When I was in primary school, drawing was my “thing.” You know how some kids are really great at sport, others are musical prodigies? Mine was drawing, and I loved it.

Then I got to high school and things got serious - I was in a competitive school and academics was king. I did Economics instead of Art, and Legal Studies instead of Design & Technology. I was terrible at it and as a result, hated it! So I did a Graphic Design degree at university and got to be creative again - yay! However, I maintained an anti-digital stance (not so smart in today’s day and age) and liked doing things by hand - ergo, very slowly (call me stubborn).

For ages, I toyed with the idea of illustrating again - I would see illustrations in the media - in ads, magazines and think “I could totally do that!” but never actually did. Then one day, I saw a pair of Christopher Kane shorts I loved, dusted off my inks and brushes and drew it. It took me ages because I was out of practice and didn’t have the right colours, but I was so happy with the result. At this stage, I wasn’t an Instagrammer and didn’t understand hashtags at all but uploaded it anyway #noob. Every ‘like’ I garnered was a cheap thrill - then @christopherkanestudio liked it and it was the mother of all thrills!! I only got about 25 likes for that post, but it was the most excitement I’d had in a long time and I never wanted the high to end. So I kept going and with the support and encouragement of my friends, family & Instagram community, here I am 8 months later and loving it more than ever.

It may be fear, it may be laziness, it doesn’t matter what it is that’s preventing you from taking the first step - once you do, then you’ve done it!

Below are the first few posts I ever put on Instagram, my techniques have evolved but as you can see my subject matters haven’t…