A few weeks ago, I seriously considered scrapping Dreadfully Drawn to focus on other things. There hadn’t been any football on and I was posting work that I wasn’t really fussed about. I messaged a few people telling them I was thinking of stopping doing it. I love doing Dreadfully Drawn, and I’d hate to think what I was doing was half-arsed, or if I thought I was wasting my time. After some great advice, I took a br
eak and took some time to think about what my younger self would think if they knew I’d given up on it without achieving what I set out to achieve. I always wanted to do caricature art. Not the traditional style - I could never manage that. I have always drawn people badly, but kind of true to life and in my own style. It’s a very simple way of drawing people. It’s not really as exaggerated as proper caricature art. It’s the simple version of how I see people. Dreadfully Drawn was set up in 2017 while I was doing a Master’s degree. I spent most of the university time building up Dreadfully Drawn while I should have been working on my uni work. Thankfully, I ended up with an alright grade anyway so it worked out okay. I absolutely LOVED football magazines as a kid, in particular MATCH Magazine. I aspired to create work that would not only be suitable for adults, but also work I think younger people would enjoy. The first Dreadfully Drawn drawing was actually based on a section from the 2006 World Cup MATCH Annual.
Since starting Dreadfully Drawn, I’ve worked on a variety of cool and exciting projects that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. From making trading cards with Hibernian Football Club, to contributing to Dave Will’s MIFA projects - I’ve enjoyed them all. I did have a goal though. That goal was to have my work featured in MATCH Magazine. In February 2020, however, I wrote a blog post about mental health, social media and why doing Dreadfully Drawn helps me. To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t in the best of ways. I hadn’t really spoken out about it, and felt that speaking out would probably help me. It obviously didn’t solve all of my problems, but it gave a little bit of transparency to the people that know me and that follow Dreadfully Drawn. This is an ongoing thing I deal with, but I’m cool with it. I know it’s part of my life at times and hopefully one day it won’t be. So it’s May 2020. Football was suspended for the foreseeable and I was bored of Dreadfully Drawn. I messaged a couple of people on Twitter basically saying I’m seriously considering moving on from Dreadfully Drawn and starting something new. I was given some great advice and words of encouragement to stick at it and to perhaps change the way I approach my work. Those that gave me some advice really helped me plough on and continue doing what I really love doing - drawing. A few weeks later I spontaneously replied to a tweet asking “who your dream client is” (big up @deancdavies). As I’ve already mentioned, MATCH Magazine was my favourite thing growing up. I was crazy about football. MATCH was (and is) my dream client. How would my younger self feel if they knew I worked with MATCH? Pretty happy, I reckon. Nah, that’s an understatement. It’d be pure joy. Honestly. Pure joy.
Anyway, here we are. 11th August 2020. The day my work is included in a MATCH Magazine. How does that feel now? It feels like an achievement, to be honest. I know within myself I’ve worked hard to get here. I said in the previous post that I spend a lot of time doing Dreadfully Drawn. To give you some context, it’s currently 00:02 when I’m writing this. Dreadfully Drawn is a constant thing I work on. This may only be a one-off moment working with the guys at MATCH, but if so, I’ll take it and I’ll grab hold of that moment just like I know my younger self would. I’ve jokingly said that I’ve completed Dreadfully Drawn but that’s not true - I have plenty of things I’d still like to achieve and plenty of brands I’d like to work with in the future. However, working with the magazine you grew up reading is the dream. It’s the reason I do Dreadfully Drawn. It’s why I continue doing it when I don’t feel like doing it. It’s why I love it. I fucking love Dreadfully Drawn.
Up the Dreadfully Drawn.