My Painting Journey to Fuzzleduck

Okay, something you guys ask all the time, especially when I'm live painting at events, is “Did you go to art school?” or “How did you learn to do this?” or an extra good one, “What a wonderful natural talent, you must always be drawing”. My short answer to these is no, I practised and also no. 

So let’s take a little walk down memory lane. I'll share how I ended up painting and creating, and how Fuzzleduck came to be

As a kid, I LOVED to draw and paint. I remember my dad's office having my paintings up on the shelves, sandwiched between books. There was a tiger, a sheep, and probably flowers.

I kept my art up as a kid and took it as a GCSE option. However, my love of drawing did not translate into a love of coursework. I’ll be honest, my art grade was the lowest out of all of my subjects. And as a teenager, that and the pressure to figure out what I was seriously going to do with my life was enough to put off painting.

I don’t think I picked up a pencil to draw again until I was maybe 20, and I started drawing in the park during the pandemic. I would go to the park and paint the trees, draw little stick figures of the people going by. 

I continued painting through university. I studied animal biology and pretty much just painted my way through the course. From painting fish for my friends to developing my first mini collection of marine megafauna. This is for sure where the animal painting kicked off.

After I tried selling some of these animal and plant paintings at markets, I decided I wanted to try live painting. I’d heard of other artists doing portraits of people, but I really wasn’t comfortable painting people. I’ve always been an animal person and love my pets, I was already offering premium pet portrait commissions, so I decided to give live pet portraits ago.

To be sure I could paint quickly I just practised. Actually, my husband and I were on a trip to Italy, and we took trains between the different cities we were visiting. Every train ride I made him time me painting these little pets. I was like a kid saying, “Watch me do a cartwheel! Watch me! Watch!”

Once could paint one within 20 minutes, I decided I could make this work. And the live pet painting began!

Whilst pets are my main focus, I also create patterns and other designs for businesses. This year, I’m also really enjoying expanding my greeting cards to include more funny and themed designs. I love both the greeting card collections and pattern design. I get to use my total creative license, and it’s very cool looking at a painting and seeing that I created something I just dreamt up.

As you can see, my journey with painting and Fuzzleduck hasn’t been straightforward. I just love to draw and paint, and I have developed it all though practise, trial and error, and doing what I enjoy 😊