Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Failure

Sorry for the whinge.

A bit more from the art show- these are the non-traditional media. Not everyone made paintings- there was a decent amount of fabric entries as well. I also included the one and only glass pieces since they don’t fit anywhere else.

These are fused glass which is pretty nifty.

Felt and embroidery!

Petite point!

Last of the fabric pieces.

So I have been thinking about trying to make more money and my asinine default is make art and sell it. As if that has EVER worked. And that was BEFORE artist income depended entirely on a monetized Youtube channel. The competition is stiff, social media diffused and unusable and the space overcrowded and oversaturated. I watched a video from an Australian illustrator breaking down her income streams and it’s daunting and terrible. It’s mostly Youtube and then once your big on Youtube it will trickle down to a successful Patreon. But BOTH of those require creating video content Patreon rewards, merch, etc. Making merch depends on money of course and so does video content. NO ONE is going to give money to a mediocre artist.

Guess I’m just panicking a bit. I want to make more money but my Etsy shop never did much. I got started on this train of though looking for ways to sell the bookmarks I’ve been looking at transparent vinyl sleeves for bookmarks and something to back the bookmarks with. I can glue a nice decorative paper to the back. Then sell the resulting bookmarks! Or not. Another thought was to make little custom cards. You can buy blank playing cards in different sizes and I could make tarot card size pieces and sell them. I just bought a pack of plat wood panels (as opposed to the cradled wood panels) in 5”x7” to practice acrylics and maybe I could sell them too! I see people selling tiny folk art type stuff that’s really cute and not to expensive. And I think, I could make simple art! Can’t I?

Speaking of bookmarks

This one came out okay. The best part is the gradient in the window. I work wet-on-wet too much and absolutely saturate the paper so it feathers terribly. But this one is better than last weeks. I didn’t love the Oni I drew and the colors went weird on me. Next up I have a trio of dog bookmarks! Might do some cats as well. I am just trying to practice cute dogs a lot to see if I can improve. I am also FINALLY using my gouache! I have a cat painting, the very first one in my dedicated gouache sketchbook, that I’ll post as well. It has become important that I need to buy a giant tube of white gouache. I’ve been eyeing the Himi jelly gouache as well, but I don’t know… Creative Mark also started making their own jelly gouache that is cheap. The quality might be cheap as well. Last thing I have been pondering is the Artxx acrylic markers. I realized that those would also make fun fast bookmarks and be great for making little cards!

In the meantime I keep playing around with my Jerry’s Artarama cart. I took out all the markers and added a big tube of gouache and got it down to $70 but I’m not sure I’m in any position to buy anything. The cart stripped down to the minimum is one SoHo marker pad, a set of micro detail brushes, Liquitex Glazing Medium, and the big gouache white.

99% OF MY ART IS FOR SALE IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED. Just contact me here.