Welcome to my new blog and my story so far!

Hi all and welcome to my new blog and my new look website! I'm not sure what this blog will be about yet, but I used to run a couple of blogs a long time ago and loved it so I thought why not! 

For those who are new to this website, I'm Natalie and I am an architectural artist, specialising in ink and watercolour illustrations. I have always loved art and crafty things in general, but it was at the beginning of 2025 when I started journaling and suddenly massively got into drawing. It started with botanicals and I did a few tutorials (Emma Lefebvre was my favourite at the time) and in fact thought this was the way I was going to go.

I can't remember how I found this but I stumbled upon a tutorial by Jillee Arts on YouTube where she sketched and painted a building in watercolour and I was then hooked! I did several of her tutorials and enjoyed every single one, picking up loads of skills from her (I may do another one now thinking about it!)

I then progressed to other artists' tutorials, trying to find out what kind of architectural art I enjoyed doing the most, all the while trying to learn watercolour (Sketching Scottie, Toby Sketch Loose). It is a tricky medium for sure and took some getting used to! I found that I needed to upgrade my paints pretty early on as I was getting frustrated with the results and this made a massive difference, but I will do another blog post on this soon. 

I then did a Domestika course by Alex Hilkurtz which was amazing but still not really my style, and then I found one by Urban Anna which was totally up my street and then sparked my 'I love this I am going to do this forever' feeling that is still with me all these months later. 

And then I just kept practising and practising, trying to do a painting every day (I was only doing them very small!) until I got brave enough to try doing a building on my own with no tutorial. I started posting my work online, mainly at first just for me so I had a visual log of my progress, but then decided to start sharing with other people. 

Follow me here!

The art community online has been amazing, so supportive and kind and I have only had one semi negative comment so far (I'm sure more will come). I love how many creative people I have found on social media and I now have so many places to buy gifts from!

Gradually I got more and more confident with watercolour and drawing buildings and discovered that I really love precision, getting the size and details right in a building and BRICKS. I love them, love painting them and never want to stop! I have changed how I paint the bricks several times and seem to have settled on a technique now (will do a post on this soon too). 

I got my first commission from my sister in law who asked me to paint Plates Restaurant where she worked. And then around that same time I decided to start seeing if I could sell paintings and opening an Etsy shop. 

Fast forward to today and I now have an Etsy shop, my own website and have had a steady stream of commissions since, which I am so grateful for! I seriously still feel shocked when someone buys a painting or commissions me and still have a bit of imposter syndrome, but that feeling when I hear that someone loves their painting cannot be matched! 

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me for now. No idea if anyone will actually read these but hello and thank you for reading if you are here!