My first ever client (that wasn’t a family friend wanting a portrait of their niece) was actually a pretty decent name to start off my client list! I remember I was in my final year at Falmouth university studying Fashion Photography, I always used to look at the #fashionillustrator on Twitter as I’d seen a few other illustrators reply to call outs on there and thought I’d keep my eye on it in case anything exciting came up!

Doing your hobby and passion as your job can make for some sticky times, it’s not for everyone but if you can read this and think you got those traits then you also got this career baby!

1. Be Stubborn.

A career in the arts takes time, it took me 8 years to get to a stage where I could finally go full-time. Developing your work, building a portfolio, getting clients, getting repeat clients...

it doesn’t happen overnight.

You have to fight through any doubt and keep soldiering on.

An exercise I like to do during fashion weeks is to set myself down with a new sketchbook, scroll through the runway An exercise I like to do during fashion weeks is to set myself down with a new sketchbook, scroll through the runway shows and sketch each and every look that catches my eye.

Nothing special, just a quick sketch to respond to the design and see what happens.

For this I thought I’d ramp that up, and sketch the entire collection in one sitting. 60 second a look, to keep each sketch gestural and quick, 31 minutes, 31 looks!

I've blinked (napped) and 3 years have gone by since I took the leap and became a full time artist!

It took me 8 years after graduating to finally be in a position to go full time, so it's a process, it won't happen overnight, and it's better for it not to!

So I've put some thoughts together about what I've learnt, as I haven't shared anything like this since my 6 month mile stone, and things have changed a bit since then...

Fashion illustrators need to know how to depict different fabrics and textures. Let’s get into this fashion bootcamp…