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Okay!  End of January, almost the end of my trip and FINALLY time to write this post.

Step one: Read the following article.

But for me, it started long before that.  About two years ago now, I started looking for insight on the blog.  I asked a lot of my friends what they like about my blog and what suggestions they’d give me.  Almost all of them responded  the only reason they’d even really check it was to see the artwork and to see what I was up to.  One friend even said she didn’t particularly care for the fashion industry on the whole, what it represents and the skewed ideals it lends to society.

It did get me thinking.  I had spent two years at that point saving images of various fashion bloggers.  For me, a lot of times it would be a catchy pose or a brightly coloured outfit that would catch my eye, but the overall message of the fashion industry really was starting to sink in.  There were girls constantly being gifted with new items to wear – things they were #obsessed with that I really didn’t care for.  One blogger I unfollowed after she posted a bedroom shot of herself that (there is no other way to say it) looked like soft core porn.

In and around the time I was discovering other things in life that spoke to me, and one of them was minimalism.  I like my nice things, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t need them in abundance.  I have one really nice winter coat and one really nice summer coat.  And to be honest, I started cycling last year so the really nice summer coat hung in the closet while I biked to and from work in clothing that I could sweat in without guilt.  I would see these girls posting photos of their closets, simply bursting at the seams – and wonder how weighed down they must feel by all of this STUFF.  I would be embarrassed by that much unnecessary crap in my life.  And if you followed that link – look at that woman’s face…I think she’s slightly embarrassed too.

In all honesty it’s been long enough now since I made the leap over to urban sketching that I’ve more or less put the topic behind me.  For a while it drove me crazy.  To sum it up neatly, fashion illustration was becoming less fun to create because I felt like I was focusing on images that would garner likes over what I really wanted to be doing.  That was one step down the wrong path.  I remind myself all the time now that I am doing this for me.  The likes on social media are a bonus now, and they do inspire me to keep working at times, but I’m not tortured the way I once was if a post on Instagram goes unrecognized.  It’s all a process, right?

Social media can be torturous if you let it.  At one point it drove me crazy.  It is nice to look back at that now and know that it’s behind me.  I feel a little silly even writing this now.

In any event!  Trip is almost over, I hopefully have a ton of new images to share, and we can lay this topic to rest.

Talk soon!