When it comes to your vocation, sometimes you just have to trust your guts. For Jane Foster, her guts were telling her to give illustrating a try. Based in South Devon, she was in her late 30s when she decided to take a leap of faith.
“I’m very self-critical and worry a lot so it’s quite bizarre in some ways that I left the security of a teaching career (in music) to carve out a new career in an area which is so precarious,” she remarked in an interview with Creative Boom. “However, I also think the uncertainty drives me on and makes me determined to make my life work out.”
Now with more than 40k fans on Instagram and endless praise, her leap of faith seems to have paid off. “It’s been quite an exciting adventure so far!” she writes on her website. It has also been much work, with her career spanning across different fields and mediums, including illustrating, writing, and textile designing.
According to Foster, she finds joy in bringing other people joy, by creating happy illustrations for children’s books, wall art, mugs, and other such products. “Don’t be afraid to fail,” she urges other aspiring creative, stressing that “successful people have failed lots. Talent is only a small part of becoming an illustrator, the rest is sheer dog-eared determination!”
Prepare to be inspired.
