about me

welcome to my about section! ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

my name is tamsyn and i am a full time illustrator based in the UK, with the brand aianaiya

so for my origin story haha i was born in scotland and then when i was a baby we moved to south africa. most of my family is south african. i lived in south africa until i was 7 years old which is when i then came back to the UK. i have two children, two cats, one dog and one husband hehe!

i love witchy art so much and i actually bought my first spell book when i was around 10 years old. we had gone back to south africa for a holiday and we visited this magical fairy inspired activity place where they had spell books and fairy ornaments. i spent the day there painting fantasy colouring pages and looking through all the ornaments and witchy products. it is the turning point in my life which brought me to love all witchy magical things. growing up after that i was bought fairy encyclopedias, decks of cards and incense which further fuelled my love of anything beautifully mystical and fantasical ♡

since i was a child all i've ever passionately loved to do was draw. i would draw constantly. i loved to create stories of characters and draw their little houses and rooms. as i got older i found that drawing was not so much of a priority and i was a mom instead, raising my two babies. when my youngest was born i started to make more time for drawing, whenever i could. this really helped me to refine my skills. i started off with cartoons, drawing disney characters for my friends and family and then moved onto drawing realism. once i became skilled in drawing realism i started up my etsy store! this is where i sold some of my artworks. i created tattoo and pet commissions and i loved the joy it brought to my customers. but i found i was unable to enjoy it that much myself and wanted to find a path where i could share my hearts passion with other like minded humans. realism wasn't for me but it taught me a lot of skills when it comes to drawing characters and drawing from references. in 2018 i decided i would stop realism and start to work on traditional illustration. i was so scared because i had to learn a new style of drawing, even though i had grown up drawing illustratively, and wondered where it would take me. i worried that stopping realism was a bad idea but i followed my heart regardless. after about a year of drawing traditional illustration i decided that i wanted to draw digitally. so i stopped drawing traditionally and took up the enormous task of learning how to draw digitally. it was so difficult and a very big learning curve but in my heart i finally felt the magical feeling i had been looking for. digital illustration was meant for me. since starting it i have never looked back.
over this journey, of course my etsy store evolved too with my changing styles. since taking up digital illustration i have had the best experience in being a full time artist. i get to still bring happiness to my customers and i have made some really strong relationships with a lot of them (i love you all so much!!). i get to also do something that every day i wake up excited and incredibly thankful to do.

i really appreciate you taking the time to read this and for visiting my store! i hope you love it here and find something to call your own. all your support means the world to me.

i hope you have a magical day and that my story inspires you ♡

you can support me in other ways too if you would like to!

♡ follow me on instagram, where i post my current artworks i am working on - @aia.naiya
♡ follow me on youtube, where i post studio vlogs - aianaiya
♡ follow me on tiktok, where i post videos of my products , art and relatable content - @aianaiya
♡ join my patreon community for art not available in my shop