I will usually start my day with a yoga class and then get a strong strong coffee straight after it, haha. Doing something to connect with myself before I begin my creative work is really important for me. By about 7:00am I will start illustrating. I find I’m most creative in the morning, so I focus on using this time for studio work. Then by the afternoon, I will work through emails and admin jazz. I try to avoid working at night, as I am typically a deadweight by this point.
Hmm..I’m going to go with some dot points to answer this.
Some of the best parts:
being your own boss;
creating your own structure/working hours; My day can start and end at different times, based on the projects I have on in that week. It’s always changing.
The diversity and the unknown. My working week is always different and ever-changing which I really enjoy and genuinely get excited for what could land in my inbox each week.
It’s incredibly purposeful and that makes it incredibly rewarding.
Some of the worst parts:
Having no sick leave entitlements (I do truly miss getting paid to have a sniffly nose, haha)
Being your own boss (kind of works as a good thing and a bad thing at times); it can be hard to manage your schedule when you have a lot on. Sometimes I find managing my timetable and workload tricky
That’s all the cons I can really think of. I don’t really hate any aspect of this gig. It’s pretty cool most of the time and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I think as soon as I left school, and didn’t feel as bound to set criteria for my art, I felt like I could create whatever I wanted in my true, authentic style and preference. Once I started to really tap into my own, honest thoughts and experiences, I felt like my style followed. Now I just keep practices new ways to take my style into different areas of work.
Hopefully I will be working towards my first children’s book. It’s a very nerve racking time, as my sample pieces are currently in the process of being approved by a publisher. So anything could happen at this stage - fingers crossed though! I would also love to share or work in a seperate studio space of my own, so I am hoping something cool pops up. I’d also love to start a clothing label soon. There’s always a lot of ideas going on, but these are the major ones at the moment.
It was really random lightbulb moment. I was drawing outside one afternoon and I remember the name popped into my head after using up a bunch of my parents fresh printing paper for silly doodles. I work quite practically with paper and my hands too, so when I'm illustrating I always like to start with paper and my hands of course do the rest. I guess it represents my creative process mostly and staying simple with making things from just your hands and a creative thought.
I was pretty average at drawing when I was younger…I remember my older sister (who was quite good at it) inspired me to start practicing drawing after we starting a ‘drawing competition’ series. I remember for one competition she drew our pet rats and they were perfect. She won the game easy. I was completely smitten by her work that I decide to learn how to draw her rat illustrations. I remember only drawing rats for a good year after that comp — I couldn’t stray from the concept.