There’s so many reasons that I love my chosen career path of a freelance illustrator, but there’s also plenty of reasons why I don’t love it so much, much with any aspects of life, you can’t have it all, at least not all at once.
I like to think whilst change sometimes feels super scary, in recently years, I’ve gotten quite good at recognising when it needs to happen, and knowing it will be worth all the hassle once you’re on the other side of it. Yes, constantly changing plans and direction won’t get you anywhere, as the grass isn’t always greener, rather it’s greener where you water it, however sometimes you can also over-water something. So I’m stepping into fear of the unknown with buying a van, and massively switching up my lifestyle in the process. I’m hoping that it will solve some of the problems, but I’m not naive to think it won’t bring new challenges.
I want to travel and experience more of the world rather than being stuck in one place, but I also highly value security and connection, so it seems ridiculous to invest so significantly in a life that potentially takes me away from these things… but I’ve always wanted a career that can be done remotely so I can travel and not feel stuck in one place, and until I give it a go I won’t know. I’m sure van life will open me up to a bunch of incredible travel and flexible remote working opportunities, however it also limits my flexibility in other areas as I’m not likely to be staying in one place very long. I’ve spent a lot of time, money and emotional energy investing into the more physical aspect of my illustration career with printed products, and I absolutely adore this side of things, almost as much as the actual illustration part, but it hasn’t been the most profitable in recent years, so I’m choosing to step away from this area for now, and to focus on what I can do on the move.
A variety of printed my personal favourite illustrations exploring the much loved themes of food, music and travel.
As part of this, I’ve reduced my physical stock as much as possible by restocking my physical shops, hosting an sale on my online shop, gifting and throwing away anything that doesn’t feel necessary to hold on to, in order to make both physical and mental space for new things!
Also to make the most of my printer whilst I still have regular access to it, I have done something which has been on my to-do list for far to long, and that’s giving physical mail-outs a go!
For this process, I was heavily inspired by Micheal Driver’s Youtube Video sharing how he approached physical reach outs. I started by going through my list of contacts and narrowing it down to what I felt were the best companies to reach out to, and then individually picked out a few images of my work to print out and send to them along with a personal message.
I’ll be honest, I’m yet to hear back from any of them… however it was an enjoyable experience to bring together printed artworks in this way, and I plan to send more when I have some more spare time, but I’m pleased so say I’ve actually been working on two commissions for the last month so that’s kept me pretty busy!