cosy day in the life of a 25 year old illustrator & content creator 🧑‍🎨 editing videos, sketching

I thought it was the perfect time to start this one since we seem to be entering spring. Hey friends, I hope you're doing really well and welcome back to another video. For today's video I really wanted to film a day in the life vlog because I don't think I've filmed one of these in a very very long time and in case some of you guys are new here my name is Aya and I'm but I also happen to do content creation full time. The goal for today is to upload a new video onto YouTube so it's going to be a very YouTube focused day. That being said I'm still hoping on getting a bit of sketching and illustrating done. I'm working towards a book cover portfolio so if you guys don't know already over the past couple of years I've been focusing mostly on picture book art but I am hoping to transition slowly into book covers as well so in order to do that I need to create a new portfolio. So that's something I've been working steadily on with my agents but like I said today I need to get a lot of editing done and then because I've been a lot more active over on Instagram I want to make sure I get back to a lot of your comments on Instagram as well. So yeah there's definitely a lot to get done today and I think I'm going to start the day by doing some admin. So I hope you've got your warm cup of tea or some sort of beverage with you and let's get into the video. So ever since I started working as a children's book illustrator ironically it became a lot more difficult to want to draw for fun and for myself so I'm always on the mission to try and figure out different ways to get my creative brain working again. I love the tactile feeling of writing in a paper diary which is why I do all my journaling and planning on paper so I thought it would be perfect to try and combine journaling with drawing. So something I've been really excited about and looking forward to each day is taking this illustrated journaling class which leads me to thank today's sponsor Skillshare. What I really love about Skillshare is that they have so many classes taught by renowned creatives and professionals making it the best place to learn a creative skill or to pick up a new hobby. Like I mentioned I've been taking the illustrated journaling class by Dylan Mioswinski and she guides you through 14 different prompts to use in your journal to get into the fun of drawing in your sketchbook. Getting back into sketching is something that I've been really craving and I feel like this class has been such a breath of fresh air for me. It has the loveliest prompts that really inspire me to slow down and to reflect. As you can see I've been working on different prompts throughout the week. I think my favourite so far was actually day one which was currently listening to. I've been listening a lot lately to Han Noddle who is a Korean singer songwriter and musician and as I was working on the journaling sketchbook prompt I listened to her album The Taemong's Harigold Club and so I had the loveliest time just listening to her music and sketching things inspired by her album art. It made me realise that sometimes I need a little bit of a nudge to really get going and be creative and having this set list of prompts has been really good for me to just get things down on paper without having to think too much. But I also love the way that the teacher Dylan really encourages you to not worry about having a perfect sketchbook and to get messy. So if you'd like to try this class or explore others the first 500 people to use my link in the description box or scan the QR code will receive a one month free trial of Skillshare. It's a wonderful way to treat yourself to a new hobby or to develop a skill. So thank you so much again to Skillshare for sponsoring today's video and let's get back into the vlog. Today is officially the day after. I ended up being way too tired to film or to do anything pretty much after work yesterday. After the last clip you saw of me working at the cafe I ended up going to my dad's because my dad lives about maybe 15 minutes away from the cafe. I think I spent three or four hours there in total. I was just chatting away with my siblings and playing with Milky as well. So yeah it was a really lovely evening but I think it meant that I came back home around half ten. I was so tired that I didn't get to wrap up the video yesterday so here I am filming an outro now. I ended up I think I read maybe about 20 pages of a new book that I'm starting before promptly knocking out and going straight to bed. But the book I'm in the middle of reading is The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop. I thought it was the perfect time to start this one since we seem to be entering spring in England which is very exciting. It's another one of those cosy healing fiction genres from East Asia. Although that being said the first 20 to 30 pages were slightly on the heavier side just because it's talking about the character's mother's death. But yeah so far I'm really enjoying this one so I wanted to give it a quick shout out. I do hope you guys enjoyed following me around and seeing what I get up to day to day. Honestly depending on whether I focus mostly on content creation or illustration my days can vary quite a lot actually. But for the most part I'm drawing, I'm editing, I'm filming so yeah it's usually a bit of a jumble of all of those things. If you're still here thank you so much for being here and for watching the video. If you guys have any questions I'd be more than happy to get back to you so do leave them in the comments below. And thank you again to Skillshare for sponsoring today's video. I'll see you all very soon in the next cosy video. Bye friends!