a short introduction about me
hi, i'm zeph (which is my chosen name) and i'm a 23-year-old unknown-gendered person from the netherlands.
i'm a blogger and an artist (i draw cars). i have studied at a university twice and i also quit twice. and i'm trying to make a living online while not working for anyone else.
and on this blog i'll share my journey and everything that comes my way that i feel like writing about.
studying is not made for me
my first study
the first study i followed was automotive at the technical university of eindhoven. eindhoven is a nice place to be, but i never really felt at home there. also it's a 1.5 hour train ride to get there...
the automotive aspect of it wasn't really what i expected. it's just electrical engineering, but sometimes, if you're lucky, you're gonna apply that to cars.
i think i could have passed all subjects (well, eh, except for coding maybe), but traveling 3 hours a day to get there and not liking the study that much in the end made it really difficult to do homework and learn for the exams.
at uni we also needed to code a lot and i never coded a single bit in my life. i never liked so i chose not to follow coding classes in highschool. so when i suddenly needed to code stuff i absolutely sucked at it. i knew so little about it that it never crossed my mind that this was a thing you could google.
just before the second exam week, i think, i quit.
my second attempt at studying
after quitting a felt like i needed to follow another study just because everybody studies and get their degree and then works the rest of their life, right?
so i decided to enroll in 2 studies, because i couldn't choose at that moment. one was some coding study at the university in utrecht, the other was product design.
i decided to study product design as it was a lot closer to home and a lower level, so i didn't need to work as hard. it did help that it wasn't as difficult. it took me over 2 years to finally be so drained i couldn't do anything anymore, so that's a win right?...
after the second time it finally dawned on me. studying is not for me.
it makes me so miserable and i don't really want a normal job, so why would i study?
so i started a blog
i researched a lot of ways to make money online and ended up choosing to start a blog (not this one though). i decided to make that blog about drawing as i know a lot about that from drawing semi professionally/seriously for almost a decade now.
i coded my blog myself
i also like to code so i coded that blog myself. sucking at coding was actually a big reason why i quit my first study, but afterwards i realized you can just google everything. who would've known... i also was inspired by the things you can do with code, so i started to learn it for myself. and of course i started with python as that's the easiest one to learn.
when i decided to start my blog i didn't want to spend much money, but also for the most popular website builders like wix and squarespace you could only pay by credit card which i couldn't get... so i decided to code the whole thing myself using python and django which was a lot of fun, but, eh, it also took a lot of time.
my first blog wasn't actually the first website i coded. i had before that already coded a website just to show my drawings and i added a webshop later on. i took that website offline when i uploaded my blog.
coding my blog took around 3 months while also studying full time and i think i uploaded it on april 18th 2022.
starting to work full time on my blog
when i finally quit uni for the second time (around jan 15 2023) i started writing blogs full time, which is a lot more difficult that it sounds. i've always hated writing essays at school, so i really doubted my decision to start a blog to try and make some money, but who knew that if you do things you want to do you might actually enjoy them?!
writing still is hard for me. sometimes the motivation and inspiration are flowing and word start to leak out of my hands, but most of the time it takes a lot more effort.
but then chatgtp came around just as i started to work full time on my blog, so is started to experiment with that. it isn't to good at writing and i wasn't that good at writing the prompts. i definitely have uploaded a few too many nonsense articles, but it's better than nothing right?
it's about a year ago now since i started working full time on my blog. it is draining and i haven't made a single penny from it yet. but i still have hope. it just needs a bit more time.
it's only about 5 months ago that i first hit 1000 visitors in 1 month. but right now i already have 7000+ monthly visitors which sounds insane to me, but it's far from enough yet to make a living...
i wish it would go a little faster, but it is what it is.
eh, i've been renting on a little bit too much...
let's talk a bit about drawing now.
i've drawn for almost my whole life
i know, i know, it's a cliché, but it is true. i have been drawing my whole life.
many people stop drawing when they go to highschool, but not me. i continued drawing. i don't know why. i just liked it. i wasn't good at it at all but i enjoyed it.
it was until 2nd grade (in the dutch schooling system, i was about 14) when i started to take it more seriously.
i used to draw trucks and machinery as that really inspired me. but in 2nd grade i got really into cars because of real racing 3. so from then on i almost only drew cars.
i first started trying to design my own car, but when i wanted to try to make it more realistic i suddenly found out about using reference photos and drawing from photos.
this made my drawings look a lot better, but they still sucked quite a lot.
finsing out about alcohol markers
i started watching a lot of youtube video timelapes of people drawing cars. in those videos i noticed they were using something i didn't know what it was. it took a long tie to find out they were alcohol markers, so naturally i bought a bunch.
i immediately made a drawing with them and guess what? the drawing sucked. of course.
i had no idea how to use them and the proportions of my quick sketch of a ferrari were way off. but i immediately liked these markers.
and from this point on my drawings got better and better.
introducing colored pencils to my drawings
from the people i followed on instagram i learned that alcohol markers work really well with colored pencils, so i bought some faber-castell polychromos.
my drawings immediately got a whole load better, but there was so much i needed to learn about colored pencils. it took a year or so to get really good at using them.
i was able to create hyperrealistic (at least in my opinion) drawings of cars, mainly supercars.
maybe i'll add some images or a link in the future, but for now i want to keep this blog anonymous.
i've been drawing cars now for about 10 years (woah, that's a long time!).
but in the recent years something changed...
drawing suddenly seems so difficult and draining
and it sucks.
why does drawing make me feel this way...
i don't like it.
it's probably because of instagram, right?
i don't know.
i've been trying to draw more when i want to draw and not following an exact schedule to keep up with my instagram schedule. so it's been about 3 months since i last posted something...
i did however start a drawing only or me. and i allow myself to take as long as i need.
in the mean time i will probably make some quick one day drawings of cars to post on my instagram. these drawing also do really well as tutorials on my blog. i should probably make more.
that's where i'm at right now.
why did i start this blog then?
my first or main blog is mainly about drawing and i eventually want to make a full time income with it. but i also want a place to document my blogging journey and, well, my life. so that's why i started this blog.
and who knows maybe people will be interested in the things i do or maybe they relate to me a bit...
but it's also for me as an organized way to keep my thoughts, struggles and achievements.
i think that's it for now. i know it's a lot...