My Story
I have been drawing ever since I can remember.
My mum used to hand me her planner whenever she wanted me to stay put and quiet. Very quickly, drawing became my favourite tool: to pass the time, to focus, to distract myself, to remember.
I started by replicating cartoon characters. I drew them and laminated the drawings to play with my friends, alongside bought playing game cards. Eventually, they wanted to buy mine. I was nine years old. I remember feeling confused — why don’t they just make their own? It’s so much fun. It’s not like it’s hard… it just requires the willingness to try, fail, and learn. When some of them actually tried to draw their own cards, it brought me so much joy. They say the things that excite you are connected to your purpose. I just didn’t see it that way yet.
“One cannot make a living out of art,” I was told. So for almost two decades, I made art only in my free time.
Art, however, was always at the centre of my life.
I thought I needed to study and get a “real job”, so I pursued sciences and technologies in high school, with art class as an extracurricular on Wednesday afternoons. One of those Wednesdays, my teacher taught a life-changing lesson. He brought an IKEA box filled with his sketchbooks from his late teenage years onwards and let us flip through them. Around fifty sketchbooks — a lifetime of moments captured through drawing, painting, and photography.
That afternoon, I decided I would have a box like that one day.
That I would stop using art only as a tool and allow it to become a passion.
“How can I register this moment in a way that will bring me joy when I revisit this sketchbook in a few years?” I kept thinking.
I started noting everything down, drawing anything that sparked curiosity, and using my Instax camera to capture fleeting moments. Around this time, I began sketching more consistently, slowly taking on small projects.
Committed to these “time capsule” sketchbooks, I received my first painting commission at 17, at Feira da Golegã. I was speechless. Someone wanted to exchange money for my art. I didn’t fully understand it, but despite my doubts and insecurities, I went ahead and did it anyway.
I practiced and practiced, yet it never felt like hard work. More like a challenge — a visual riddle to be solved.
Still, I didn’t see it as a “real job”, so I went to design school, thinking I could put my drawing skills to “good use”. Later, as I was often the one comfortable presenting in group projects, I pursued a master’s in Communication Sciences. I studied during the day and painted commissions at night, while also continuing my artistic training through courses, including the painting program at the Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon.
What started informally became consistent. Since 2015, I have been sketching and illustrating professionally. Over the years, I have created and sold over 500 artworks to clients across different countries.
When the pandemic hit, I decided to share this joy of art with others, despite the uncertainty of the world. Every Saturday morning during lockdown, I hosted a livestream on Instagram, offering creative sessions and inviting other artists to join. Entire families would tune in from home. Sometimes neighbourhood kids would gather and paint together.
After the pandemic, I defended my master’s thesis (on stakeholder engagement and design management) with a magna cum laude grade — and a crown of bay leaves, like the Italians.
Around that time, my oldest childhood friend, Margot, reached out with something unexpected. She asked if I could live paint her cousin’s wedding in watercolour, like I did in my sketchbooks.
I said yes.
And with that, I discovered that painting someone’s “best day of their life” is one of the greatest honours an artist can have.
The emotion, the love in the air, the music, the joy, the food… and my role was to turn it all into art.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald writes in The Great Gatsby, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” That’s how I experience these moments. Present, but observing. Part of it, yet a witness.
From the beginning, I put myself in my clients’ shoes and thought: if this were my day, what would I want to remember in 25 years? And I painted the moments that answered that question.
With each wedding, party, and event, a different story takes shape. I capture quick watercolour sketches of what is unfolding, building a visual narrative that people can return to over time. To date, I have sketched close to 100 events, from weddings to corporate settings.
Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a range of brands and institutions, including Chanel, Longchamp, La Prairie, Perfumes & Companhia, Granado, Hendrick’s, Mateus Rosé, NIVEA, and La Roche-Posay, as well as entities such as the Lisbon Museum, the European Union, and the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic.
As requests grew, I started gathering other talented women in my field into a WhatsApp group. I invited them to paint alongside me, and eventually, to take on their own events. Many of them, like me, weren’t working professionally in art at the time. Gradually, one by one, we built the confidence to pursue it.
I worked briefly in brand management, and just as I felt ready to focus fully on my art, I was invited to take on a part-time role as an art teacher at a private primary school in Lisbon.
For two years, I taught over 160 children between the ages of 6 and 10. I gave each of them a sketchbook, a watercolour set, a pen, and a water brush. The only requirement was to create.
And they did.
Children who were labelled as “difficult” or “class clowns” began to excel in art. Parents would stop me on the way to and from school to thank me for awakening a talent in their child that nobody — not even them — knew was there. Others would say their son, for the first time in years, would come home and not go straight to screens, but instead pick up their sketchbook and draw. Entire families began creating together after dinner.
At first, I was nervous about teaching, so I filmed my classes to improve. I soon realised children say the most unexpected and honest things when their creativity is pushed. I started sharing those moments online.
Today, my digital platforms gather a growing audience of over 46,000 people, with videos reaching so much as 14 million views.
Some reach out to say they’ve started drawing again. Others say their children have reconnected with creativity. Some simply find the moments familiar, almost nostalgic.
That’s when it became clear: This might be the "real job" I had been searching for! To inspire people to observe more closely, to create, to be present — even if just for a moment.
Most people, when leaving the house, check for their phone, wallet, and keys. I also check for my sketchbook and watercolours. Never without them, I sketch daily life — people, places, small details — turning the ordinary into something worth keeping.
After ten years of painting professionally, I still feel like I’m at the beginning. Still defining my style, my subjects, and how I want to contribute to our world.
But I’ve always believed in doing things before feeling entirely ready, and doing them scared.
So this is an open invitation.
Whether through a live painting at your event, a print or custom artwork in your home, a class, pushing you outside of the box in an outdoor session, or simply something you come across online — you decide how you let yourself be inspired.
I’m here to be of (creative) service.
Thank you for reading, for supporting this path, and for being open to letting a little more art into your world.
Love,
Piedade (Pi) Jardine