Jill Dickin Schinas is an artist, writer, photographer, yachtswoman, and mother of three. She lives, with her husband, the kids, a dog, and a cat, on a half-built cruising yacht.
As Jill Dickin I used to do intricate line drawings, but I now concentrate mainly on watercolours, cartoons, and oil paintings. My paintings are suitable for reproduction as greetings cards or prints. My cartoons and line drawings have been used to illustrate books, leaflets, and websites.
I started writing after I got married and, for no particular reason, began this career using my new name. As Jill Schinas I have written for Practical Boat Owner, Yachting World, and Small World Magazine on such varied subjects as building a steel boat in South Africa, visiting the Cape Verde islands, and homeschooling. I am also the author of Kids in the Cockpit - a book about sailing and cruising with children - and of a brief history book about Chichester Harbour.
Photography has always been something of an obsession for me. Capturing photographic images helps to relieve the frustration when there isn't time to make a painting. The Schinas family never spends very long in the same place; when not travelling by boat we journey overland in our ancient campervan. These travels provide plenty of opportunity to gather images of foreign festivals, exciting landscapes, islands, sand dunes, strange flora and fauna, and so forth.
Before you ask - Schinas is a Greek name and, as such, is pronounced in the same way as other similar words of Greek origin such as scheme, schizo, and schism. You really should have known that; after all you went to skool, didn't you, and not shool?
The Schinas family have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Yachting World, The News of the World, Sainsbury's Magazine, Chichester Observer, The West Sussex Gazette, The Times, The Telegraph, and The Independent. The kids have even made it onto the front page of the Daily Mail !
