Illustration: Monica Ramos makes the heatwave a little bit more bearable with her celebratory images

If I were looking for an illustrator to adequately sum up the overwhelming heat sitting heavily on London’s weary, slumped shoulders at the moment then Monica Ramos would definitely be the one to do it. The Brooklyn-based illustrator’s series A Hot Summer is dedicated to a bunch of tiny watercolour characters doing exactly the kinds of things that I want to be doing; soaking in a pool closely packed with several hundred other people, seeking shade under giant overhanging lily-pads, frying eggs on the baking hot pavement and sadly trying to salvage the last of a rapidly melting, freshly dropped ice-lolly.

Other areas of expertise for Monica include Comfort Food, in which she has illustrated what might happen if the term was understood literally – cue a sleepover in giant pan of macaroni cheese and drifting absent-mindedly in a bowl full of Cheerios. In fact, every subject she puts her paintbrush to seems to emerge in a haze of rose-tinted merriment. Very, very lovely work indeed.