I wanted to make this post in celebration of the Polish Independence Day that is coming on November 11th. Poland has struggled with democracy, freedom of speech, and basic human rights in the past years due to the oppressive, far-right and Euroskeptic government ruling the country. This is changing now that parliamentary elections last month revealed the opposition was chosen to take over, which will open many new doors for Poland on the international scene and start positive change within the country. Truly an Independence Day to celebrate.
just curious, Krakow, PolandZakopane, PolandMy home – Kraków, Poland
Last weekend I actually got off of the Youmacon Artist Alley waitlist extremely last-minute (like, getting off on Friday of the Friday to Sunday convention weekend last-minute), so I tabled for all three days with the stock I had prepared for Motor City Comic Con and actually surpassed all of my previous sales records and expectations for convention selling! If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I split a table at last year’s Youmacon with a friend as one of my first convention selling experiences. This year I had a whole table to myself, and I think my art and display have seen massive improvements since then, as you can see in my table display pictured below:
My convention table setup this year, though I did rearrange some of the prints on my photostand later that weekend
Considering how much better my bank account looks now, I actually want to talk about a few different types of income streams that working artists rely upon to make a living, pay bills, keep their art business going, or sometimes just to have “fun money”. Typically artists will rely on multiple income streams/sources to minimize volatility from surges and recessions in the demand for certain types of art services.
Commissions
Getting other people to pay for you to draw them custom artwork is a pretty common way to make money as an artist. If your skills are valuable enough and you get your name out there one way or another, clients will be willing to pay a pretty penny for your services. Typical personal commissions cost anywhere from sub-100 dollars to hundreds of dollars, with some clients potentially being willing to pay over a thousand or more for your artwork if you’re in the top echelon of commission artists.
Commercial commissions (e.g. working as a contractor) pay much better than personal commissions and typically pay several thousand dollars per piece, but they’re also much harder to secure with higher skill and networking requirements to get your foot in the door.
Online Store
A lot of artists run an online store, whether they’re selling digital products, their mass-manufactured products, or even original artworks. If a lot of people from around the country or world want to purchase your products, this can be a decently regular and significant income source. However, there’s a lot of necessary know-how to actually market and run and online store, and actually fulfilling orders can become very time-consuming (I literally just spent 2 hours the other day packing orders). While I don’t focus as much on my online store as I do on other income sources, my online store has taken off enough to the point that it now constitutes a decent part of my income in between commissions and conventions.
Conventions (mass-produced products)
I’ve definitely already discussed conventions a few times before on this column, but they’re worth mentioning again if the type of art you create is geared toward pop-culture fans or simply can be sold in a cheaper mass-manufactured form. Just like with most types of online stores, the money you make per sale isn’t that much, but getting a lot of purchases in a single weekend can add up pretty fast and lead to significant take-home income relative to the amount of hours you spent selling. However, the cost and time investment involved in paying for table space/travel/merchandise is also pretty significant, and most people only break even or barely make a profit after expenses.
Fine Art events (originals)
I don’t know as much about this type of income since I’ve never tried to make money through this income stream, but I’ve attended a bunch and have a few acquaintances who are working to break into this sphere. Just as online stores and convention selling involve combining business acumen with an attractive display and good art to make people believe in the worth of your work, fine art events involve showing off your impressive one-of-a-kind creations and selling them for large sums of money similar to or larger than the amount of money you’d charge for custom commissions (in the hundreds or thousands of dollars). They also have a high initial start-up cost and most people don’t actually make a living off of doing this (which is true for pretty much all of the income streams here). Really, the main difference is the type of audience you have to woo and what kinds of signifiers (e.g. connections, presentation, the quality of your artwork) they recognize as determining the value of paying for your work. As for what those are, you’re better off asking someone else besides me, sorry.
Patreon/Subscriptions
I also don’t know as much about this type of income source, but it’s the closest thing that many independent artists have to a reliable income source. Usually this takes the form of digital goodies (work-in-progress pics, high-quality final pics, a monthly poll to choose an art idea to draw, etc.), but some artists run monthly enamel pin/sticker/charm/etc. subscription services where they mail out a merch package to their subscribers on a regular basis. The per-patron revenue oftentimes isn’t very high because of the expectation that subscription services that provide the same services to everyone who use them shouldn’t be too expensive, but the artists who secure a large and devoted paying following can make a respectable income off of monthly subscription money.
Full-time work
The dream for many artists is to find stable, full-time work with a company so that they can get typical employment benefits (including retirement and health insurance) and not have to juggle several different hustles at the same time to get by. However, full-time employees are expensive for companies to pay for, so in the age of increasing cost-cutting, outsourcing, and automation there’s fewer and fewer full-time jobs available — and the ones that do still exist are oftentimes higher level jobs which require years of experience at other full-time art jobs. Basically, more and more artists in the future will have to rely on some of the other income sources described above.
Of course, these are all very broad descriptions, and there’s many much more specific ways to profit off of these types of income streams, but I hope these descriptions are helpful enough as a way to help you get thinking about how you want to get money in exchange for the value of your artistic labor!
Also, I’ll be tabling in the Artist Alley at Motor City Comic Con this weekend starting from the time that this post goes live, so I’ll make a mention of how I did at my first comic con tabling experience in next week’s column!
