Steve

In the beginning

Being very creative and loving to draw when I was very young, it was natural for me to continue to develop my art skills in my educated years. After excelling in my art studies in high school and at college, I then progressed into the study of graphic design where I spent 4 years being ‘tutored’ in the disciplines of design.  I’ve now been a qualified and practising graphic designer for over 30 years.

2020 The year of change

I had previously been working part time as an engraver in my sisters engraving business for almost 12 years, but then came the global C0VlD-19 pandemic and then everything came to a stop. The government instructed all non-essential shops to close, which essentially led to the end of many businesses as they would not be allowed to continue their trade, and my sisters was unfortunately one of them. I was lucky to have another part time job working in a marketing agency as a graphic/web designer, but I just knew I had to start a new career into a marketplace where I could really develop my potential.

I have been artistic for most of my life, however this year became a particularly important one for many reasons. The events of 2020 were the catalyst for my new venture into the world of Art & Design. Not only was the hottest and driest one for many decades but also one of the most eeriest summers I’ve ever experienced. Quiet streets and mostly quiet roads too created a very strange and unusual atmosphere for most of the summer where I lived in Lowestoft, Suffolk. I think the eerie nature of that summer helped in some way to focus my mind on how I wanted to move forward with a new business.

So during that summer of 2020 I found myself thinking of how I could utilise my art & design skills to create content and services to sell online. I already had an established reputation on Etsy for photoengraved gifts (see feedback) which I had developed whilst in my sisters engraving shop, so I knew I could continue doing this from home. I had so much more to offer than engraving photos onto metal gifts, so after much research I stumbled upon the idea of developing art and/or designs for the print on demand service RedBubble.

My first piece of art that I created was a bit of movie fan art of one of my all time favourites, TRON. I’ve had a love of all things CGI in movies, and this was an opportunity for me to recreate one of the earliest and one of the most famous CGI scenes of all time (in my opinion of course).

See product page on RedBubble

The year of the face mask

During the global pandemic there became a requirement for most people of wearing a face mask when going into shops or businesses, and RedBubble of course had seen the opportunity to benefit from this growing need and started selling their artists designs on face masks. One day I was inspired by a design that I’d seen on RedBubble for another of my favourite movies, The Matrix. [show B&W Neo stopping bullets image] I looked at this image and thought wouldn’t it look cool if instead of bullets, they were C0VlD-19 viruses (an artists impression of one of course), so that became my first design I created that could be applied to a face mask, among the many other products that RedBubble sold. It went on to become one of my best selling designs of the year, closely followed by my Smiling Minion mask which I developed to help give people a laugh when they saw someone wearing it, children loved it. Despite everything that was going on in that year, I really wanted to help bring a smile to those whose smiles (if they had one) couldn’t be seen because of their face covering. So I continued to create several mask designs which would do just that.

See product page on RedBubble

Coming up with new designs for this marketplace never seemed to be a problem for me, as I was continuously being provided with new inspiration during that long hot summer of 2020, so many in fact that it will probably take me many years to finish creating them all, if indeed I ever will.