What's it mean to be a professional artist? (Patreon)

Hello 2024! It's that time of year where I contemplate what it is I'm doing with my career, and what sort of steps I need to take for advancing towards my goals. I'll throw a summary down at the bottom if all my ramblings make your eyes glaze over, so there'll be that at least lol.

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did patreon get rid of the readmore line? or ANY of its lines? man that's dumb.

Anyway, a question that's been on my mind the last couple months is-

What does it mean to be a professional artist?

Is being a professional marked by success? Is it marked by skill? Is it marked by the amount of money you make? Is it marked by popularity or in the way you act? Is it marked by consistency in what you make? Or a focus in any particular subject? Are you a professional artist when you decide to make that your career and your primary means of making money?

It's probably all of that, honestly. Or most of it. Being a professional artist involves many factors that, at times, I feel very disqualified from. I've experienced a significant amount of burnout in the last few years in an attempt to pursue this concept of "professionalism." I believed that because my social media standing seemed significant enough, that meant that maybe I was ready to do art "professionally." I certainly felt that my skills were up to the level of a professional, at least in terms of doing what I've always done- character illustrations.

But something that's always been difficult for me trying to be an artist online and on Twitter, trying to be someone who emulates other "successful" artists, is that concept of "consistency." And I don't think it's a question that I'm very inconsistent in what I produce lol. For months on end I might be obsessed with OCs, and then I get a stroke of inspiration from something I've watched or read and wanna do art of it. Bigger artists tend to "make it" because they can consistently produce work focused on media they like, and carve a niche by catering mostly into that interest. And that's not just a SFW art trend, this does also apply to drawing porn.

For a long time now, the "goal" of the Patreon was to balance things I knew people wanted to see with the things I wanted to make. This meant doing fanart, this meant drawing other people's characters. This meant trying to do what I saw big artists do to keep up their income-meaning commissions, requests, and monthly polls.

But I'm just not that kind of person. If I get too rigidly set into a schedule, I freak out when I think I'm not meeting my deadlines, so polls were not good for me. I do enjoy indulging fanart on occasion, and I do get flashes of inspiration in that regard very rarely myself. It's not without external stimuli (commissions, requests, someone catching me at the right time) that I feel very inspired to do that on my own. Which sucks! lmao. I'd love to draw the things I like more, but my primary inspiration just doesn't come from it.

So what sort of "success" have I found as a "professional" artist so far?

I understand the concept behind "success" as an artist, and that involves doing work you personally might not be interested in. And it's not like I can't do that, I've been doing that all my life. But not always in a "professional" way.

If a "professional" artist (online) carves their niche by drawing fandom artwork, I've been carving my niche the last decade of my life by drawing OC content. And I don't think you need me to tell you that can be an extremely unfulfilling niche to fill depending on who you are lol.

That's not to say that I don't think that I can't find success drawing my OCs, no. I think people like my OCs, and you see other artists make it entirely by drawing their OCs, and working on their personal projects. Maybe they had a background in drawing fandom content, but it's clear that their interest is ultimately in doing OC projects. And that's fine!

No, what I'm talking about is how always doing OC art for others has really been dragging me down for years. I love drawing for my friends. I love to validate their creativity, and I love to show my appreciation through art for people I am much more personable with. I personally feel much more satisfied producing on a personal level than on a fandom level, because it does give me quite a lot of validation in what I do if people view me as reliable in that manner.

But this isn't something I can keep doing if I want to find profit. If I want to find success. I can draw my friends' OCs, but unless we are mutually very popular artists, there is nothing more to gain from it than making a fun friend activity out of it (not bad thing, not a bad thing, not inherently a bad thing)

Similarly, unless my commissioner is very popular or very loaded, I cannot afford to always take on certain jobs that might not give me any reach in a direction I like. And yes this does happen in professional work- that is, taking work on that doesn't necessarily give you views- but that doesn't mean it's not a problem in professional work either.

It's a problem when I take on work I inherently cannot market because the subject is "my friend's OC" or "my client's OC," or works that I take on from certain IRL clients so I can maintain a divide between my public and online identities. It's a problem when the time I could be spending on more profitable work, like developing my personal projects or drawing fandom art I can sell, is being used to instead draw content that only appeals towards my friends or my clients.

