2025 Year In Review

2025 was a ROLLERCOASTER! Every year has it’s ups and downs, but 2025 had some major highs and lows. I’m starting this blog as a more in depth way to share my thoughts and behind the scenes of being an artist. In this post, I’m sharing some of my favorite projects and moments from this year (and a few low points), some of which I never got around to talking about on social media!

My favorite collection: TINNED FISH

As part of a prompt to create a collection based on a 2025 trend, I kicked off my year with with this illustration collection featuring sardines, caviar, and other seafood. Each of the tins was illustrated by hand in ink and then scanned and colored in Procreate. The color palette ended up being one of my favorite things about the collection, so you may see these same colors making more appearances in the new year. I also have continued to work on ideas to add to this collection and in the last week illustrated some oyster cans!

The coolest project: reading terminal market holiday party

Just before Thanksgiving, I was contacted by an event company searching for Philly illustrations to use at a company holiday party happening in Reading Terminal Market. They loved my Philly pattern and ended up licensing it to wrap columns and tables in the print! Reading Terminal is such an iconic Philly landmark (and it’s featured in the pattern) so it was beyond cool to see my artwork used in their space. It definitely felt like an “I made it” moment!

a project I didn’t share: venue illustrations

Early in 2025, I was contacted to create illustrations for several venues in Philly, including The Met, Theater of Living Arts, The Fillmore, and Punch Line. I got to illustrate the signature chandeliers of the first 3 venues, and then the wall of boxing gloves for Punch Line. My favorite part of this project was getting to create these detailed illustrations in my signature style using fineliner pens and stippling techniques. I’ve done lots of commission work in the last 5 years but most of that work has been in other styles or materials. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the illustrations ended up being used for anything, but it was such a fun project none the less.

A new series: stamp illustrations

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably seen my Philly, Baltimore, and Charleston artwork. I grew up in the Baltimore area, moved to Philly over 6 years ago, and have spent lots of time in Charleston over the last 15 years, so I have fun creating work that highlights these cities. The patterns I’ve created for each city are some of my best sellers and this year had an idea to expand my offerings! Stamps were such a popular motif this year that I first created a Philly stamp art print and pattern, and then took the time to post about it on Tiktok. For the first time ever, I actually got a bit of traction on Tiktok and sold a bunch of the Philly prints. Following that success, I created a Baltimore stamps version, that also did very well! I plan to continue this series with a Charleston illustration, and one that highlights more of Maryland than just Baltimore. I hope to post more on Tiktok in the new year, so follow me @ejw__art. I’m also hoping to offer stickers or magnets of some of the individual stamps in 2026!

16 pet portraits

I always enjoy illustrating your pets and I had the pleasure of completing 16 pet commission in 2025. Here are a few of my favorites from the year, and you can view my full pet portrait portfolio here. I illustrate all of these portraits using ink and marker! I’m so glad that I committed to this style for pet portraits a few years ago, because I don’t get to work with marker often outside of these projects, which makes them even more fun.

My favorite client: Jane win jewelry

I’ve been working with Jane Win for 2 years now, from painting the office walls to creating a new print for gift boxes and shipping boxes! This year, I painted a large piece to display in the showroom, hand-lettered place cards for events, painted more walls, watercolored motifs to use in flatlay photos, and designed some things you’ll have to wait to see! As much as I obviously love coming up with my own projects and ideas, I love getting creative prompts to create new work that take me away from my usual subjects. I also love the added bonus of seeing my art pop up in an Instagram ad or being sent off on packaging to happy customers!

now for the not so fun moments…

The biggest lesson: stolen artwork

At this point, I think every artist that shares their work on the internet knows that at some point your work will be used somewhere without your permission. 2025 was the year I hit that point. I tried so, so hard to look at it as a sign of success, a sign that my artwork was worthy of stealing, but truly it was so upsetting. My blue seashell print that I created in 2018 has long been my best seller, especially on RedBubble and Society6. In the spring of 2025, I met a new coworker and noticed that she had my blue seashell print on her phone case. Of course I was so excited, because it’s not often I come across my own artwork in the wild, and I asked if she purchased it from RedBubble. I sell that specific phone case frequently on RedBubble so I didn’t even question it until she said “no, I got it on Amazon”. I think my heart stopped. I tried to brush it off but immediately went to Amazon and started searching. In my search I came across my pattern on iPhone cases on Amazon, Temu, Etsy, and Walmart. Thankfully, since all of these sites are marketplaces, they have forms you can fill out to request they remove products featuring your copyrighted material. All of the sites removed the listings and my next step was to file for official copyright with the US Copyright Office, which I did and got the letter in the mail with my copyright info a few weeks later. I’ve since had to enforce the copyright on a notebook on Amazon and a company that printed a version of my pattern on fabric. The company was a small business and the founder was very understanding when I reached out. They hired someone to create a pattern and whoever they hired ripped off my design and added one new element to it. The only way I learned about this was that I saw an Instagram ad for their products and immediately recognized my work. I learned a lot from going through all of this and hopefully it’s not something I have to deal with often in the future.

time to move on: the Manayunk arts festival

The Manayunk Arts Festival means so much to me. The day I moved to Philly in 2019, I met up with a friend and we went to check out the festival. I had seen on Instagram that an artist I followed was participating and it was only 10 minutes from my apartment. I ended up buying a print from her and a few other artists and could not believe how incredible the event was. I instantly knew I wanted to participate in the future! I applied and was accepted in 2020, but then the festival was canceled so I had to wait another year. I’ve done the festival every year since (and now live in the neighborhood) and even though it is so much prep work and always the HOTTEST weekend of the summer, I love doing it. 2024 was my best year by far and I went into the 2025 festival with big expectations. While I had some great sales and interactions, I didn’t come close to my success in 2024. Festivals and events have never been a major part of my business, and I think this was a sign that there are so many other things for me to focus on. In 2026 I will be taking the year off from the festival to be able to enjoy it as a spectator and we’ll see if I end up missing it or being ok without it. And seriously thank you so much to every single person that stopped by my booth the last few years, it’s so nice to meet people in person and get to chat. I will most definitely miss that!!

That's a wrap on 2025!

Thank you to everyone who has supported me this year and followed along with my work! As always, I can’t wait to create tons of new illustrations in 2026. I have some updates coming soon to my website and offerings, so stay tuned!