Quitting my day job!

After the birth of my second child, I continued to do the odd portrait commission when I could - my girl wasn’t much of a sleeper though so there wasn’t that much time to do this! When she was around 7 months old, we needed the extra income so I went back to teaching for two days a week which gave us JUST enough money to supplement my partners income and scrape by. My little girl is a very social bunny so it wasn’t long before I popped her into daycare for an extra day in which I could focus on my drawing - or just REST for a bit!

To start with, my main source of commissions came from posting my work on Facebook community pages in the place that I lived. I soon became know as the lady that draws the animals, and I had a fairly constant stream of bookings.

At this point, I was still not charging very much (relatively) for my portraits, but as my confidence in my skills and as my work got better, I slowly raised my prices to a more realistic wage. For those artists reading, you’ll know that pricing our work is one of the hardest things to do. We can’t necessarily go with an hourly rate because all art takes a different amount of time, but where do we begin? With my drawing, I began by looking at an hourly rate as a gauge. I was working for almost half the minimum wage when I started, so that was a fairly good start in telling myself I couldn’t survive on that much longer!

In June 2022, I was teaching two days a week and drawing two days a week but still having to draw most evenings too. I had been researching and following a number of pet portrait artists at this point and I decided that it was time to look into introducing colour. Coming from a painting background, watercolour was my first go to medium. Watercolour pencils to be exact. I loved it; and they had a good response from people too as commissions continued to come in.

As much as I loved the watercolour, I was keen to explore more and had been keeping an eye on soft pastel artists.

Held back by the initial cost, I saw a soft pastel workshop come up one day and jumped at the chance to give the medium a try before investing too deeply. Needless to say, I quite liked them and it wasn’t long before I was doing my first commission in my new medium, soft pastels!

I drew this gorgeous husky dog in July 2022 and I think this is when my turning point was. I realised that I was actually pretty good at this animal gig, and that it could possibly actually go somewhere! At this point, I had made myself a goal to be able to go fulltime with my art commissions by the end of the school year.

I amped up my advertising on Facebook and I soon filled my commission slots for at least 2 months. It did help that Christmas was nearing so these made wonderful gifts - and my price point was still very reasonable.

It was around September that I realised how exhausted I was getting. Having two jobs, albeit part time ones, is mentally exhausting. I guess I also hadn’t fully invited the fact that I was started a new business! This in itself is a big thing and I had to learn how to manage the business side of things, get my commissions done on time, continue to learn new soft pastel techniques, maintain my high quality of teaching for 2 days….AND be a Mum to two beautiful children and a present partner to my gorgeous fella. It was a lot on my wee brain and I needed to change something.

So, what else was there but to take the leap and resign from my teaching job a whole term earlier than I was planning.

To be honest, it wasn’t that much of a leap because I had bookings coming out my ears so I knew I was going to survive financially. And we kept saying, that if it all turns to custard I can do some relief teaching here and there to get a bit of cash.

It hasn’t turned to custard just yet! I have definitely had some lulls where I’ve had no bookings and have almost reached out to schools, but then somehow they have picked up again!

My brain is still a constant buzz, but it is a buzz on passion. Although the marketing side of being a fulltime artist is still a learning curve for me, it is lucky that I love to learn new things!

Thank you for joining me here. It is only because of you’re interest that I have been able to get this far! Where to next?!