About Lindsey Saoirse | Storybound Press
Hi, I'm Lindsey.
I'm a storyteller, illustrator, and worldbuilder with a deep love for folklore, fantasy, natural history, and the quiet stories hidden along forgotten paths.
My creative practice has taken a winding route to get here. I've worked across a number of mediums over the years. From pour painting and watercolor to oil pastel, mixed media, and photography, often following curiosity more than any particular destination. Over time, I found myself returning again and again to simpler, more tactile materials: charcoal, ink, and fire.
Today, most of my visual work has settled into illustration, ink, charcoal, and fire—but nearly everything begins digitally. I tend to follow the tendrils of my imagination first, letting an idea take shape without always knowing exactly what I'm making or where it will lead. Procreate has become the place where those ideas first become visible: where I can sketch freely, follow strange little details, change direction, and allow a creature, object, or landscape to reveal itself as I work.
Once I can see it, I start asking a different question: How does this want to live in the world?
Sometimes the answer is ink on paper. Sometimes it wants the softness and shadow of charcoal, the permanence of an image burned into wood, or the texture and imperfections of a natural material incorporated into the finished piece. Other times, the digital illustration is exactly where it belongs. I don't necessarily choose the final medium before I begin; I let the idea help determine what form it eventually takes.
And often, becoming visible is only the beginning of its story. A creature rarely remains only a drawing. Once it exists, I want to know where it came from, what someone saw it doing, what travelers say about it, and which parts of those stories they've gotten wrong. A landscape develops a history. An object acquires a legend. A character leads me somewhere on a map I haven't explored yet. Illustration becomes an entry point into worldbuilding, and worldbuilding inevitably sends me back toward illustration again.
That movement between imagination, image, story, and physical object has gradually become the heart of my practice. I create by following the tendrils—allowing one discovery to lead to another, and giving an idea the space to tell me what it wants to become.
When I'm not creating, you'll usually find me homeschooling my children, wandering through the woods looking for mushrooms and other overlooked things, reading fantasy novels, or listening to music far louder than necessary.
Most days, the stories still have a way of finding me before I ever go looking for them.
Where to find my work
About The Press
Storybound Press didn't begin as a publishing house.
Its earliest incarnation was a small gift shop and apothecary. It was a place where I created custom designs for apparel and other goods alongside small-batch teas and handmade offerings inspired by nature, storytelling, and the things I loved. It was my first real attempt at creating a home for the many different directions my creativity wanted to travel.
But running that kind of business alone proved difficult. Designing products, producing and sourcing them, managing orders, maintaining a storefront, marketing, and trying to continually create enough things to sell left very little room for the part I loved most: actually creating. Eventually, Storybound took a back seat.
For a while, I thought that meant the idea simply hadn't worked.
Instead, it was waiting.
When Storybound began to emerge again, it did so differently. By then, my own creative practice had changed. I was writing more. Illustrating more. Building worlds. Collecting folklore. Creating creatures and wondering where they came from. My artwork was beginning to develop stories, and my stories were beginning to leave behind illustrations, objects, field notes, and artifacts of their own.
Storybound didn't need to return as a gift shop.
It needed to become a press.
Today, Storybound Press is a small independent publishing house and creative studio built around original storytelling, worldbuilding, illustration, and the physical artifacts that emerge from those worlds. It is home to projects like Bound by the Bow, the developing world of Aglitall, the folklore surrounding the Gloam Cats, and the stories and Lore Entries collected through The Wandering Ink.
It is also home to the tangible side of my practice: original illustrations, woodburnings, prints, naturalist-inspired reliquaries, and other objects created along the way. Rather than existing as merchandise separate from the stories, these pieces are allowed to emerge from the same creative process. A creature might begin as a sketch, acquire a history through a Lore Entry, wander into a larger story, and eventually become an illustration or physical artifact someone can hold.
That is ultimately what Storybound Press has become: a place for stories to take whatever form they need.
Some are published in words. Some are drawn in ink. Some are burned into wood. Some become objects, specimens, or artifacts. And some are still somewhere in the forest, waiting to be found.
Work With Me
There are a couple of ways we can create something together.
Whether you're looking for an original piece of my artwork made especially for you, or you're building a world of your own and looking for another creative mind to help bring it to life, you can find more about how I work below.
Commissions
Something made by me, for you.
For individuals looking to commission original illustration or woodburning work in my established style. From creatures and botanicals to personal pieces inspired by the strange, natural, and storied.
Explore Commissions →
Creative Collaboration
Something we're building together.
For authors, publishers, game creators, and other storytellers looking for support with fantasy worldbuilding, folklore and creature development, narrative writing, illustration, or the imaginative spaces between them.