Industrious Illustrating #41 – Another Year!

Hello and welcome back to year 3 of Industrious Illustrating, which means a new header image! I’m going with a new header image look this year to reflect my growth and evolving identity as an artist. Each header image shows off some of the works I’m the most proud of making in the past few years.

In terms of other changes, I’ve been thinking recently about what I want this school year’s Industrious Illustrating columns to look like. Ever since I started selling art at anime cons over a year ago, more and more of this column has focused on conventions and upcoming events I’m doing. Just talking about these events in announcements isn’t the most riveting blog material, so I thought about how to make my experiences more interesting and unique as content.

I then decided that I’ll be putting a greater focus this year on writing about the ins and outs of being a freelancer and selling my art. While I will still post about the artwork I’ve made recently and the processes that go into making art, I also want to bring my own experiences running a small business as an artist to the table for people who may be interested in making that jump to marketing and selling their creations for money.

Some of the business topics I plan on addressing with this year’s Industrious Illustrating columns:

• Profit margins
• Different types of art products
• The “marketing funnel”
• Different types of art fairs/conventions
• Fanart vs. original art
• Commission invoices and finding clients
• How much does a social media following matter?

And much more! I’m also up for doing columns about topics suggested in the comments on my posts, if anyone has questions or wants me to elaborate more on any of the topics I’ll talk about this year. Anyway, I hope you guys will continue to follow along with this blog column this year even now that I’m moving slightly to a new focus!