Drew’s pet project grows into career
A WOMAN has quit her day job to draw people’s pets all day.
At 21-years-old, Drew Stirling attended the University of York to study archaeology.
During her studies, she was unable to express her creative side so decided to find her own way to do so.
When it comes to art, the now 28-year-old is entirely self-taught apart from studying art during her GCSE’s at Northfield School and Sports College. During her time at Bede Sixth Form, Billingham, she decided not to study art so it wasn’t until six years later that Drew decided to pick up a paint brush and hasn’t looked back since.
Drew started by drawing people for fun and shared her art on social media, people loved her art and started making requests of their own.
It wasn’t until Drew wanted a portrait of her own dog, Georgie, that she decided to play around with drawing animals.
The Billingham woman decided to do the drawing herself as there was nothing she could find online to fit her budget – and the rest is history. Drew shared the drawing on Facebook and her inboxes were bombarded with people hoping to get original drawings of their furry friends.
The artist started selling her work on top of waitressing and university.
Drew said: “I mainly picked art back up as an escape and stress relief from university but I draw and paint entirely different things as a hobby to what I do for a job.
“After university, I knew I wanted to eventually take it full-time but I was just too scared to make the leap. After a year or two of being a waitress at the Lion Sports Bar and Grill and doing pet portraits on the side, I ended up getting a decent job in admin at Seal Sands and it was full-time.
“It took me away from my art quite a lot so I decided the little time I did have, I’d try TikTok.
“It was a painting of a border collie that went viral before that I had one semi-successful video painting of a spaniel but it wasn’t even slightly on the same level.”
After getting millions of views on TikTok and having over 320,000 followers, Drew made the lifechanging decision to go full-time.
Drew explained: “I actually ended up leaving my job to do this full-time the same week we moved into our first house – so that made it even more dramatic and scary.
“I was taking a huge risk becoming full-time self-employed with a mortgage to pay but I honestly am living in a dream. I love animals so much I even managed to make my university dissertation about dogs, I did a BA in archaeology.
“So now I get to see everyone’s beautiful animals and hear all about them and spend days drawing them.
“It can sometimes be sad, when people have lost their pets and are having memorial portraits but a lot of people say it feels like I’ve reunited them with their lost pet.
“That’s probably the most rewarding part as well as spending the day with my own dog, she started it all really!”
To check out Drew’s work you can see more on her Instagram and Facebook page.
All prices and photo guides can be found on her website http://petportraitsbydrew.com/.
I was taking a huge risk becoming full-time self-employed with a
mortgage to pay.
Drew Stirling