Table of Contents
How it started vs how it’s going
I sometimes too wonder how I went from one to the other, so every year I like to remember a bit of the process.
Mid 90s
I liked drawing since I could grab a pencil, but never had the patience with it, or myself, to "tolerate mistakes".
I focused more on the outcome instead of the process.
I tried copying other drawings, from TV shows I liked, and when they didn't come out perfectly, I got frustrated, angry, made a ball with my sheet of paper, yeeted it in the bin and didn't try again for a long time. On and off.
Fast forward about 20 years to 2018. That’s when I found Affinity Designer and gave it another shot.
April 15th 2018
8 years ago, I created a little pair of Twitter and Instagram accounts called "@creatinglightly".
Since then I got my bachelor’s degree, adopted Kiwi (our youngest cat), married my girlfriend, went through the pandemic, uprooted my life and moved continents, amongst other things.
What remained constant was the fact that I stayed creative.
I had no idea what I was doing, so I started simple. If you have been following for long, you probably have already seen this:
First ever illustration I did under the Creating Lightly name. A very simplified version of a Ford GT because I didn't have the skills to do more details, so I just made it “recognisable”.
This illustration is very important to me, and not only because it is my brother’s favourite car of all time, but because I could see I was definitely not ready.
I couldn’t do details or understand a lot of things. But it got me started. It showed me in retrospective, that things don’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable. It got me out there, brought in some love and encouragement.
So I continued. And little by little I kept on getting better.
I made friends with mistakes. Understanding them as points to improve.
Every time you notice a mistake in your work it's not a failure, but a learning opportunity.
You are literally getting better.
So I kept pushing and this is the second illustration that came out of that.
First full illustration with shading I shared. Back then I still used gradients and was finding my style. Lamborghini Miura illustration.
I was still exploring and finding a style. This was just one of the few images I actually used gradients for.
I didn’t fully understand how they worked. Or lighting, for that matter. So some things still look weird. But at the time, this was a huge achievement for me. Just compare it with the one immediately above.
It was probably, to date, the biggest leap in understanding and skill I had at any given point in my career.
Not only cars
I did not only create automotive artwork, but definitely it was my main focus point, and still is today.