Reinvesting into Yourself as an Artist

For most of artists, or people who create content in any form, getting that first commission or selling that first piece of merchandise is all they need as an initial boost to get them to turn their art into a full-time income. At least that’s what happened to me.

I still remember my first commission, which was a 3$ (yes, really) hand-drawn sketch I did back around April 2020, in the middle of our first lockdown. The commission itself wasn’t the most exciting thing, neither were the 3 dollars, not that I am not thankful of course. But the most exciting part in reality was the awakening, the sudden epiphany - wow, I can actually make money from this! And once the first commission turned into another one, and another one, I started scaling up, and so far I have managed to get enough money to go by from this alone.

However, the money I got did not go 100% to my needs and wants. At some point in the beginning I decided it would be wise (and it was) to actually reinvest in my hobby, which was slowly turning into a side-hustle. By doing this, I avoided the risk of growing stale and uninteresting to the audience, and I managed to stay motivated and keep this going for a long period of time. In this article I’ve listed some of the ways I have reinvested in my art business myself or in which I plan to do so in the future.

1. Get that fancy gear

This is our first point, even though it is probably the most expensive way to get better return-on-investment for your art career. When I say gear, I mean, in the case of digital artists, a better dawing tablet, a more exquisite drawing and editing software, maybe even a better laptop, why not. These purchases shouldn’t be the whole point of your artistic journey, and they probably shouldn’t become your only goalposts - your audience and the quality of your work will speak much more of your progress than your tech. Yet, still, it is obvious that a higher-class drawing tablet would make your quality a biiiiiiit higher.

I like to think of it this way - good tech/gear does not instantly make your art better, but it can act as a multiplier. Which means, the lower your current skill level, the less of a difference a better tablet would do. But if you happen to be a very high-level artist, if you go to a tablet which has better speed, graphics, effects, and is overall a bigger joy to use and makes you draw and draw and draw, the difference would be very huge.

So my outtake from this is that we shouldn’t neglect the effect of tools in our craft, even though they aren’t the most important aspect, and we should aim to utilise them as what they are, just tools that make us do better. A better tool would be a great way to boost your motivation to work, if not your immediate production quality.

2. Improve your reach

Now while in the previous point we discussed the hardware, let’s go to the software now, and I don’t mean the programs you use. The artistic ‘software’ is the network over which you spread your audience, your different social media and how much engagement do you have on each. It gets a bit more complicated though. For example, my website, the one you are reading this article on right now, is not a social media of any kind, but it still proved to be a great investment. During the first year of which it has been up in the internet space, it has helped me land 100+ clients and make me look a lot more professional, even if I was just a beginner a few months back. It is something I consider a very good investment, and the website hosting fee was something among the lines of 100-200$ annually, but it was so so worth it over the long run. And I believe that after an even longer period of time it would be worth even more, as it becomes more recognisable and it starts getting picked up by the Google algorithm by itself.

So there you have it, one way to invest in yourself - create your own website! It can serve as the place where you sell your art, showcase your portfolio, post your blog/writing, share more about yourself, overall to become more prolific in the public’s eyes.

Other ways in which you can improve your social media presence is by going Premium on some apps. For example, if you are on Ko-Fi, you may apply for Ko-Fi Gold, which makes you so much more reachable there, and allows you a number of options to sell your work that were previously unavailable. If you happen to use productivity apps, by going premium on them you may happen to become more productive in your career.

3. Recharge

Take this however you like - it could be a holiday, you may pay somebody to do your share of work, anything. The point’s that life isn’t only about work, work, work, and periods of rest are highly underrated. If you spent all your time practicing your art, drawing, exploring new styles, grinding, you’d end up getting burnt out really fast, and it may even worsen your content over time. Yes, the hustle is well-appreciated, but it would become essentially useless if you couldn’t manage to do it in the long-term. Projects such as an artistic career are marathons, not sprints, so periods of rest are essential. Once you make enough to get by, consider how you can make enough money to be able to rest more - maybe this means getting less hours of work at your non-artistic job and spending more time on rest and artistic endeavours. Maybe it means less drawing and more learning - there are tons of free and paid courses you can go to online to teach you a thing or two, which you can best absorb during a period of rest. It’s a bit more difficult to take new information in when you are constantly producing new works one after the other, sketch after sketch.

When you start thinking of your time more in terms of work-rest, output-input, it can help you become much calmer and more focused on your specific goals.

For the more advanced - Give back to the community

This would and should be the ultimate goal for anybody that has profitted off a given community - in our case the art community. Once you have all your utilities and rent and everything covered, have more than enough to lead a happy life, why not reward the people who brought you there yourself? Maybe you can commission an artist you love, or to make a giveaway of a tablet/other tool. Not only would it boost your ‘karma’ if you happen to believe in that, it would overall be one of the most fulfilling things you can do.

If you are one of the lucky artists that have managed to score some money from their gigs, you may want to consider reading more about how to get more focused and productive and a particular app I use to do so.