On the 15th May I received an email from the Adobe Design Achievement Awards and they said I have been selected as a semi finalist for their Adobe Design Achievements Awards for this year. This is great news for my career as last year I had been selected for a 3×3 Contemporary Illustration Merit and Student Show Honourable mention.

I really hope my works can make it to the final as I have spent countless hours illustrating and when there were no encouragements for me to use digital art as a media to create my illustrations I still insist on using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as my main medias to create my illustrations.

I love using Adobe Illustrator to create illustrations because it suits my style and gives me a lot of freedom to test new techniques as well as to test colours that I wouldn’t normally go for. It also allows me to have a fast workflow which is perfect for me as I have a three year old daughter who allows me little time and who could potentially damage more traditional illustration medias. For example she could quite easily (and unintentionally) tear a watercolour painting or knock a pot of water all over my drawings. So I love digital art!

It feels really nice when you work so hard for something you love so much and get some recognition. In the past three years there have only been three periods of time where I haven’t done any illustrations. The first period was when I gave birth to my daughter and had a month break. the second period was when I had my gallbladder removed and had a two weeks break. The third period was when my father passed away late 2014 and I had three weeks off to go back to Taiwan for his funeral. I love working as an illustrator and my career is still in it’s very early stages so I know I have to work very hard to get what I want. There is no one in my life who will hand me down anything. So I know I must work hard for something I finally found that I love in my life, which is working as an illustrator.

Getting selected to be one of the semifinalists feels like I finally got the pat on the shoulder that sometimes one needs. So a thank you to the judges who selected me as a semifinalist in the 2015 Adobe Design Achievement Awards and hopefully I go further in the competition. Hopefully this will then lead to working with more awesome clients and exciting projects.