Role: Stylist and artist
Company: Freelance
Track Record: Freelance stylist and artist, Sara O’Neill has just launched her second body of work entitled ‘Love Me To Death’ – www.saras-designs.co.uk.
DAY IN THE LIFE
7.00am
Alarm goes off and I get up and feed the cats, who will have been pawing at me for ages by this stage and depending on my schedule or call time that day, I’ll either go back to bed for an hour or stay up.
Being freelance, no two days are the same! I’ve been a stylist for the last seven years, and in the last couple of years I have also moved into fine art and illustration. I’ve always loved drawing, and what began as a hobby has now become part of my business. Although styling and drawing are very different disciplines, both sides of my work inspires the other.
Currently, styling is my main source of income, and most of my styling work is done during the day obviously for practical reasons; I need to work while the shops are open and during normal business hours. Drawing can be done at any time, so I tend to split my day accordingly and draw in the evening and at night.
8.00am
Shower, make up and dress, followed by coffee while watching the news and, time allowing, Frasier. I then try to do a bit of sketching, work on images on Photoshop or catch up on emails and invoices.
People think being a stylist must be terribly glamorous and amazing fun – it certainly is a fantastic way to make a living although rarely glamorous! But it is a business, and like all businesses there is the boring but necessary tasks of keeping accounts and paperwork, chasing invoices and general administration work. I really have to make an effort to do this work as it is the least fun aspect so I try to get it over with early in the day.
10.00am
I leave the house and head to wherever I am scheduled to be that day. I could be sourcing or picking up clothes for a shoot or show, styling a shoot, teaching at the Oonagh Boman School of Make-up or picking up and delivering prints and artwork – often a mixture of all of the above!
A lot of my work revolves around photo shoots for advertising campaigns and magazines so if I’m on a shoot I could be on location anywhere – in a studio, on the beach, on a cattle farm, a derelict building, literally anywhere that looks cool. This can be difficult as keeping thousands of pounds worth of borrowed clothes clean and unharmed is a challenge on location but the opportunity to work in so many different places is great.
I do no more than three or four shoots a week as so much of my time goes into sourcing clothes for shoots, and picking them up and returning them after the shoot. When a stylist turns up on a shoot, a lot of their work is already done. For a big shoot I will have spent a couple of weeks sourcing and selecting items and liaising with designers and press offices.
12.30pm
Lunches are often centred around work either grabbing something on the run if I’m sourcing, a quick break at a shoot or meeting with colleagues to discuss future projects.
1.30pm
Afternoons tend to be spent in meetings, writing for magazines and blogs or checking out what’s new in the shops. I’m always on the look-out for cool things to use in shoots. Often I will spend hours trying to track down one elusive item that has been requested by an art director or photographer or that I have in my mind for a shoot. I make phone calls and answer emails while running around town.
4.30pm
I usually try to meet friends for coffee. My work is very sociable in one aspect – I’m always meeting and working with different people, but when I’m very busy I don’t get much time to see my friends outside the fashion industry.
6.00pm
I arrive home. If I’m not too busy I usually eat out either with my boyfriend or with friends. If I have a shoot the next day I’d grab a quick dinner (Boojum or Build a Burger being favourites) and pack my suitcase for the following day.
7.00pm
I start drawing. For the last few months I’ve been working on my exhibition ‘Love me to Death’, which was based on classic literature. I love reading and don’t get much of a chance to do so, so this exhibition allowed me to revisit some of my favourite books – Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations… Now I’m working on commissions and a commercial portfolio.
I work in pencil, I love the simplicity of this medium; the lack of colour means that form, light and shade are the focus. Working with photographers over the years has made me very aware of the effects of lighting – how it affects the mood of a composition and how a person or object appears.
Styling beautiful models obviously has a huge effect on my artwork, fashion certainly seeps into my artwork and I’m so lucky to have model friends to draw. My drawings tend to be very time-consuming, they are very detailed and I’m currently working on a large scale so working with pencil means it takes a lot of time to fill a page!
While I’m drawing I’ll usually listen to music, something relaxing like Billie Holiday, Nick Cave or Fleetwood Mac, or have a DVD on in the background. I don’t watch much TV but I love box sets, currently Mad Men or Modern Family – something familiar that won’t distract me.
Once I start drawing I tend to work for hours, literally until I fall asleep. On the weeks leading up to my exhibition I was sleeping for only two or three hours a night.
2.00am
Sleep!