This is some spoilers for the later parts of Yim’s story, but I can’t help it, designing this was a lot of fun. Yim belongs to a Fae-Dragon court called The Cosmic Deep, which is all space, entropy, and eldritch horror. I really wanted to convey the power and cosmic horror of Yim’s new form, which was done by adding galaxy print! The second image are two of my colored concept drawings.
I lengthened their hair, made it unclear where some of the clothing seams were, and added this star map to their back, as well as a rip to outer space in their chest. The belt thing is actually a mouth. I experimented with giving Yim a freakier mouth biology but decided against it because of ease of drawing. Looking back, I think I want to add more mouths where the stitching is on the leftmost design of image 2. It would really up the creepiness factor.
I actually showed image 2 to my friends before I posted it. They preferred the design where Yim has a crop top. I do enjoy the concept of Yim exposing skin in this form. Yim normally stays covered, so revealing skin would convey a sense of wrongness inherent to this forceful transformation.
For a moment, Selene was blinded by a striking brightness. Her eyes stung with tears, and she struggled to blink them away. She held out her arms hoping that if her future child fell from somewhere, they would land safely in her arms.
However, when the brightness ceased, there was no child, and instead, she was roughly embraced by strange muscular arms. Ones that definitely did not belong to a baby.
“Let me go!” She struggled against her assaulter, beating on arms as firm as steel. But they did not yield and she was suffocated even further.
Eventually, she was let go of and forcefully turned around by those same deathly arms. She was met with the smiling face of a handsome man with iridescent eyes that glowed surreally. Yet she couldn’t get herself to smile back, for there was something ominous about the air that surrounded him— it was addicting and stifling like some sort of drug.
The man suddenly spoke, and she was allured by his deep melodious voice, “Lovely lady, I see that you have called for me.”
His utterance broke her out of the momentary spell. “I didn’t call for you. I called for a baby.”
His smile widened dangerously. “You did call for me. You called for the ‘Great Sun.’”
Dread coursed through Selene. Oh no . . . was he . . . ?
“And here I am, the Sun. Here to take your body and soul and give you a baby.”
Panic burned through Selene. For all intents and purposes, she had basically made a deal with the devil— a devil that glowed marvelously— but a devil nonetheless. She didn’t want a man, that’s why she went to the Sun in the first place, but now it seemed that she would still be stuck with one. And this was a man that was far more troublesome than she could have ever expected.
“And what if I say no?”
The sky darkened. Thunder struck in the distance. Wind began to howl. All of this happened at once as the Sun’s eyes glinted menacingly.
Selene supposed that her remark wasn’t appreciated. So she immediately took it back, “I was just kidding. Of course, I’ll . . . I’ll give myself to you.”
Suddenly, the sky cleared and the Sun’s face brightened with glee. But it didn’t relieve her fear.
“Wonderful! Shall we?” He asked her, holding out his palm for her to take.
And take it she did, but not without feeling like she had just signed her death warrant.
Sometimes it’s good to go outside your comfort zone. Take me, for example, self-proclaimed nerd and introvert — the last place I would expect to see myself is Rick’s, but there I was, dancing alongside my friends. The first five to ten minutes there were uncomfortable (see my above artistic rendition), but the minute I let go of the idea that people were looking at me, I started to have fun. I started to care less, giving into the early-2010s-pop remixes monopolizing my senses. Sometimes you just have to give into the music; life is too short and stressful as is. This is not my endorsement of Rick’s, as my opinion is still mixed, but it is to say this: at the very least, maybe consider dancing in your room with your headphones. There’s an inherently silly and unserious feeling to it, but that’s what makes it fun. Perhaps it’s “healing your inner child,” or whatever those self-help guides online say.
Recently, I’ve been planning out my final semester of my undergraduate education. It’s been stressful, as future planning and class registration tend to be. This time, though, I’m searching for an internship. Going into my target career field of sustainability is an exciting prospect, but I’ve been experiencing some imposter syndrome. I may be just over a semester away from graduating with my bachelor’s degree, but I can’t help but worry that I am unprepared for the real world.
“As you shape-shift through the Earth.”
These past few weeks, I’ve talked and met with many professionals and academics who I have viewed as my superiors. Somehow, these interactions have been overwhelmingly positive, and they give me a renewed faith in myself, my passion, and my knowledge. I need to remember these feelings when imposter syndrome and anxiety try to creep in. These may be uncomfortable feelings, but that is all they are: uncomfortable. I know that I am stronger than my fears.
“You knew me as fire; you have always been metal, water, wood,”
When it comes to the elements, I’ve always viewed myself as fire. Passionate, loud, and not afraid to speak up. This is funny, considering I’m a Leo, one of the fire signs, even funnier because this had no influence on me seeing myself as a fiery person. However, right now is a time of such growth and change for me, and I think it has become time for me to move forward more like water: relaxed, flexible, and gentle, but equally as powerful as fire.
“Be like water.”
My dad said this to me this past weekend: “be like water; stay water.” Flow freely, allow myself to be flexible with the waves and the tides of life. Do not stay rigid. Things change, and I must be able to adjust along with them. This conversation reminded me of a song I love by one of my favorite artists, Tori Amos, from her environmentally-focused album Ocean to Ocean. How fitting! Listening to this song has energized me: I have all the strength I need, and it’s been inside of me all along. Now to start my journey of being like water: remaining flexible through it all.
