You guys probably know Sean Ryan better as the Instagram account @badlydrawnmodels. Yesterday he was doing portraits at the apple store on regents street. I've been living in London for the last 6 weeks but in that time I've been adjusting to living away from home for the first time and balancing my time so I haven't been making the most of living here. My resolution for this term is to really appreciate and engage in living in central London.
So I wandered into the Apple Store and got one of the last slots for a portrait and was very excited to meet Sean Ryan as I've followed his Instagram for a while and wanted to see which features he would emphasise (I particularly love my eyebrows in this). When I sat down he preemptively apologised for his drawing and then begun. It was a very weird experience to have my portrait drawn. I've never done it before and the closest thing I can compare it to is having a haircut. You know that something is happening but you can't quite get the full picture until the end.
I ended up having a really great chat with Sean Ryan and how he got into his very odd profession and it was surprising. He told me he did a business degree and after that he applied to add agencies to no avail. Then one day he found a sticker book of footballers and started to draw them and post it online. He then told me he rather strategically moved onto models due to their large following and boom "fashion's favourite illustrator" was born. Although he still seemed to be in a state of disbelief over his success and the fact that he get stop do what he loves full-time. this disbelief is shared by his parents who don't quite understand what he does but he mentioned that drawing at Apple has made his dad realise how successful an illustrator he is. I tend to get very anxious about my life plans and how things are going to pan out but it was reassuring to see that things tend to fall into place in their own random way and you end up doing something you probably couldn't have imagined at 18.
Overall I had a lot of fun meeting and chatting to Sean Ryan and I absolutely LOVE my portrait.