This is how my art on IG looked like, in chronological order, from my first art post in 2015 until now, 2025. AI training by META makes posting on Instagram and Facebook very scary. I decided to protect my art and, once and for all, delete it all from those platforms, saving my old pictures here in this article.
Instagram was for me a way of making a visual journal, depicting my life month after month, after year. I can still recognize every moment of the past 10 years:
My post-uni days in Firenze in 2015, preparing a portfolio for an illustration course I was then admitted in September 2016. Getting myself the proper cotton paper to paint on, the scary expensive one, for the first time. Falling in love with the combination of watercolour and soft pencils.
Moving abroad in December 2017, trying to decide what to bring with me.
In the bag only the essentials: a watercolour kit, a few Derwent crayons (colorsoft and graphite) and some cheap Stabilo ink pens.
Moving first to Lille for a month, then to Cardiff in February 2018 and Galway in 2019. I started taking long walks observing Nature around me, so different from the Mediterranean one I was used to. I drew local birds and plants, trying to catch the different light with my colour palette: that pale bright Nordic light that struck me more than anything else. 2020 came and changed a lot of things: it put the World on hold for a while and in December, after months of confinement, I moved to Pamplona. I stayed there for a year, until I eventually moved to Viborg, Denmark, in December 2021.
Once I arrived in Denmark I slowly got settled. For the first time in years I could finally paint on big scale again and try other techniques, like lino-cut. I also printed some of my art and made stickers to sell in the local artist alley. I settled in my first real office 2 years ago: a dedicated tiny space to work and paint in, outside of my home for the first time, with colleagues, friends.
I can see all these life changes into each drawing and remember the feelings I had back then. I remember the forced minimalism in my few drawing tools I brought around with me, the joy of finding the perfect compact folder to store my drawings into, fitting just right for my suitcase. I remember all the Inktobers, drawing with my Stabilo pens or that one Edding pen I found in Galway, with a beautiful terracotta colour.
Memory after memory, I started taking down all those pictures from IG, to keep them safe, to keep them mine. Most of them are here now, to remind me of my 10 years of travels and brush strokes.
Sabina, April 2025
