For some, it’s an opportunity to uncover patterns of thinking and to approach professional and personal challenges with a fresh, creative perspective. For others it’s a fun and intuitive way of finding meaning in the random, like looking at ink blots or tea leaves.

Using a visual language instead of a verbal one disrupts habitual beliefs and ways of thinking. We literally see things differently, understand things from a different perspective and notice different options.

Spend some time thinking about the issues or themes you’d like to explore. What you see when you think of the topic? What is happening? Does it take the form of a static object or is there movement and action? Have you recently dreamt about it? Do you use certain recurring metaphors? How do you feel when these images appear and what actions spring to mind as a result?

Or simply think about images that attract you – representational or abstract – free of meaning or interpretation.

At our first session we will explore these themes and associated images as the building blocks of the Illustrated Coaching process. They will then be loosely incorporated into the first draft of a digital illustration.

The draft will be shared and the process continued in a spirit of genuine shared creativity. As the illustration evolves, its meaning and significance will come into focus. Unexpected connections will emerge, ‘aha’ moments of self-discovery.

We all have powerful visual imaginations. Sometimes we just don’t realise it. Illustrated coaching builds our awareness of the constellation of imagery we all carry in our heads.

If the picture fails to capture what you see, you are billed only for the face-to-face coaching sessions that have already occurred and not for the time incurred in creating the drawing.

Using digital drawing and painting tools is ideal for creative collaboration. These tools provide the flexibility to make rapid and substantial changes to the pictures. And it allows for much easier sharing of high-resolution imagery.

No. Illustrated Coaching is a process of close co-creativity between coach and client. The
imagery created is a direct and unique response to the client’s own process of self-discovery – emerging as an integral part of the coaching process rather than being generated mechanically by AI. For some clients, the final picture is a less important part of the process than the opportunity
of exploring their psychological landscapes visually.

There is a flat charge for the face-to-face coaching sessions (usually three or four sessions) in which the client’s themes are discussed and explored, together with a separate cost for the creation of the picture, set according to the size, compositional complexity and medium used (a
black and white line drawing can be created more quickly, for example, than a digital painting).

On average it takes around two months to get from the initial session to a completed picture but the timing varies hugely from client to client. Some images spring quickly and fully formed from a client’s imaginative landscape, others emerge more slowly and iteratively as the client explores and discovers new, deeper and sometimes revelatory insights about themselves

The copyright is retained by Illustrated Coaching as is the right to use images, or sections of them, non-attributably for promotional purposes (as on this website).

A drawing is never re-purposed for another client. The coaching client has the right to make unlimited physical or digital reproductions for their own purposes as long as Illustrated Coaching’s copyright is acknowledged and the items are not resold.