My short business of doing portraits

During the pandemic I was trying to explore some side hustle. So I put an ad on marketplace, which later was taken down by facebook as it was a service -  service is not allowed to be advertised on facebook. 

But during the short periold the ad managed to stay alive, I got a client who asked me to draw a portrait of 7 people.

She gave me a photo of each person and I did a rough sketch to show her how I would place these people in the picture. She was not only happen with it but told one of her friends about me. So this friend also came and asked for a portrait of five people.

The first client later asked me to do another portrait for one of her relatives and I did it. 

She was also so kind that she introduced me to a neighbour of hers. Ths neighbour asked me to do two portraits.

I learned how to draw even before I was in primary school. My parents both like drawing but they are never experts. They used to teach me to draw some very simple things. I became interested in drawing people because of my mother --  she liked to draw pretty women.

To be honest, after I've done all these commition, I felt a bit tired of portraying people. The payment wasn't the best and mostly, I just realized I wasn't good at drawing at all 😓 

When I was in school, I thought I would become an artist (who didn't!), and all my school mates love to ask me for a drawing of mine. After 30 years, today some of them still kept me drawing! Heartwarming indeed when I heard that. But my parents and my teacher never allowed me to go to an art school. In China, the best wayout for a working class family would be that the kid goes to the university. Going to an artschool would have been the last choice for a kid, unless they are from really rich families and they can just afford a good art school. Mine is never like that.

So I went to uni, just like many kids from both single-child families and more-than-one-child families, carrying the greatest expections of our parents.

I studied English for four years, and law for one year (during the four years), and had nothing to do with art. But I did take another year off two years after I finished uni. I studied fashion design in the best fashion design university in Beijing, for a whole year. That was when I got back to drawing the things I always loved: women in pretty clothes.

Then, I worked for a fashion website for a bit, changed my career to work in a sales team in a consultant company, but quickly realised that I was a good sales material. So I found another job, working for a styling company as an editor.

After I moved to Australia, my drawing life kind of ceased. Thanks to the lockdown, I did have more heart for creating. But I guess this was it for now, my portraits.

Good news is, I started to crochet a little bit again, after at least 3 years without touching the hook!