Turning the table on Tom Froese

Tom Froese is an award-winning illustrator, teacher, and speaker, as well as a juror for the 2025 Applied Arts Photography & Illustration Awards. Since entering the industry in 2013, he has worked with high-profile clients from Yahoo!, Airbnb, and The Wall Street Journal. Applied Arts was eager to learn more about his creative world, so we asked Tom to share his favourite project from 2024 and give us a behind-the-scenes look at his process.

I am most proud of this book, it is emblematic of all that I hoped 2024 would be — a chance to fall back in love with my process, and to this end, finding ways of bringing more analogue-inspired processes and vibes to my work. Because there were fewer clients competing for my time, I was able to pour myself into this book in a more focused way than in past books. My publisher and their partner noticed and were simply glowing about the work, which, of course, made me a happy illustrator!

Since 2022, I’ve been spending the first hour or so each day drawing in my sketchbook and sharing on Instagram. My tools of choice: ugly books and posca paint pens. I have loads of sketches you can see in this technique. Some of them even ended up in a book. I grew to love this almost purely non-digital process, where, at least for one hour, I didn’t have to touch a screen-based device.

My particular focus in my daily drawing practice last year was in finding a way to bring my love of non-digital techniques to my commercial (and necessarily digital) process. A huge part of this was going back to my Inky roots, cracking open my old pots of India Ink, brushes and nib pens, and even some block printing tools. What I had missed most about these older techniques of mine was the sense of adventure and opportunity for happy accidents that my more controlled digital techniques had all but snuffed out. Illustrating without the opportunity for accidents to happen gives you a hard limit to come up against, and it’s hard to get past it.

W. tomfroese.com | IG. @mrtomfroese | Threads. @mrtomfroese | YouTube. @tomfroese | Patreon. @tomfroese | Substack. @mrtomfroese.

To purchase Tom's book.

Great work Tom, thank you for sharing with us!