The Ups and Downs of Being an Artist
I guess the best way to start this post is to say that I have been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil, even though it’s become quite a cliché statement. But I have a slight leverage; my mom says that she caught me eating paper a few times.
In other words, I’ve always known that I was going to grow up to be an artist. Luckily my parents always supported me and my talent.
Over the years, the achievements kept piling up: winning first place in art competitions, top of my class at university, exhibiting locally and later exhibiting in London for the first time in 2018. By this point, I felt larger than life, unstoppable—like I could do anything and get anywhere.
This was until I finally made the official move to London to start a new life with my husband, and that’s when I felt the weight of things. I had left all my art behind back home, and I literally had to start from scratch. No one knew me, I had no connections and no knowledge of anything in the art field in London. I had a lot of work and a lot of figuring-things-out to do.
This brings me to talk about my experience of being an artist so far.
Art is great overall to adopt as a career. I started making money at the age of 14 by doing portrait commissions for my friends and family on special occasions: birthdays, relationship anniversaries, etc. One could get pretty famous quite quickly through word of mouth. This got me a lot of job offers with local authors, publishing houses, and regional magazines. Even though I was enjoying it a lot, it was still art-by-commission rather than selling my own actual work. There’s of course nothing wrong with that as a lot of artists choose to take that direction in their career and have it centered around commissioning. It’s just not what I personally wanted to do.
If you are looking to become a full time artist, you must first decide what kind of art path you want to take (in my opinion). Do you want to do fan-art? Celebrity portraits? Commissioned work (ex. people & pet portraits), or do you want to be a creative visual artist doing their own thing and developing their own career through exhibiting in galleries and the likes. This would definitely help is defining you as an artist and would make it easier to find the right audience for you.
Whatever you decide to do, there is no denying that there are awesome perks that come with the job:
Your job is literally a full-time outlet for expression and creativity: you can use it to address any topic, matter, and feeling through your art.
It’s extremely therapeutic: which kind of falls in with the first point but I feel like it still deserves its own spotlight.
You can choose your own working hours: YES! This is the best thing about the job. I’m sure people working from home during the pandemic are enjoying being huddled on the couch under a cosy blanket, sipping on their favourite tea, and most importantly not having to wake up early for the morning commute.
For freelance artists, this is the norm for us. We’re used to our quirky thick socks and hanging out with our pets while making art and doing admin work. Ultimately, this also means that you have full control over what you do with your life, especially when it comes to travel and exploration because you can literally make art from anywhere in the world.
You are your own boss: you probably hear this a lot to the point where it’s just redundant, but it’s true. You do what you believe in. You also choose the whens, hows, and wheres.
You’re in a constant state of evolution: ever heard of people who are stuck in a dead end job with nowhere to go? Well, technically, when it comes to experience and knowledge about your field, you’re always in a state of evolving and growing.
Again, because you’re your own boss, you play by your own rules, which means that you would have the previlige of learning, maturing, expanding your imagination, experimentating, and progressing in your work as an artist.
One of the things that we can do that isn’t necessarily allowed in a lot of other jobs is to fail and learn from out mistakes. We can do it behind closed doors and we have the opportunity to get back on our feet. No one is getting fired today.
The great sense of accomplishment when selling your art: And the euphoric feeling you get when you know that your art has touched, helped, and/or inspired someone out there in some way. This direct communication with your audience makes the journey much more meaningful and sentimental.
If you’re still following at this point, I’m sure you’re wondering: this sounds amazing, why doesn’t everyone choose to be a freelance artist? Well, like everything in this world, there’s always a yin to the yang.
It’s not all about the raw natural talent: this is something that I actually used to think before, only to find out that the art-making is just a part of having a professional art career. There is a lot of admin work to do. A lot of submissions, rejections, marketing, forming connections, and the list goes on.
There’s no steady income: if you decide to do art full-time with no jobs on the side, you’re very likely looking at an inconsistent flow of income. So choosing a job when you rely on making a living through the sale of your work alone can definitely be a tricky matter.
You may get to a point where you’re working overtime just to pay the bills: from personal experience, I remember working so many hours each week to be able to deliver artworks and meet deadlines—staying up for almost three days straight, going to sleep at 5 AM, all to meet tight schedules and deadlines for clients, exhibitions, etc. Although this is not always the case, you must be prepared for this scenario.
It’s a long way to the top: although there are some overnight success stories out there, it’s hardly the case for the majority of emerging and striving artists. The journey can definitely be mentally and physically draining. Whether you’re dealing you ghosting or rejections after submitting your work to a gallery or a magazine, suffering from artist block at the worst times, trying hard to build an audience, things going wrong while creating an artwork…these are all a fraction of the things an artist has to deal with.
As a wrap up, despite the downside of being a professional freelance artist, I stand here today (or sit behind my computer screen) a proud one. I personally think that the pros outweight the cons. No matter how difficult things get, and no matter what the uncertainties that accompany this job are, I would never see myself doing anything else.
I simply love being an artist.