My first post was on Sunday 30 March 2009 and straight away I was sure Illustration was something that I wanted to explore further, and so I ended up quitting my job and starting the MA course at Camberwell in the Autumn (after taking a trip to Melbourne and Sydney in between)!
The course gave me the time to really focus on what I wanted to do with my Illustration work and I think that I started to develop my Illustration style a lot more during this time. And I continued to share my work on this blog! I always found it a good resource to be able to look back over what I'd done, especially in those moments when I felt like I wasn't quite achieving enough. Creativity and Anxiety are strange bedfellows!
I recently took part in an Illustration Fair in Kings Cross, where someone came up to my table and told me that they started following my blog about 10 years ago, so pretty much from when I started it, after her sister suggested that if she was interested in becoming an illustrator, she should have a look online and see what people were doing. It's not often that you get to meet your online audience IRL, but it was definitely humbling to know that someone had been looking at what I was doing all this time!
And so I kept posting work, and even when I wasn't getting much commissioned work, I was still trying to produce work to post on my blog. I think one of the key things to try to achieve as an Illustrator is to remain visible. With so many other people out there trying to make it work, if you drop off of people's radar for too long then it's hard to get back on there. It's part of the reason I named this blog (and my first printed comics collection) Look What I Drawed! It made me think of that kid proudly clutching his painting in his hands and showing it off to his mum on the way home from nursery: "Look what I drawed mum! Look!" (And yes, I know it should be "Drew", as one person once commented criticising my use of grammar. But "Drawed" is funnier! And it's my blog, so I'll spell how I want to! :P ). This blog was the digital equivalent of that. Proudly shoving my latest drawing into people's online faces! (I think this metaphor may have run away from me...)
But over the years, I've been picking up more commissioned work, as well as working more hours at my other jobs, plus the proliferation of various Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter which provide more immediate ways to get people to see my work, and gradually I've been posting less and less on my blog. I've gone from posting nearly 150 posts per year back in 2013 to barely double figures in the last few years. And most of those have begun with an apology for not posting for ages, followed by an endeavor to post more frequently for a few weeks, and then nothing again till the following year. Rinse and Repeat.
My last blog post was almost exactly a year ago on Sunday 25 February 2018. And after thinking about it over the last few days, I think it's probably time that I retire this blog for good.
Anyone who is still Following me on here, please do go and check out and Follow my Instagram page where I regularly post updates and new drawings: www.instagram.com/paulshinndraws. I'm also on Twitter as @paulshinndraws and I have a Facebook page too. And I have a website, which is www.paulshinndraws.com and my comics are also available to buy from my Etsy Shop.
I'm not going to be deleting this page, so it'll still be viewable. And anyone who is only just discovering it now and is bummed that I'm not gonna be posting any more stuff here, you have 858 previous posts to look through, so that should keep you busy for a while!
Like I said, I occasionally like to sit and have a look back through my previous work to remind myself of what I've done before. It's amazing how much stuff I completely forgot I even did. Like this drawing of Ghandi from my first Movillustrations project back in 2012, which seems like an appropriate image to end on:
Thanks for reading and following!
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