Hi! I'm Jessica Mackenzie! The person behind all the prints at designs by JessMack. I am a queer artist passionate about human rights, mental health accessibility and the environment. I started doing digital art in my free time over winter break in my first year of university. We were in full lock down, all my classes were online and I hardly knew anyone from school other than a few people from class group chats and I was feeling kinda down. While classes were out and I didn't have any plans because everything was closed I fell into a rut, staying up wayyyy too late scrolling though TikTok and Instagram and then waking up at 2pm and not doing anything productive with my day. I knew I needed to make a change in my life to get back to a place where I was proud of what I was working on. So I did. I deleted TikTok for a while and took a break from my phone. I started going to bed at a normal time again, reading books that actually brought value to my life and I started doing art again.
I have always been the creative type. I have many filled sketchbooks from over the years, I worked on set designs for my high school's musical productions and was part of the yearbook committee my senior year but this time I decided to turn to digital art instead! I'd seen a few digital artist pop up on my feed during my time in the world of social media and I had my iPad that I bought myself for classes and I wanted to challenge myself and try something new! My first few attempts in the notes app before I decided to invest in some better software (I now use Procreate) were absolutely horrendous but I eventually got the hang of it and I now I really enjoy the process.
When I lost my part-time job due to school closures for Covid Response I decided to start selling my art and turn my part-time hobby into a pretty successful small business! Follow along to support my goals and watch me grow, learn some of my tips and tricks to getting started and check out my membership options for access to more exclusive content, discount codes for my website (https://www.jessmack.art/) and behind the scenes looks at my creative process and running a business!