Now, how do I survive as an artist?!

So, I’m here. My ‘day job’ is ARTIST. How does that look?!

Firstly, I’m glad I took it slow to reach this point. My part-time teaching gig was the perfect backstop to helping me get where I am and I’m am so grateful that I had that to maintain my income as I grew my art business. I know many artists who struggle in the beginning because they don’t have that back support and then they feel a sense of failure when they indeed to have to pick up part time (real) work to supplement their income. I just wanted to say, that that is NOT FAILING! You are making your art life work, in whatever way you can and for me, that is a SUCCESS. If being an artist makes you happy, then find any means you can to make it a part of your life. Whether it be full time OR part time, it does not matter.

One of the biggest learnings for me in becoming a self-employed artist, was in fact the business side of things. Yes, I can do the ART. But what about the marketing, the selling, the getting my art into galleries, the making of art prints, the generating of new customers…pretty much all of this, I’ve had to learn along the way. And of course, there is no learning, without a certain amount of mistakes :)

Using social media to get your work out there is one of those things that seems easy, but is incredibly mind blowing. The algorithms and all that jazz, is still far to advanced for me to worry about but I do try to be as real as I can, and I am learning to show more of my ‘self’ for my followers to see. There are so many soft pastel artists out there at the moment and it can be incredibly intimidating putting my work out there among all of these amazing artists. I try to remember that the world is wide. No matter how many artists there are, there are enough eyes who would like to see what you do, so keep on keeping on.

I’ve started slowly to streamline my weeks to ensure that I have enough time to do everything that I need to do. I had to remind myself the other day, that I keep saying that I’m a FULLTIME artist, but that’s not entirely correct! I only have 30 hours a week without kids, allocated to my art business. So I’m more accurately a part-time artist, full time Mum!
For those artists reading, here is my tip this week. Set aside one day of the week to do those admin tasks that we don’t realise we need to do. Monday is my admin day and it is filled with emails, blogs, checking in on bookings, marketing, tracking expenses, taxes, making prints, framing, follow ups, trying to plan some social media posts and the list goes on. Needless to say, that even though I actually get NO drawing done on Mondays, it’s my busiest day of the week!

But I find that getting this stuff out of the way on Monday, allows my brain the space to relax into my drawing commissions for the rest of the week. It’s working really well.

Let me know in the comments, what it is you do! Are you an artist following this for tips? Or are you just interested in my journey? Either way, I appreciate you fully.

In my next blog post, I’ll give some insight into the reason I love soft pastels. Or is there something else you’d like to know?

Much love

Berny x