Sunday Thoughts (Ep. 39) (Patreon)

Hello Patrons, good afternoon, or good evening! Another Happy Sunday to you, another week on this earth in the books.  I hope you had a great first week of February!

This week for me has been delightful, as Seattle has been hit by two snow storms in the past seven days, making it the snowiest February since the 40s. I LOVE snow, love bundling up, love hygge and coziness, love winter and autumn and unexpected changes in the daily same same. I am an undeniable lover of the changes in the seasons.  

Also I work at home, live a few blocks walking distance from the grocery store, and don't have to drive anywhere.

During the first snow storm I took a bit of time to do the above personal piece. The cozy life of a freelance illustrator who works from her living room. Often I draw the first thing that comes to my mind, and often it is myself in my current situation. I like to think of it as a form of mindfulness!

We are savoring the latest snow fall, what seems like 6-7" from Friday night.

It's all anyone is talking about, in person and on social media. The Washington Governor declared a State of Emergency, as the state is completely unprepared to handle this amount of snow. The grocery stores were overflowing on Thursday and Friday. Everyone has been sharing photos of the empty grocery store shelves, cleared of bread, onions, greens, broccoli, tofu. Seattleites are calling it Snowmageddon, or the Snowpocalypse.

If you think that's an exaggeration, remember that we have very very steep hills and relatively higher temperatures that melt and refreeze the ice into thick, slick sheets. And barely enough trucks and salt to clear the major roads, let alone the whole city. 

On Saturday morning I literally dragged Zach out of bed at 7:30 to pour of mug of instant coffee and hike the neighborhood before everyone else in the city woke up.

We hiked through mostly unbroken snow, up the steep and empty hills to the top of Phinney Ridge, for a chilly and gorgeous view of our neighborhood. One tiny neighborhood coffee shop was open, and in true Seattle fashion was already filled with people chatting about the snow. Some of the steepest hills were blocked off with signs and police tape to keep cars from damaging themselves or others, like in this video from 2010 (don't worry, no one got hurt.) We saw adults happily sledding down these steep hills. 

And up the same hill a big SUV broke through the police tape to power its way up. Dangerous and selfish.

The normally busy streets were almost entirely empty.

What do we do after a lovely hike on a snowy day? Make vegan biscuits and gravy and more coffee, home yoga, cook a big pot of dried black beans, drink some hearty stout, watch movies, and do some drawing.

As far as work goes I've continued to be busy with a couple of commissions I took at the end of January. I've been trying to condense my commissions to only certain open times, but last month I opened for a few extra people who had bigger projects or longer timelines.

Which is fine, which is great! A commission is a commission, money is money. But I'm a little disappointed, as I'd intended to open digital commissions before Valentine's day. I was too busy finishing up the other projects to have enough time for the holiday. After debating opening up speed portrait slots, or just very few digital slots, I decided to just wait until after V-Day to open traditional and digital spots for April. I think that's going to be the best way to do portraits and still leave time for any other art thing I want to do. Have a set time every month that my commissions will open for the next month.

I'm refining this portrait process bit by bit!

One fun digital commission was from a former co-worker who plays a competitive arcade game called Killer Queen. (This co-worker has now commissioned me 5 separate times, what a champ!) Her team is hosting a new regular tournament and asked me to illustrate a poster for the event.

It was fun to experiment with more larger scale posters and designs, but I definitely feel rusty. My next step to improve at this kind of illustration is to research what kind of posters I like and find appealing, and then to do some study on the fundamentals of design. 

It looks like the team will commission me for future posters, so hopefully I'll get more practice at this!

A new/old art meme has been making its rounds again: Artvsartist !

This tag is a fun way to find new artists, see the artist behind the art, and see how similar/dissimilar they look to their art or characters.

I'm of the opinion that artists should already be posting pictures of themselves along with their art. From what I understand it helps you audience connect with you better, remember your art, and see that there is a person making the art that they love.

But! I do like this to see a quick way my art has changed from when the meme was going around last year! I feel like my art has improved hugely, with a unified design language, solidified color palette, new rendering skills, and pushing the boundaries of my design a little further. And my hair has grown but that's just life.

A final big achievement from this past week was meeting with a Tax Consultant,  by name of Jenny! My good friend Tori heard Jenny talking with a client at the coffeeshop Tori works in, and approached to ask her if she worked with taxes and accounting! Tori passed on her information to me, and I immediately set up a one-time consultation.

I had hoped to learn to do my businesses taxes and accounting myself, rather than hiring an accountant to do them for me. Jenny is an amazing resource for small-businesses in Seattle, and puts her focus on advising women.

She gave me a few worksheets and information sheets to help me do my own taxes at the four different levels (City, county, state, and national.) She answered all my questions about taxes/accounting/paperwork, and was so inspiring and honest and encouraging as she did. She even passed on her personal formatted excel files to help me keep up with my own bookkeeping. 

I think this was a perfect investment to help me feel more confident in my business taxes and finances. If you're in Seattle she has an amazing blog/website  with free how-tos and information. She also has regular pay-what-you-can information sessions at local coffeeshops!

A FEW TAX LESSONS I LEARNED:

1. Make taxes fun. Do it ahead of time, plan a specific day and put it in your calendar. Play your favorite music, drink a little wine, get comfy. And shift your frame of mind about taxes: think of this as a way of being proud of how much money you made this year! And when you're done treat yourself to something special.

2. Call the representatives for whatever taxes you're doing if you have questions/are confused! This seems so obvious but is so helpful. They're literally there to answer your questions and to help you do your taxes correctly. 

3. Separate your taxes! Also seems very obvious, but have a separate bank account for your business earnings. Then have a separate savings account within that to reserve for paying your taxes. Calculate what percentage of your revenue will go to taxes, and put that away. Calculate your possible expenses for tools, supplies, domain names, software, convention tables, etc, and put that away in its own account too. Simple, but genius!

4. Etsy remits your collects and remits your sales tax for you! So all you have to do is report that tax, you don't have to pay it. Very important to learn! (I need to request a refund because I've been paying that sales tax all year!)

I hope some of this is new or useful to you, some of it was mind blowing to me! Especially the idea of making taxes fun somehow. We've got to make peace with it at some point, as business owners we literally have to do it multiple times a year for our entire lives.

That's all for now, lovelies! It was a good and happy and peaceful week. I hope your upcoming week is good and happy and peaceful too, you deserve it!

xoxo

Ragon