Years ago after leaving school I ended up working using Computer Aided Design systems (CAD). It was interesting and something new, but gradually over time I changed jobs a few times and pretty much forgot what I knew.
Fast forward to 2020 and I found myself with time on my hands (as many of us did) and not much to keep my brain from turning to mush. I love camping and travelling and I couldn’t.
I also love driving, which I also couldn’t…
So I decided it was a good time to relearn some things I’d forgotten.
I tried. I really did.
I find it hard to learn things from tutorials and Youtube, and I prefer the old method of “learning by doing”.
The downside of this is that unless you have a specific task to do it’s hard to learn how to “do” it.
I quickly realised that I was just drawing cars, and whilst there is a use for complex CAD drawings of cars, I didn’t really have one.
This is where I made the shift to drawing using vectors. Basically a lot of the similar processes to CAD but more colourful!
I started drawing cars. My own, my friends, cars I liked… pretty soon I had a library of cars.
I’d drawn them in a way that allowed me to change details like colours, wheels, window tints and graphics easily. Which was fun.
I didnt really have a use for them though.
About this time, a friend asked if I could draw him some custom arwork utilising the fabric design of his T3 Westfalia Camper so he could get some mugs printed to match…
I drew it… then drew some other fabrics, and added them. I made some changes and offered quite a few different ones. I sold a few on ebay on printed mugs.
Mugfalia was born. Basically a play on words of Westfalia and Mugs. Thats as deep as it goes!
Finding a name that isn’t used for anything else is hard. And especially if you want to make it searchable on the internet!
At this point, i bought the equipment for printing the mugs myself, and started looking for other things to print.
The obvious thing was to utilise this library of drawings of cars which I had built up… so thats what I did.
And now at time fo writing thats what I still do… part time.
Draw cars, print things. Sell on this website and on ebay.
It’s not a huge business. It’s not my main job, it’s just something that keeps me out of trouble and keeps my brain working…