Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

Hi! I'm Claire Robertson - I'm an Australian writer, illustrator, blogger and crafter living on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. I am currently illustrating a series of books for Harper Collins Australia and I post sporadically to my blog.

What hardware do you use?

I use a 15" MacBook Pro for almost everything I do, but I sometimes switch to my 27" iMac - located inconveniently in the kitchen - when in need of a larger screen and disk space, or simply to play some loud music while cooking dinner.

I use a Wacom Intuos 3 Graphics Tablet for digital illustration and CanoScan LiDE 700F for scanning in my hand drawn artwork.

I have an old iPhone 3G which I rarely use. It mostly sits in my bag gathering grit in its case and being annoyingly out of batteries when I actually need it.

A Jawbone Jambox is used all day, every day for blasting music out of while I work. It looks like a big block of lego and makes all the ornaments on my window sill rattle and shake.

I have an old Canon 350D SLR for taking photos (badly).

I have a Kindle for reading but I don't like it much and have gone back to buying paperbacks.

I fire up my fancy-pants Janome 3160 QDC sewing machine when crafting. It has replaced a very nice old workhorse of my grandma's which I had to leave in Australia due to the difference in voltage between Australia and Canada. This new thing is a little temperamental and has lots of bells and whistles. I've busted the bobbin case twice already but we are learning to live together.

My favourite pens for drawing are Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens in varying colours but mostly the black in superfine size. I have a big nice box of 132 Prismacolor Premier drawing pencils. I like Strathmore paper and Moleskine notebooks.

And what software?

I use Chrome for browsing, Photoshop for illustrating, iTunes for music, Scrivener for writing, Wordpress and Tumblr for blogging, Gmail for emailing and Runkeeper for tracking the small amount of exercise I do.

What would be your dream setup?

Firstly - a studio would be good. I work on a small, small desk in a tiny alcove in our bedroom. I am always knocking things over with my elbows and crushing important sketches underfoot.

I would love a Wacom Cintiq Pen Display for digital illustration. I'll add a new Canon EOS camera to the list because I'm sure it's my camera and not me that makes my pictures so ordinary (right?).

I'd also upgrade my iPhone. Amongst other apps, I am yet to adopt Instagram and I would like to get into that, but my current phone doesn't like getting involved. Mostly because the battery is flat.

A new MacBook Air or Pro would be quite nice too - and a big screen to go with it.

I am looking forward to a birthday present from my Adobe-employed brother consisting of the new Adobe Creative Suite.

While we're fantasising; I'd like to add to the list some kind of futuristic robotic nanny that has a driver's license to occasionally look after my children on this crazy 4-day school week island.

And lots of Green & Blacks chocolate.