Hello, this is James Ashe. I’m an illustrator based in Northern Ireland who’s been drawing since he was old enough to hold a crayon. As part of trying new things in 2025, I started my own Substack. This will be a space for me to write my own stories, thoughts, inspiration, and journey in illustration. Admittedly, I don’t have a plan yet for Substack – but we all have to start somewhere!
Here’s a little bit about me and my journey as an illustrator. If you want to go right back, I was born in the early 1990s in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Given the city’s atmosphere (if you knew Belfast from the 1970s to the late 1990s), my family moved to County Armagh when I was a small child.
I was also diagnosed as autistic early on in my childhood. It’d take me well into adulthood to embrace it and make it part of my identity (the world was different in the 2000’s). I went through special needs education (now referred to as additional needs) throughout my childhood. I was always drawing and reading comics as a child, and I was encouraged to be creative. I won many art competitions as a child and designed a poster for a school play. It wouldn’t be until I was in my 20s, when I graduated with a Graphic Communication degree, that I learned that illustration is a career and that traditional graphic design wasn’t the route for me.
I hit a snag in my career a couple of years ago. I hadn’t felt happy with anything I made or where my illustration career was going. I was talking to a friend who works with books, and they asked me what about writing stories with my illustrations, and I responded with, “But I’m not a writer”. The irony was that people in Northern Ireland are natural-born storytellers, and people always took an interest in hearing my background in the arts. I’ve spent the past year working towards making my illustrations that revolve around stories in a style that adults and children can enjoy.
Social media as a platform doesn’t work for me anymore; it’s akin to a vampire sucking time and energy from me – and there’s the debate if it has made the world a better or worse place. I was a teenager the last time I wrote a blog post, and maybe many years later, carving out a tiny part of the internet and a little notepad for myself isn’t a bad idea.
On my Substack, you will get a glimpse into my life, creative process, and what inspires me. This is a journal that reflects on my creative practice. I plan to make most of my content accessible to all members, and later, I plan to offer tutorials, share my work process, and hopefully provide freebies for paid subscribers.
You can email me at hello@halfcut.net
See my work at jamesashestudio.com