2024 Year In Review

Let's use my experience to see what can be done better to get better faster and prepare to achieve art goals.

What were the goals - ? The biggest issue is that the goals were nebulous and not well defined. (Robert Baratheon voice: Is that what nebulous means?) I just wanted to have to some- any - measure of success, like get my first few commission/freelance jobs, grow an audience somewhere and sell some items in my overhauled online shop. It felt like I had to do everything all at once, and I'd take any win at all- so I didn’t make a goal like creating an art book, graphic novel, or getting a specific type of job. At the beginning of the year, I still didn’t know whether I wanted to break into freelance concept art or illustration or run my own art business. I tried to set up a shop before my skills were really good enough – both art skills and business skills. I wasn’t quite yet making art that I, myself would actually pay for. I was still doing a lot of practice exercises that weren’t related to each other, creating a bit of a disjointed body of work that didn't help attract followers on social media.

A lot of my time felt like throwing poodoo at the wall and see what stuck - and not surprising, there’s poodoo all over the floor. There's an infinite amount of decisions, choices, a bazillion platforms, a googaplex of distractions, a sea of scams, and someone jumping out in a digital trenchcoat at every turn looking to sell you THE SECRETSSS, it's right here in this snake oil!

I was stretching myself like one tab of hobbit butter over a bunch of lembas bread trying to –

- Get better at art by watching a billion youtube videos.

- Post to Instagram, ArtStation, Cara, and now BlueSky – but not really knowing what makes interesting “content”. Second guessing the need about making “content” – cause there’s a moral and environmental impact about simply spewing something out that takes a person’s time and focus and spending energy to make. (I basically had zero growth).

- Learn to create and edit interesting videos and preparing myself to launch a youtube channel possibly - except I don’t feel qualified to teach anyone anything and I don’t have success to show others.

- Get work with sites like UpWork. ICK. Let’s not even go there. Experience was like your first battle royale gaming experience. (Was just soliticed for scam job postings).

- Research how to make a successful Etsy store and absolutely bombarded with suggestions on getrichquickwithAIPODshite everywhere. Some of it just feels like gambling.

- Make time to participate in drawing contests, DTIYSes (draw this in your style), challenges, and find a community of artists with similar goals and skills to get feedback and engage with. I didn’t commit to a specific art community to get peer feedback. – I think I plateaued a bit in my skills, and need to get some constructive criticism to level up faster.

- Learn what is M A R K E T I N G ?

You can see where this is going – I was just not able to do all of this on a part time schedule and didn’t really achieve much financially. I think I did stagnate with skill a little bit. One of the only concrete goals I had was to learn Blender (I did not even start). I was also trying to focus a lot of my artwork to my partner's roleplaying setting, in part to help unify some of the work I was creating to make a portfolio that felt like it was part of the same world – but my style is a bit more bright and cute than his world – so I need to separate my personal work and treat art for him like client work.

What went right?

I showed up every day and did the work, never lost motivation to draw. I have so many ideas, but ideas are cheap. I work out what I want to draw and prioritize completely separately from my drawing session so once I get back to the er, drawing board, as it were, I can just go. No scrolling, no perseverating, just drawing.

I stared creating video content and found I enjoy this process as well. I am only a beginner, but it’s getting easier to do each time, and I’m learning new things at a fast pace.

I purchased a very detailed art school program to strengthen all my fundamentals. I need to schedule time to watch it each week, right now I often forget or rewatch certain parts, but I simply need to make time to work on a different fundamental each week.

I made a decision on what platforms to avoid, and to defer on several things until other milestones are reached. No sense in drawing the cart before the horse, right?

I took the first steps in creating a small business – started separating and tracking the finances, got a PO box, got the first big purchases of a printer, cutting machine, shipping and sticker supplies.

I restarted my Etsy shop with a more cohesive offering of products and am working on polishing my product photos, SEO, and branding. I keep asking myself if I would buy the item if I were shopping, and I don’t post something if I’m not willing to spend my own money on. I’d eventually like to add or transition to a shopify store, but I need to figure out how to get traffic first.

Going forward --

In 2025 I have more specific goals and attempt to reverse engineer them into smaller, digestible and manageable chunks - more effective than just HEJ, WIN!...Breaking things down helps me manage my time better throughout the weeks and months, as I often lost sight of the big picture last year.

I’ve made weekly tasks with my google calendar to make time to vlog, record video and take pictures, and work on social media/marketing each week. I make time for easy, fun art that would be appropriate for stickers or mini prints and time for more “srs” illustrations. I make sure to make time for personal work that doesn’t have to marketable or even sharable, although I admit it’s pretty difficult to take on a piece I don’t think I can share.

It’s also OK not to know every step, if you did you’d already be motorin’ and not looking at this blog, right? Your unknown steps could just be pretty, stylized questions marks inside of clouds. “Figure this out???” Especially when it comes to marketing myself. I would consider outsourcing this to an expert when the budget allows for it - paying a consultant or taking a class to help me create my own roadmap.

I never had issues of deciding what to draw next, but I did stray from what work could have helped me create a more cohesive body of work that lent to a) a confident portfolio that reflects an artist that knows what they want and want skills they offer b) allow for more consistent content (social media has made me revile that word, but people need to know I exist, and having a presence on a platform where people who like nerdy art are is a necessity for someone that doesn't have developed marketing and SEO skills). A solution that I'm not sure why I haven't already developed is making some original characters. Even if I don't ever end up writing a story around specific adventures, I want to create some characters that could have their own game (or at least, campaign/module) that we can engage across a series of artworks.

One thing I try to keep in mind when I'm struggling with a skill, is that if I keep going with practice, feedback, learning, that it's the worst/hardest its going to be today. Keep showing up for yourself.