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Hi there! So here’s the thing. I want to resurrect this blog and bring it back to a regular routine on the internets – to share bits of my process, to explain my journey as an artist but also for those just starting out to gain some perspective on how I have come to be where I am today. We were all new at something once and in 2012, this was the case for me too. I just woke up to the realization not long ago that I’m no longer on Chapter 1 here with Design by Streetlight. I think it is time to grow things up a bit and share a bit of the back story in the process. This is Part 2 of my transition from fashion illustration to urban sketching.

It was at the end of 2014 that my mom began the decline in her battle with cancer. My life priorities slowly ground to a halt as I split time between work and the hospital she was increasingly in and out of. One night I was home with no agenda, saw something on Pinterest and FINALLY felt the push. ENOUGH staring at everyone else’s work. Time to create something of my own. They weren’t great at first. In fact they were awful. I had to reacquaint myself with the rules of perspective, and then break them so that I could keep going without the need to be perfect. Of course, there were still logistics to be figured out. I’d dropped my watercolours and at this point had a beautiful set of 120 Prismamarkers as well as this book on architectural renderings that had become something of a bible in it’s rendered perfection. Intimidation and paralysis all over again.
After my mom passed I was off work for a month. It was needed as a stress leave. I wasn’t sleeping, I had no short term memory…it was the biggest trauma I have endured in my life to date. But one day I wandered into an art supply shop and saw a Windsor and Newton travel watercolor palette. I purchased that and two sketchbooks on a whim. That’s where my journey started. At first the thirst was just to fill a sketchbook. The pages were replaceable. They didn’t need to feel perfect. If I didn’t love the subject, I could simply turn the page. There were a few other elements to learn my way through of course. Finding my preferred paper type, burning through Micron pens on cold press paper, playing with my washes. But by the end of 2015, probably as a solution to my grief, I was finally beginning to find my footing. I was still too intimidated at the concept of sketching on site – in fact I’d only attempted it from a few cafe windows with not at all ideal viewpoints. But it was starting to become something.