.

Link in bio if you fancy a read.

What do herring, charcoal drawing and Medieval Berwick have in common?They all featured in my May newsletter, along with...
27/05/2026

What do herring, charcoal drawing and Medieval Berwick have in common?

They all featured in my May newsletter, along with three outdoor sketching workshops in very unpredictable weather, new workshops coming up (including a full-day on a 4,000-acre rewilding estate), and some thoughts on what it actually feels like to be the student rather than the teacher for a change.

Every month I send a behind-the-scenes letter to my subscribers — seasonal stories from life and work in Northumberland, what I'm making and why, upcoming workshops and markets and a few things I think you might like. It's free, it's short, and people seem to like it.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, the sign-up link is https://www.coostie.co.uk/mailing-list

What do illustrators do when they're not drawing for work? 🖤Well, in my case, they draw for fun!For the past few weeks I...
25/05/2026

What do illustrators do when they're not drawing for work? 🖤
Well, in my case, they draw for fun!

For the past few weeks I've been taking a course called 'Discover Charcoal Drawing' with the brilliant — an artist with one of the calmest and most encouraging teaching styles I've encountered. And it has been such a joy to be the student for a change!

The course wasn't about being taught how to use charcoal. It was about ‘discovering’ the many different ways you can use it and what feels most right to you. We explored mark-making, line and tone, creating our own tools, and finding our own way into the medium. Tansy gives you the framework and then gets out of the way to let you find your own direction.

As someone who runs sketching workshops myself, being a student again always makes me think a lot about my own teaching style. The best creative education isn't necessarily about showing people the *right* way to do something. It's about giving people the confidence to find their own way — and I hope that that’s what people take from my workshops, too.

I’ve also discovered that I love charcoal. The immediacy of it. The mess. The way you can push it around and lift it back out with a putty rubber or a piece of kitchen towel. It's about as far from the precise linework and detail of my go-to illustration style as you can get, which is probably good for me...

I don't think you ever really finish learning as a creative. There's always a new medium to discover, a new way of seeing, a new teacher who shows you something you didn't know you needed to learn. Here's some of my work from the past few sessions — rough, exploratory and very much a work in progress. 🖤

22/05/2026

There's no 'right' way to fill a sketchbook. 🌿

Messy mark-making, quick gesture sketches, colour and material experiments, studies of things that caught your eye — it all counts.

At my full-day nature sketching workshop at Hepple Wilds on Friday 5th June, we'll spend the day exploring different ways of capturing the landscape and the natural world in your sketchbook, using a range of materials and techniques, and with plenty of time to experiment and find what works for you. We’ll be based in the bothy all day and from there we’ll venture out into the estate with experienced ecologist and guide, Richard, to combine some en plein air sketching with studio work.

Suitable for complete beginners and more experienced sketchers alike. All materials provided. Lunch included.

📍 Hepple Wilds, near Rothbury, Northumberland 📅 Friday 5th June (World Environment Day) ⏰ 10.30am – 3.30pm 💷 £70pp

Booking link in bio — spaces still available.

Sketchbooks, paints and pencils, a beautiful garden, and a morning well spent. 🌿Earlier this week I ran my Glorious Gard...
21/05/2026

Sketchbooks, paints and pencils, a beautiful garden, and a morning well spent. 🌿

Earlier this week I ran my Glorious Gardens Green Sketch Club session in the grounds of Paxton House — a small group, which meant it felt wonderfully relaxed and personal from the start.

We began with some line control warm-ups before choosing a flower head or leaf to study in three different ways: first, a continuous line drawing — pencil never leaving the paper — which teaches you to really slow down and look at the outline of your subject rather than drawing what you think you see. Then a negative space study, looking at the shapes around and within the subject rather than the subject itself. And finally, a watercolour wash in the shape of the flower, building form and detail with coloured pencils on top.

For the second half of the session we made small frames in our sketchbooks and went looking for vignettes of the garden that caught our eye — bringing the techniques from the first half but with more freedom to explore colour and composition.

People chatted as they drew, compared what they were noticing, and quietly laid to rest some childhood memories of being told they couldn't draw. The weather held. The light kept shifting as clouds came and went, and we noticed how differently the same subject could look from one moment to the next.

And at the end, as we were packing up, a small group of birds danced overhead — fast and swooping, tails slightly blunter than we expected. Swallows? Swifts? We couldn't quite agree. It felt like exactly the right kind of question to end a nature sketching morning on. 🐦

If you'd like to join me for a session this summer, I've got two more Green Sketch Club dates coming up — Coast at Berwick Beach Cliffs on 19th July, and Autumn Colour at Paxton House on 23rd October. Or if you're just starting out and feel that you need some additional support, you might want to try my 'Introduction to Green Sketching' workshop on Friday 19th June here in Berwick.
See https://www.coostie.co.uk/workshops-and-events for more info and booking.

Paxton House Berwick Style & Culture Magazine

Last chance to book! 🌸My Glorious Gardens sketching morning at Paxton House is this Wednesday (20th May) and I've still ...
17/05/2026

Last chance to book! 🌸

My Glorious Gardens sketching morning at Paxton House is this Wednesday (20th May) and I've still got spaces if you'd like to join us.

We'll spend a couple of hours in the beautiful grounds sketching whatever catches our eye — flowers in full bloom, the shapes of trees, the patterns in a stone wall. I'll lead you through some warm-up exercises and a couple of short tutorials, and then you'll have plenty of time to fill some sketchbook pages at your own pace.

Here's what people have said after previous Green Sketch Club sessions:

"I left feeling curious and relaxed — it has given me the confidence to keep sketching."

"A very inclusive, relaxed atmosphere with no pressure to create a masterpiece."

"Every art class should be like this."

You don't need any experience, just a sketchbook or some paper and something to draw with!

Wednesday 20th May | 10.30am–12.30pm | Paxton House | £25

Booking link in bio 🌿

Address

Berwick

Website

https://drawntonature.substack.com/

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