Hi all and welcome to my new blog!
I thought I ought to have something for people to read who perhaps don't do social media and would still like to see what I get up to.
First of all I thought I should use my first post to tell you something about me and how I found myself here in my mid Thirties embarking on a dream career. This is probably going to be a bit long but I promise they won't all be like this!
So, in April 2012 I walked out on a career I had nurtured for 10 years. I was a Senior nurse in a troubled District nursing team that was falling apart at the seams. I was stressed, unhappy and felt trapped and I needed to do something to change it.
I still remember the look on my husbands face when I came home in tears yet again, and said "That's it, I can't do it anymore I'm handing my notice in." He was not happy understandably. I was taking home over £1100 a month working part time and suddenly we wouldn't have that anymore, so of course he didn't know how we would cope financially. But the short story is that we did, we are coping, pretty well actually. We had to make ALOT of changes in our general day to day lifestyle. I have to cook a lot more, and my shopping list is basically Tesco's entire basic range but if you asked me to trade my old life and money back again, I would laugh in your face!
I spent time just adjusting. I felt a bit like I had lost a part of my identity. I had been a professional for such a long time I felt really lost for a long time. My job was not the kind that you could just leave at door at the end of day and suddenly I didn't have that anymore. But I threw myself in to becoming a domestic goddess and learning how to scrimp and save and watch every penny. I even have a spread sheet now! That is fairly amazing considering I never really looked at my account before. But I started to really enjoy it. I didn't have a permanent head ache and was sleeping better than I had in years. So..... What to do next?
I had been playing with my portraits for baby face art since 2010. I had gained a few commissions from friends and a couple from my little Facebook page and was loving it. I thought to myself well if I'm going to do it, why not now! I started looking at facebook a bit closer and discovered the newsfeed from my page (yes I know seems ridiculous but I was and still am a bit of a social media idiot). I started touring around a bit and searching for places to advertise my work. Quickly I realised that there were a lot of groups in my area for mums wanting things for kiddies at cheap prices and selling pages for general things too. I started posting on these first of all and it quickly got me up to about 100 likes and I started getting enquiries. I also looked at other portrait artists and researched how much they were charging and the processes and terms they used. I cherry picked what I thought were the best bits and started building a little profile for myself.
In August 2012 I fell pregnant with my second...Yeah!
We were really happy, William (my first) was doing really well and we were expecting no 2 fantastic, and then BAM.
I was a few weeks in to my pregnancy which had been a bit rough with sickness but bareable, I started getting sciatica quite badly. Over the next couple of weeks it got worse and worse until one day I couldn't get out of bed. You know you often hear of people 'throwing their back out'. Well let me tell you, this was something else. I quickly became bed bound with the pain. I could just about make it to the toilet with help but it left me sweating, sick and sobbing in pain. For the next few weeks Tim (Hubby) had to wash me, dress me, make our meals, look after our son and do everything (with significant help from family I might add). It was horrendous and I never want to go through that again.
But my pregnancy progressed and I felt less sick (I tell you vomiting with excruciating pain in your back/legs is like hell on earth) and I slowly started to improve. By now it was November and I had been getting requests for portraits for Christmas portraits, so not wanting to stop the momentum I said yes! So, how do you draw when you can't sit up? Well I learned to draw on my back of course! I still can't believe I did it but I did and completed 7 commissions and they weren't half bad!
I thought I ought to have something for people to read who perhaps don't do social media and would still like to see what I get up to.
First of all I thought I should use my first post to tell you something about me and how I found myself here in my mid Thirties embarking on a dream career. This is probably going to be a bit long but I promise they won't all be like this!
So, in April 2012 I walked out on a career I had nurtured for 10 years. I was a Senior nurse in a troubled District nursing team that was falling apart at the seams. I was stressed, unhappy and felt trapped and I needed to do something to change it.
I still remember the look on my husbands face when I came home in tears yet again, and said "That's it, I can't do it anymore I'm handing my notice in." He was not happy understandably. I was taking home over £1100 a month working part time and suddenly we wouldn't have that anymore, so of course he didn't know how we would cope financially. But the short story is that we did, we are coping, pretty well actually. We had to make ALOT of changes in our general day to day lifestyle. I have to cook a lot more, and my shopping list is basically Tesco's entire basic range but if you asked me to trade my old life and money back again, I would laugh in your face!
