Throughout my time at university, I have battled with finding my visual signature, or style constantly. I’ve always felt like everyone else has a clear style that you can instantly distinguish them by what they make, and that my work is just a mash up of random things I’ve made in order to try and find my style. If someone had told me that by the end of third year that I’d find my style, I wouldn’t have believed them. But this year I started making digital work after buying a Wacom tablet, which is something I previously never wanted to do. In second year I was really against using digital software to create work and couldn’t use Photoshop whatsoever. When I bought my Wacom, all I knew how to do on Photoshop was adjust the levels. I put my all into it and started teaching myself as I went along, and now the majority of what I make is digital. I’ve gotten really into making collages with my hand drawn pieces and my digital work and I’m really happy with how things have been working out so far. I really think I’ve improved and started to find my style and what I like to make as an artist. The thing that makes me happiest about the work I make digitally is that, although most of it is done on a computer, it is somehow really similar to the oil paintings I make in my free time.
One thing that makes me especially happy about my newfound love of digital work is that there are clear themes across all the pieces I make, that also tie in with the hand drawn, painted stuff I make too. I didn’t realise until looking back at my work as a whole, but the majority of it includes plants and flowers and nature themes. Although I did all this without really realising, I am happy because I think it reflects my own personal interests and showing what I am interested in through my work is very important to me. I’d like to develop the themes I use throughout my work and include other things that interest me, like animals, insects, space and things like that. I am also interesting in developing the things I work on or what I apply my work to. Last year, I started an oil painting on a large log slice and I really enjoyed doing it and like how different it looks. In the future I want to look into applying my work to more products, like tote bags and clothing, as well as working on new materials within my painted practice.
Since I finally feel like I have a visual signature, and after being asked countless times, this year I plucked up the courage and opened my own Etsy shop. I have sold some of my things in the past but they never felt as professional as this time around. So far I have been selling three different prints and some badges. Since starting to sell my work at the end of May, I have made a few sales and made around £100 already. It’s not much, but it’s a start and has given me a lot more confidence where my work is concerned and it’s definitely encouraged me to keep making and producing work and sharing it online, where I am trying to gain a bigger following so that my work reaches a wider audience and in turn, I will hopefully make more sales. One of the best things about selling work is receiving orders, its such an amazing feeling to receive an order and see where it was placed. I recently got an order of a print from someone in America and its really weird knowing someone all the way in America has my work up in their house somewhere! I hope to carry on developing my Etsy store and hope to produce and sell more products. I already have an idea of a little pack of three postcards that I want to make and list on Etsy. I’m not sure if selling on Etsy will become something I do full time, and to be honest I’m not sure I want it to be my full time job, but I’d definitely like to sell more and see it grow at least a little bit.
Something that I have really enjoyed doing this year was building my visual identity, promo pack and developing my own personal ‘brand’. I decided that I needed a catchy ‘art name’ that I could use as my handle across all of my professional social media accounts. I settled on ‘SonnyDraws’ as its quite simple and easy to remember and is personal to me. It stems from my late Grandad, a grumpy old Italian man who was nicknamed sonny for being anything but ‘sunny’. I too acquired this nickname as a child as I could be as grumpy as my Grandad Sonny. I have since changed my name to include this nickname as one of my middle names. I am now using this handle on my professional twitter, instagram, my website, my etsy and as my professional email address. I was pretty lucky that sonnydraws was available on all of those platforms! I used to get really stressed out about not having a very professional sounding ‘art name’ and quite a boring sounding name in general that I didn’t want to use as my professional brand name. I am finally, at long last satisfied with this and hope I stay happy with it so I don’t have to change everything and start all over again in the future!
Something that I am proud of that happened this year was my entry to the So Young illustration competition being selected for a place in the Top 20. I only got the brief three days before the deadline and had to make something pretty quickly and definitely didn’t expect a place in the top 20! My entry was only the second piece of digital work I had ever made so I really didn’t think it was going to be good enough to submit, never mind a place in the shortlist. I really enjoyed making my entry to this competition and would like to do more music based illustration in the future. I was really happy with the finished image and got a lot of really good feedback on it so I now sell the design as prints in my Etsy shop. Last year for responsive I considered taking part in the So Young competition but talked myself out of it and made myself believe my work was no where near good enough to enter. I am happy that this year I gained enough confidence to go ahead and enter, and end up getting a place in the top 20, which I never ever thought would happen to me. So Young is currently running another illustration competition that I might enter now I have more time again.
From my time at LAU, I have discovered that I prefer to make pieces of work that I like and sell them on, rather than working to a brief that has been set for me by someone else that I cannot bend. I much prefer having the time to spend on something that I planned and that I can develop without worrying what someone else will think. I find this extra rewarding then, when I’ve made a piece for myself and people want to buy prints of it too. I want to do more briefs like The Diabetic Eye project that I wrote for myself for 603, where I painted my eyes and made them into wall hangings and am planning on selling them and donating the money to Diabetes UK. I’d also like to continue developing and adding to the fan art brief I wrote for 603 too, as I really enjoy making work based on my interests and sharing the work I make with others. I sell most of the fan art prints I made on Etsy and it’s a great feeling when someone who is also interested in the same thing wants to buy art you made based on that thing. I think if I keep adding to it, I will have a very large, interesting and personal body of work that I can share with others who like similar things.
Now that university is almost over, I’ve had to start thinking about what I want to do with my future. I think for me, the main thing I want to do is carry on making. I hope there never comes a time when I get too busy and don’t have time to paint or draw. I’d like to continue selling on Etsy and do more paintings and sell them. I also want to do more painted commissions and carry on entering my work into things like So Young. I think the amount my work has progressed and the things I have learnt in my third year alone has put me in a good starting position and I hope to keep on working and developing and carry on surprising myself with what I can do and what I can accomplish. I want to better my Photoshop skills and learn even more about digital work. I also really want to make some enamel pins and tote bags at some point. I think PP has helped put all the starting points in place and I already have a shop, a logo, a promo pack and a personal brand to get me started. Although there are areas for improvement, I feel ready to leave university and am confident that I can achieve the things I want to if I work hard enough for them. I’d like to think that maybe one day in the future, I will be able to make enough money from my paintings to live on, but I need to develop my skills even more before that happens.
As nervous as I am to get a real job and become a real person, I think my time at LAU will definitely aid me in my future endeavours. I never thought that by the end of University I would be selling my work, have personal social media accounts, have my own promo pack and logo. I feel ready to go out and get a job but continue with my art as much as I have time for and will hopefully continue to learn and develop on my own, without the safety net of university. For me, my three years of being here had a lot of ups and downs and at the beginning of second year I was so down about my work that I was so close to dropping out. I didn’t enjoy first year at all and had no idea what I was doing with my work and everyone around me seemed to be improving and developing a style, while everything I was making was rubbish and just a pathetic attempt at finding my style. At the end of third year, I can say that I am so glad I didn’t drop out and that I pushed myself to keep on going until I started making work I do like. It’s been hard and sometimes I wonder how I ever made it this far, but I did and I think I should be proud of that, especially since I have worked hard to develop a visual signature and finally feel like I am getting somewhere.