Volunteer Illustrator​/Artist - Volunteer

Overview

Help us create a bank of watercolour illustrations or hand-painted images for our website, emails and social. Photography isn’t appropriate because we support people who are dying. We are looking for illustrations that reflect bedside companionship—showing holding hands, hospital buildings, and no faces.

What difference will you make?

These illustrations will help us communicate our work in a way that’s truthful, respectful, and usable. The Anne Robson Trust supports people who are dying, and the families and friends around them. We work alongside healthcare organisations, helping them introduce or strengthen volunteer companionship services so that more people have a calming presence at the bedside, especially in the final days and hours of life.

Because of the sensitivity of this work, photography is often not possible or appropriate. That creates a real challenge for our communications, and we need to show what we do while protecting dignity and privacy.

By creating a small bank of consistent, hand-painted illustrations, you’ll give us a way to show the heart of our work without relying on real-life images. Your artwork will bring warmth and humanity to key parts of our website and support hub, helping visitors understand quickly what bedside companionship looks and feels like.

For many people, arriving on our website happens at a difficult moment. Gentle, sensitive visuals can make our information feel more approachable and less clinical, helping people stay on the page, take in guidance, and feel less alone.

Your work will also strengthen how we speak to supporters, donors, and potential healthcare partners. Having high-quality, consistent assets means we can share clearer messages on social media and in email updates, without using generic stock photography that can feel out of place or emotionally tone-deaf. It will help us tell our story with more care and clarity, and support trust in our charity and our cause.

Longer term, this illustration bank will become a reusable set of core assets we can build from, saving time and helping us keep our branding consistent. It will allow us to create new webpages, resources and campaigns more efficiently, while staying aligned with the sensitivity of death and dying.

In short, your illustrations will help more people understand our work, feel supported by our resources, and help us reach the audiences who can make bedside companionship available to more people when it matters most.

• A clear, consistent illustration style. You can create a “family” of images that look like they belong together. We’re specifically looking for a hand-painted/watercolour feel, with visible texture and imperfection, rather than anything that looks flat, vector-based or overly digital.
• Sensitivity and emotional intelligence. You’re comfortable working around themes of death and dying and can hold them with care. Small choices (expression, posture, lighting) can change the emotional meaning of an image.
• Ability to work from a brief and references. We’ll share example images and a colour palette. You can follow this direction closely while still bringing your own skill and creativity.
• Openness to feedback. You’re happy to share drafts, iterate, and make refinements so the final set feels right. You can also explain your creative decisions when helpful.
• Reliability and clear communication. You can agree realistic timelines, keep us updated, and deliver what’s needed without lots of chasing.

• Experience

• Creating illustration sets for brands or organisations (even small projects or a personal portfolio is fine), especially where consistency across multiple assets matters.
• Illustrating people in a respectful, non-literal way, using minimal facial detail, body language, and composition to show connection and comfort.
• Healthcare, charity, or “sensitive subject” work is not essential, but a bonus if you’ve illustrated topics like illness, grief, ageing, disability, care, mental health, or other emotionally complex themes.
• Digital delivery for comms teams. You’re comfortable supplying final artwork in formats that work across platforms (e.g., PNG/JPG, scalable…