Shejustdoesit “

For some people making it big in business means living up to life’s stereotypes – pinstripe suits, leather briefcases and a life in the city. But for entrepreneur Johanna Basford, wife of Brewdog’s James Watt, life is anything but conventional.

She found London a “culture shock” and it was only once settled in the idyllic Aberdeenshire countryside she found her creative inspiration returning.

And it was a childhood fascination that has led her to success – colouring books for adults, literally penned against the backdrop of the scenic north-east of Scotland.

But it’s not all been plain sailing in her DIY success story.

From going back to work just nine days after giving birth to one of her daughters, to the joy of being a one woman enterprise, answering phone calls at bedtime and scheduling time to send off a few e-mails when she should be sitting down with her husband.

However, if there’s one thing I found when interviewing the illustrator, it’s that she is a determined individual.

“It’s not about escaping to the studio for a couple of hours, sitting down and sipping tea and reading poetry while I sketch,” she said.

“One book usually takes six to nine months to create so it’s hard, like brutally hard. I think unless you love what you’re doing you are not going to succeed in running your own business.

“The highs are great but the lows are really lonely and very low. You have to be completely committed to it and passionate about what you do but also really determined because there’s no team there to pick you up when things go wrong, you have to be in charge of everything.

“It’s really hardcore, long hours, much more so than if I had a regular nine to five job. I never switch off. Even when the kids are in bed I am on the computer answering e-mails and thinking up new ideas.

“You never ever switch off. It’s not work it’s life. People talk about work life balance but when you run your own business everything sort of muddles in together. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as you keep everything in check but there is no finish time and weekends are a bit blurry.”

After leaving art school in 2005 Ms Basford armed herself with her portfolio stuffed with drawings and took out a £5,000 loan from the Prince’s Trust.

Over the next six years she created hand printed wallpaper in a shed on her parent’s fish farm while working numerous part time jobs to pay the bills, taking the overnight Megabus from Aberdeen to London on days off to pester art directors into commissioning her.

But the hard work has definitely paid off as the mum-of-two who was awarded an OBE for her services to entrepreneurship and the arts last year and has sold more than 20million copies of her six colouring books around the globe. Three of them have also appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list.

But the 34-year-old former Ellon Academy pupil said she initially struggled to convince her publishers that there was a market for adult colouring books.

She said: “I had been freelancing for a lot of big brands like Nike, Absolute Vodka and Starbucks but always black and white drawings and for years my clients would say to me ‘Oh it looks like you should colour it in, it looked like a colouring in picture’.

“It was quite a flippant comment but it sort of planted the seed of an idea. Then I was approached by a publisher to do a children’s colouring in book and I said I would love to do a colouring in book, but I would like to do one for adults.

“But initially the publishers didn’t want to do an adult colouring book in 2011, it just seemed like a really silly idea, but I drew up the first five pages, in terms of what I thought it would look like and they liked what they saw.”

Some 13,000 copies of The Secret Garden were printed initially during the first print run in 2013 in an attempt to test the market. And now, four years on, more than 10million copies have flown off the shelves around the world.

Last month Ms Basford’s sixth book was published, however this time she used her creative talents to come up with a story to accompany her intricate illustrations.

Ivy and the Inky Butterfly began as a bedtime tale she told her daughter each night. The book follows the story of a little girl named Ivy with a vivid imagination who follows a magical Butterfly to the world of Enchantia, through its many realms, meeting whimsical characters and discovering magical things along they way.

She added: “We have seen the adult colouring book business excel and for me I wanted to do something really exciting rather than keep churning out the same work.

“That idea didn’t appeal to me so I contacted my editors and said I wanted to give those interested in colouring a new way to express themselves and develop their skills.

“I do my best work when I am a bit scared and out of my comfort zone. This is 120 pages my biggest book ever and there is a story to go with it. The format has changed and it was a really exciting project to work on.”

But Ms Basford says she owes the serene environment which surrounds her daily for allowing