I spent time just adjusting. I felt a bit like I had lost a part of my identity. I had been a professional for such a long time I felt really lost for a long time. My job was not the kind that you could just leave at door at the end of day and suddenly I didn't have that anymore. But I threw myself in to becoming a domestic goddess and learning how to scrimp and save and watch every penny. I even have a spread sheet now! That is fairly amazing considering I never really looked at my account before. But I started to really enjoy it. I didn't have a permanent head ache and was sleeping better than I had in years. So..... What to do next?
I had been playing with my portraits for baby face art since 2010. I had gained a few commissions from friends and a couple from my little Facebook page and was loving it. I thought to myself well if I'm going to do it, why not now! I started looking at facebook a bit closer and discovered the newsfeed from my page (yes I know seems ridiculous but I was and still am a bit of a social media idiot). I started touring around a bit and searching for places to advertise my work. Quickly I realised that there were a lot of groups in my area for mums wanting things for kiddies at cheap prices and selling pages for general things too. I started posting on these first of all and it quickly got me up to about 100 likes and I started getting enquiries. I also looked at other portrait artists and researched how much they were charging and the processes and terms they used. I cherry picked what I thought were the best bits and started building a little profile for myself.
In August 2012 I fell pregnant with my second...Yeah!
We were really happy, William (my first) was doing really well and we were expecting no 2 fantastic, and then BAM.
I was a few weeks in to my pregnancy which had been a bit rough with sickness but bareable, I started getting sciatica quite badly. Over the next couple of weeks it got worse and worse until one day I couldn't get out of bed. You know you often hear of people 'throwing their back out'. Well let me tell you, this was something else. I quickly became bed bound with the pain. I could just about make it to the toilet with help but it left me sweating, sick and sobbing in pain. For the next few weeks Tim (Hubby) had to wash me, dress me, make our meals, look after our son and do everything (with significant help from family I might add). It was horrendous and I never want to go through that again.
But my pregnancy progressed and I felt less sick (I tell you vomiting with excruciating pain in your back/legs is like hell on earth) and I slowly started to improve. By now it was November and I had been getting requests for portraits for Christmas portraits, so not wanting to stop the momentum I said yes! So, how do you draw when you can't sit up? Well I learned to draw on my back of course! I still can't believe I did it but I did and completed 7 commissions and they weren't half bad!
Yes this one was done on my back!
Anyway Christmas 2012 was done and I was gaining more of a presence on facebook. All that time on my back had enabled me to tap in to a community of likeminded artists and I had started to learn to network and get noticed by sharing pages, taking part in events and generally talking to people. My likes had climbed to 350 and I was feeling good about it.
Time for time out. My second beautiful baby was born in April 2013 and I had a good few months out away from the drawing board.
I still kept in touch with my online art community, joined twitter and reposted work I had done to keep the interest growing. I was back to it in time for Christmas and can happily report that it was a bumper year, with 17 commissions in the bag, Christmas, a holiday and some other bits were paid for entirely by me!
I now have 170 twitter followers, over 1000 facebook followers and somebody has just repined one of mine on pinterest for the first time! I am booked with orders until March and I am working on original artwork to sell and showcase on this site and Saachi online. So its starting to work out for me. All I need now is some time to write my blog other than at 02:00 in the morning!
Anyway Christmas 2012 was done and I was gaining more of a presence on facebook. All that time on my back had enabled me to tap in to a community of likeminded artists and I had started to learn to network and get noticed by sharing pages, taking part in events and generally talking to people. My likes had climbed to 350 and I was feeling good about it.
Time for time out. My second beautiful baby was born in April 2013 and I had a good few months out away from the drawing board.
I still kept in touch with my online art community, joined twitter and reposted work I had done to keep the interest growing. I was back to it in time for Christmas and can happily report that it was a bumper year, with 17 commissions in the bag, Christmas, a holiday and some other bits were paid for entirely by me!
I now have 170 twitter followers, over 1000 facebook followers and somebody has just repined one of mine on pinterest for the first time! I am booked with orders until March and I am working on original artwork to sell and showcase on this site and Saachi online. So its starting to work out for me. All I need now is some time to write my blog other than at 02:00 in the morning!