How I started on my journey to creating personalised portraits

11 years ago, I was inspired to try out a style of portraiture I had never done before.

I knew three key things about myself:

1. I could draw realistic humans pretty well.
2. I was very detailed in my drawings, less so when painting.
3. I couldn't draw from memory, and always needed a reference.

I thought that number 3 made me a poor artist.

Anyway, I don't know exactly how or when; maybe I was browsing Pinterest and admiring all the different styles of art shown. All I remember is that I suddenly had an idea to try drawing someone with a big head and a small body. No other reason.

Over the years, my portraits have become more detailed (much to my pride, but also detriment, since they take longer to finish).

But I still have the same amount of joy when I hear the stories of the people I draw, and their reasons for commissioning a portrait. It's important to me to understand the motivation, because I do believe that some of that feeling is expressed directly in the portrait.

I lay my pen and brush down in 2016 when I gave birth to my first child, and picked it up again in August 2024.

I was asked, how can you make a living from this, how can you scale... you only have a certain number of hours in a day? I've never had a head for business, for me it was just about working hard and long, and hoping that people would see the value and be willing to keep me afloat!

Then, in late October 2024, I was struck by an idea—how about trying to paint people in front of them, and passing them their portrait on the same day? Way to put pressure on yourself, Jun-Yi!

I tentatively stepped into my first Live Painting experience by signing up at a local plant market. In a nutshell, the experience was amazing. And exhausting. But being able to see people's reactions in real life, and get their feedback and feel their enthusiasm gave me the affirmation and motivation to continue pursuing this line of work.

It was nice income for a day's work (although much preparation had been done beforehand too). But I knew I couldn't do this every week. I still needed to be able to scale.

Then, again, in December 2024, I was struck with inspiration—how about making a bunch of original portrait assets for people to design their own portrait?

It was a win-win, really. Customers wouldn't have to wait for me to finish their portrait, and they could also have fun putting together their own ensemble. With over 500 assets in the system (as of March 2025), I can quite honestly say that it would be difficult to have the same portrait as someone else.

I worked excitedly, day and night, producing these assets, learning about Shopify and customisation apps, and officially launched my website and the Portrait Designer in February 2025. I was so convinced of its viability and was so driven to make this happen.

A month later, my excitement has been dampened a little by not getting organic sales from it, but I believe in it so strongly that I'm still building assets for it whenever I can. My gut and research is telling me that I have two key issues—lack of SEO and advertising, and people lacking the knowledge to try it (in the words of my husband, "the market is not ready for this").

In the meantime, my Live Painting is gaining traction. In my first experience, I had to pay for my own booth at the plant market. My second, I was invited by a friend to paint at her son's birthday party. My third, I approached a local café and we worked together at no expense. And for my fourth - some progress! - I actually have someone who looked for a place for me to paint at. I will announce more on this in a couple of weeks.

I haven't quite scaled and I am not seeing a stable income currently, but I think I also need to look at my wins over the past eight months. I don't have a team behind me to do all my marketing and brilliant things to get me noticed, but I still believe in what I do, and I hope that others will start taking notice too!