Sketches to Replace Perfectionism

A couple days ago I accidentally deleted an illustration that I spent 3-4 hours working on, which caused quite the emotional breakdown and spiralling negative thoughts about myself and my illustration work 🤡 fun times! Thankfully I’m now working through my feelings a lot better, and learning the hard way that I need to regularly duplicate my files on Procreate lol…

This new years, I set myself a goal of creating more illustrations for myself, this developed into creating a collection of travel related drawings, illustrating some of the memories I was making. I was really excited about the project, and the first few illustrations I created were ones I was pretty happy with. But as time went on, and ideas were growing, I started getting more critical of my own work, and stressed that I was getting behind.

I wanted to quickly create multiple illustrations, with this expectation for them to all be to the same standard of my usual work, and all on a programme that I still haven’t quite mastered, as I obviously can’t bring my full set up with me. This, along with the very incredible, but also very overstimulating experiences I’m having whilst travelling, were all a bit too much for me to handle.

I also feel for the first time (at least to this degree) that social media is having a negative impact on me. Usually I find platforms like Instagram and Linked In a really helpful and inspiring tool, and I’m happy to see other people succeeding. However, with my mental health already being in a negative overwhelmed state, I was constantly seeing incredible projects coming into fruition, and this lead me to thinking I needed to take note, and be inspired, and do similar things, rather than focusing on my existing project, and being graceful with myself and a calmer and slower approach to continued learning and progression within my career.

So for now, I’m taking a break from social media, and a break on this personal project, giving myself space and time to breath and decompress. I have an exciting commission in the works too, with a client who is thankfully giving me far less stress than I give myself, so that’s I nice distraction! For now enjoy some messy sketches to breakup this need for perfectionism.

I’m back in the UK next week! So hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be re-opening my online shop, sharing some upcoming market dates, and some finished drawings too. Ideally all with a much clearer headspace 🫶🏻 

WACA

Disrupting the chronological order of my travel illustrations, (not that anyone other than myself would notice or care) because I started an observational drawing whilst at a cricket game in Parth, and wanted to finish it whilst it was fresh in my mind!

I don’t do observational illustration half as much as I’d like to, and I don’t have any particular interest in cricket, but my partner Tom does, and convinced me to go by saying it was only a very small, casual game, and would be a relaxing environment I could draw in, and it was! I’m glad he did as I think it’s super helpful to mix up your process when drawing. I mostly draw from photos, which works a treat, but I always find capturing a live observation gives you a more unique perspective, and loosens the need for perfectionism.

We attended the WACA to see West Australia vs New South Wales. I barely paid any attention the sport, as I was much more interested in people watching in the audience. There were probably less than 50 attendees, and I’m pretty sure we were the only guests under the age of 60. Most of them, like me, had a book or a newspaper with a crossword to give half their attention to 🗞️

Travel Illustration Number 3 🚐

For the last 3 weeks, as we’ve travelled up the East Coast of Australia, from Sydney to Cairns, we’ve been staying in the most adorable little camper van. Travelling in a van has been a dream of mine for a few years now. I’ve done long weekends in the UK, but this was different… and required stepping out of my comfort zone a little, but it was 100% worth it, and definitely met all of my expectations!

We rented our van from Camperman; it’s not the most luxurious of vehicles, but it’s allowed us to travel at our own pace, stopping at all the sites and hidden gems along the way, and to me, it feels like the best way to do it!

I love so many different aspects of van life, and some other bits not so much… but this illustration aims to capture my favourite part. The ability to drive to basically any and every beach, park up right by the water with the best view, almost always having it entirely to ourselves, having a quick swim in the sea, and it being so hot but also nice and breezy, that your swimmers are dry again before setting off 😌🫶🏻👙

Hoping to capture many more van life moments as illustrations in the future!