Julie Hyld – 30 drawings. 30 days.

Instagram is magic. If you don’t agree, we’ll never be friends. Sorry. That’s just the way it is.

It’s one of those tech innovations that seems so simple, but has been a complete game changer. It’s, to a degree, democratised the world of illustration, art and photography and on a personal note has allowed me to make many professional and personal connections with many people from all around the world.

Plus it gives me somewhere to post endless sneaker selfies and look at pictures of cats.

I recently discovered a super friendly, and incredibly talented Danish illustrator and designer that goes by the name of Julie Hyld. I started to become  a little bit obsessed with her series of running inspired illustrations, of which she has created a new one every day for the last 30 days.

After getting to know Julie a little bit more via email I discovered that she’s recovering from a pretty serious injury  that has left her unable to run…and missing it badly.

Instead of getting too down about this, she decided to set herself a pretty unique challenge that has produced some beautiful results.

But rather than trying to talk for her, I’ll let Julie describe it in her own words….

Julie’s Story:  In her own, real life, words;

I got injured in September, and it took away one of the things that is very natural to me, and a thing I thought I’d always have…Running.

Around  the same time I moved to Paris to do an exchange at a new school, and too be completely honest, I just lost control over a lot of things, that I thought safe before.

It’s my first injury as a runner, and a lot of the problems is mental. But it’s also a pain that people don’t see. Everytime I took a step, I was in so much pain, but it wasn’t visible.

So after 1,5 months of pain and a lot of mental frustration. I kinda got my shit together haha. I wasn’t whining, but I was focusing a lot on all the things that I suddenly couldn’t do, and I had no control over.

Around me people started doing these “30-days-everyday” running challenges. So everybody on my freaking IG was running every single day in November. This is something I probably would have done too, if I could – but hey, still injured and not able to.

So instead, I started concentrating on some of the things I still can do, and still makes me happy. I am a runner, but I am also a design student, I also love to draw, I love to focus on goals, and I am an exchange student in Paris.

SO, I decided to draw a runner everyday for 30 days, no matter what. Some days I have a lot of time, and some days I might only have 10 min. But I had to draw each day regardless.

I also just decided to switch my fitness goals to “be able to run again, be the king of the cross-trainer in the gym, and have killer abs and arms”(cause I never had killer arms…)

Check out Julie’s series above and you can view more of her work following the links below. One to watch fo’sho.

www.cargocollective.com/juliehyld

@Hyld Instagram