#also i'll be trying to balance this account with other ones...... wish me luck

[fure-dcmk]

As one of my favourite and most inspiring artists on Tumblr, I wanted to ask you for advice about being an artist online

I'm a self-taught artist who mostly draws OCs for my own amusement but I also like trying to draw fan art and I had accounts before where I posted some of my art

But I'm very self-critical so I took down my art because I'm still learning and I hated finding mistakes in it. I also deleted my accounts due to personal life setbacks.

But I really want to get back to posting again one day hopefully after I practice digital art more.

So... do you have any advice for artists who are insecure about putting themselves out there and engaging with a public audience?

I really would appreciate your insight

Thank you

♥️

Aaaa anon i'm not sure if I can give any useful advice but i'll try T_T

personally I'm pretty lenient on myself, i prefer to prioritize productivity than quality. so im not sure how helpful my POV would be to a perfectionist. and i see myself as a 'fandom artist' where people follow me for a specific fandom rather than my own art. plus drawing is my way to consume and process my obsession, I have no inclination to do original stuff. in other word, i truly feel inept in providing an advice on this anon orz

but I'll try anyway, it depends on what you want from posting art online. do you want the dopamine from seeing others enjoying your work? do you want to make friends? are you frustrated a thing you like barely has any content so you decide to cook your own food? you should have a vauge idea of what you want from posting

in my opinion, new artist tend to be more insecure in posting, a lack of engagement can demotivate you from posting entirely. so, posting serious art that take days to make are the motivationally the riskiest. people usually struggle to give feedback to serious art. when these posts flop you'll end up feeling more insecure

my advice is to prioritize fun first. things like memes, funny or interesting ideas. sketchy comics are my go-to tbh. people usually have more things to say on things like that.

so you can try to balance low effort content so that it doesn't hurt as much when the stuff that you do spend a lot of time in flops. doesnt mean you should stop experimenting and improving, just do keep in mind posts like that usually don't do that well, you should set your expectations properly.

^this is the most realistic advice i could give anon.

also im not sure if this would be helpful but everytime i get into a new thing, i will first only draw for myself. I'll only start to upload when i hoard too much and it start to feel ridiculous to not publish them

I'm wishing you luck on your art journey!

[finarfiniel]

            hi i’m alive & cas has.............. kind of brought back my muse big time so i?? am kind of back?

[doodoodloo]

*this is an honest question plz answer* how do u make money to travel to like Japan and live in a place as an artist? How do you make money? I'm an aspiring artist but I really do fear that one day I'll be homeless..

hi! thanks for your question!

just to clear things up from the start, i sadly don’t make all my travel / other money from my art. though if i add up all my revenue since i started selling four years ago, i have made almost enough to cover all of my airfares for all of my trips since leaving school! it makes me feel thankful and somewhat proud that i was able to provide adventure for myself by using a pen and paper to get myself to Iceland, for example ~ so, it can be done.

for all of my trips i’ve had a period of working really hard, followed by a period of travel or leisure time, and i’ve personally decided that it’s worth putting in a hard slog for what is almost always a worthwhile reward! i’ve done it in several different ways. for my first trip around Australia, i made a relatively wussy effort to pull together funds by gardening, babysitting and house painting. i was straight out of school and i started with about $150 in my bank account, and left with a couple thousand for a trip of 6 months. i slept on the beach and lived off home brand two minute noodles and most of my money went to petrol for our van! my mum sent me about two hundred so that i could get home from Darwin and i came home to my family, broke.

when i got home i was really fired up to go to SE Asia, so I got a job at a local cafe in my hometown washing dishes four to five days a week, and the other days i house painted and babysat. for a few months i worked seven days a week! i’m not sure where you’re from, but the wage here is decent so i saved pretty fast. i went on a six month trip around SE Asia as planned, plus India and Nepal! when i got home i mooched around a bit and procrastinated and was generally a lazy potato under my parents roof, since i had applied for uni in Melb but still had six months until it started. i know i did odd jobs but that time is sort of a blur. 

then when i was about to start my first year of university the Aus government gave me a ‘relocation scholarship’ which is granted to any young student that has to move from a rural or regional area to the city to study. at the time the total amount was 5,000 paid into my bank account (ridiculous, i know). i payed bond on my house in the city but still had a yummy chunk of cash sitting around. 

at the same time i opened my Etsy shop and made a decent amount in that year, the only year in the last seven years that i haven’t travelled! again, i’m not sure where you’re from, but in Australia students that are considered independent from their parents (living separately or age 22 and over) are granted a fortnightly allowance to support them while studying. if you begin to earn over a certain amount fortnightly from personal employment, then the allowance goes down. i was granted the full allowance of 500 per fortnight, and decided to sit on that full allowance without earning a separate wage from an ‘official job’. i lived a very modest student life, and didn’t buy alcohol, eat out or go to gigs very often! also, my housemate and friend worked at a fruit and veg deli / store near our place and he brought back so much free food after work! i owe him a lot for getting through that first real year of living out of home!

for the next two years things followed the same style. i worked a bit harder on my art and got some more regular babysitting gigs in my suburb. in two years i somehow managed to get to both Iceland and the USA for two months each trip. i can’t really tell you how i made that happen. honestly, my money making habits are still something of a mystery to myself! i do recall one night making a quiet wish in my head for more money to come my way before one of my trips. the next day i got an email from the tumblr team in cahoots with converse, and they were running a social media promotion in collaboration with tumblr artists. they said they would pay me five hundred US bucks for one drawing and i thought it was a joke! but i followed through with the job and the money came into my account the next month !!

when i moved to the US last year i had ok savings and i shared the cost of my silly expensive work visa with my bf, bless him. i worked two jobs really hard for 9 months of my time there, and thankfully i didn’t have to pay bond, and my rent was exceptional. but ugh it was so hard to save with the US wage, though i definitely could have been more frugal with my dollars.

most of that money that i saved for a whole of last year just went to my very short trip in japan. i had such a blast that i don’t really care about having spent it all! living in the US was kind of like traveling anyway, so i feel like i got a lot from both experiences.

my ability to travel has come down to a lot of luck + some decent effort, my style of travel, the ability to return to my family home and the student help i got from the government. i’m kind of known amongst some of my friends as this mystery money maker that for many years had only had one ‘real’ job that lasted four months. i somehow have maintained that for several years.

if you want to make money from your art in the early stages, i guess you have to find a balance between giving yourself time to work on your art, and employment that offsets the time. i don’t plan to ever try to support myself just from art, but that would be cool if i found myself in that position.

as usual, i’ve given a much longer reply than necessary! but also, i want to give you an honest idea of the processes i’ve gone through to make my dreams happen, since i don’t want you to assume i just galavant all around the world with tons of dollars to spend. i live simply, and my only indulgence is buying clothes :p Hope I gave you some insight! Also, I don’t think you’ll be homeless! things will unfold for you and you’ll make it work! 

luck & love,

x Freya