And so I don't think my method of work has been very professional. It's taken an embarrassingly long time to realize and understand this, but I've been trying to make money off hobby art this entire time.

Hobby Art?

Yes, I am trying to earn money through art commissions. I do run it like a business. In that respect, I am not making hobby art, I am making professional art. However, I am constantly producing art for hobbyists. With all due respect, many of my clients are, in fact, hobbyists. An OC job, if the client is not well known or isn't paying big bucks, that is a hobby job. I'm not producing art for somebody's next novel, I am not producing art for use in someone's fan fiction, I'm not producing art that will be shown to a potentially wider audience, nor do I have a contract with somebody in which I produce art for a production.

I am drawing people's OCs on the internet for less than my state's minimum wage. And most of the time, nobody even knows who these random character designs I'm drawing are.

And that's not good. That's not good for me to clarify. There is nothing wrong with hobby artists, there is nothing wrong with OC artists, there is nothing wrong with hobbyists who just like having OCs, and there is nothing inherently wrong if all you want to do is draw your friends' OCs and circulate those five dollars between all of you. That can be fun!

But I can't keep doing that lol. I made a resolution to do that less a few months ago, and I haven't fully committed because the immediate reward that comes from drawing OC commissions keeps me afloat every month. I don't have a well paying real world job, so I have to balance it with art commissions. But all the art commissions I receive don't make me a larger artist, it just feeds back into the same circle of friends and my audience doesn't grow. As a result, I stagnate and don't come any closer to increasing the money I make so I can spend more time making what I truly want to make.

It's a bad cycle! And I know I have to break out of it sooner or later. I turn 28 this year. I am almost a 30 year old man who has had to work out the world very slowly because art is all I have, and it gets increasingly more shameful that I don't understand how certain things go because my world experience is just that limited. Art is the main thing that makes me happy, and it's difficult to part ways with the main thing I am proud of being able to do. I want to do more with my life.

I continuously want to give my respects to the people who got me this far in life, but doing that keeps me trapped in this cycle. And a lot of that is on me. I've spent a long time untangling my unhealthy mental fixation with gratitude, respect, and validation, and I'm still working on that. If I'm gonna fully escape thinking that I need to be affordable for my friends and small regular audience, I need to start focusing on making enough money for myself. I gotta start doing a few things differently.

So here's the plan

The first major step I need to do, really, is to stop doing small profit work. I've been back on my bullshit when it comes to those sketch commission. Those commissions are still WAYYYY too good for the value most people get them for, on top of the time one can take. I'm too much of a perfectionist, and I've been stuck in the mentality that $45 justifies spending two-four hours on one sketch. That's 2-4 hours I could've spent making more than $45.

So starting next month, ko-fi sketch commissions are no more. You can still toss like $5 bucks for a very shitty doodle after that, but nothing on the scale I've been doing.

The next step I'll be taking is repricing my commissions. This'll hurt a lot of people and is quite a big mental hurdle for me to overcome, but I'm gonna start pricing much higher on my commissions. An average commission will at least be costing more than $100, is what I mean.

I took a rushjob 1-day commission for my cousin this Christmas, and she wanted me to draw EIGHT PEOPLE for a Christmas card. Simple cartoon characters, but it's still eight people. My brother ran the math on that for me, and said the work I did was easily worth $800 or more at least, and to draw even eight simple cartoon characters means that commission was less than $20 for each person. For something that took me the whole day, I only earned that much? There was a giga family discount at play, but boy, I do not want to disrespect myself like that again.

Rather than making another new graphic for commissions, I'm going to do something else that I've been putting off for a long time.

I am making a proper contact website for myself.

Most likely, I'm going to make a new Carrd website that can house my commission info, art examples, contact information, and all the links to my various social medias. This is a strong staple of professional artists I have just been putting off due to a combination of laziness and busy-ness, and I just gotta do it already!

Back to commissions though, I think the move might be that these more expensive commissions are just open all the time. This entirely depends on who is actually biting for these, because I know commissions that exceed more than $50 tends to dissuade the average internet art enjoyer. But either way, more expensive commissions will be my standard business model from here.

Regarding the actual work I'm focusing on from here on:

Remember how a while back I said I wanted to do one-shot comics? Yeah those are still in the planning phase. Alas, I am not that naturally good at writing, and so my writing process takes a lot of time and refinement before I hit the actual art phase lol. I've actually been doing a lot of writing and planning for Crash Buster, and I'm getting closer and closer to refining the story's outline into something that'll let me start writing the real stories and scripts and junk so I can draw it.

BUT

IN DOING SO MUCH PLANNING

I'VE REALIZED IN THE PROCESS

With all the story I want to tell and have planned, the shortest amount of time it will take for me to finish Crash Buster is............................................................

14 years.

Crash Buster is a 14 year minimum investment, and I REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY don't want to abandon it partway through. I'd like to produce more oneshot comics so that I at least have a small portfolio of comic works under my belt.

Oneshot comics will not bring in the dough, however. This much I'm aware of. Now, even though I said I am not naturally inclined to draw fanart, that doesn't mean I don't have inspiration every now and then.

Between drawing cool art of my own OCs, I'll try my best to do fanart that I want to do, and maybe chase a few trends here and there.

My own portfolio is still quite lacking in a few elements, and I'd like to use fanart and OC art that's for me to explore my weaknesses and improve on what I can't do. A lot of my art relied upon speed to complete character illustrations, meaning I've been shafting backgrounds for a REEEEALLY long time so I could improve character expression. Things like detailing have also suffered in my art experience, and even just going through the process of making a full art piece has become exhausting for myself.

I can't keep being Speedy McSpeedster producing sketch art of things just floating in the void. I want more for myself, and I want to develop into being a stronger, well-rounded artist. I'll need it for all the stories I want to tell. This goal has not changed, it's just growing more prominent as I finally pull back on things that have been hampering my development.

I might be forgetting a few more points I wanted to make, but I think those were the big things I wanted to say. If you made it all the way down here and actually wanted to read all my self-important ramblings- thank you lol. I collect these thoughts for months at a time, and they find their way out of my head in aggressively long bursts like these.

If you're just scrolling down for what all this is about, I don't blame you.

Here's the tl;dr:

• I've concluded that I've been doing hobby art for too long the way I've been focusing on drawing other people's OCs for fun and for commissions. This isn't professional behavior, and it's not what I want to keep doing with my life.
• I can't keep doing commissions for pennies, and I can't keep putting in work whose literal time-based value is less than my state's minimum wage. Ko-fi commissions are ending next month, and it's time to scale up into those big boy hundred dollar-ranges. ($5 doodles are still on the table though.)
• I'm probably going to make a new website using Carrd or whatever else to house samples of my art, my commission info, and all my contact details. It'll be better than my current plain and simple Carrd that I use to direct people around to my social medias.
• I'll still be chipping away at my comics, I'm just kind of a slow writer. Crash Buster alone will take me a minimum of 14 years, so I'd like to at least have a library of oneshots I can refer people to before I start it properly.
• In the meantime, my primary exports will be my OC art that I want to make, and fanart that I also personally want to produce. I need to start making art that gets me more notice, and I'd like to start doing what I should have always been doing- refining my art process and working on skills I'm not very good at.

So that's the plan! That's what's up, that's what I've been thinking.

Full disclosure, I probably will still be doing a few more "hobbyist" art pieces in the near future. I've really been itching to do a character fusion prompt on Twitter and/or Tumblr, and that'll probably happen after I complete the last set of Crash Buster references I wanted to do. Doing references for Zeke, Sapphire, and Nova will leave me plenty satisfied going into the future. I think it'll be fun, and the more important part is that engages people in a public space.

I'm going back to college as well this year by the way. I'm gonna try and earn a Bachelor's in Graphic Design so I can have a real world job that doesn't necessitate being a commissions type of person. If I'm lucky, I might be able to score an instructing job at the college I already have a real world job at as well in the Fall semester.

Other than that, I think that's it? Thanks again for reading through all this, I know I tend to ramble on for a long time. As always, I hope for your continued support through this year. 🙇