Strychu i know you're polish so
Any advice for polish digital artist?
I wanted to go into tattooing but I feel like that field it oversaturated now to the point you can't really do it anymore but painting and digital isn't really bringing I'm the money too
Yeah, tattoo industry definitely had brighter days. There're a lot of reasons why a lot of tattoo artists struggle rn, but it's waaaaay more complicated to just throw all the blame on "too many artists, not enough clients" problem. I can elaborate more about it in a different post if anyone wants to know more
Unfortunately I don't have any general advice that will help with popping art sales and I'm afraid there is none that exists""" It's more like a process, I personally know only few people that went from "I don't draw much" to "it's a big part of my regular income". But still it took them years and a tons of work to achieve that.
My wife and I opened our shop years ago, way before the pandemic, but it became our main source of income about two or three years ago, but we still do a lot of other things to earn money (artistic things, yes, but still it's not just one source of earning money). Before that we both had a different jobs in shops, I worked as a babysitter and help for elders, in art university as a model, as a manager of a tattoo studio (where 90% of my job was cleaning).
I think, and this is my personal opinion only, that the art community, especially small creators on yt (and now on tiktok) with "spend a wonderful day with me in my art studio✨", did a big disservice of how most of the people perceive making money as an artist. Don't get me wrong, those types of videos are pretty, it's a lot of work to make them and can be very inspiring, but at the same time a lot of people forget it's a content, not a reality and most of full time artist don't work that way
Working as an artist is hard. The more independent an artist gets, the more responsibilities they have, and the more responsibilities they have, the less they draw. Because they're busy with being a boss, a manager, a customer advisor, a salesman, a driver, a person responsible for managing parcels and orders, a small "warehouse" worker, a Karen making a phone call because the manufacturer did the order wrong and don't want to make another one or give the money back jdbdjshsh
Tbh the only reason why I still draw a lot is my patreon and all the people that support me there. Otherwise I would probably stopped posting cotl stuff at some point to focus on different things to survive. And I'm not trying to be dramatic, it's just how life works
Coming back to the shore - tbh the only advice I can give is the one I would like to get when I was working my ass of trying to be an independent artist all those years ago. It's okay to be slow, it's okay to not understand how everything works. It's okay to try new things, to fail and learn from it. It's okay to lose money because of not-so-smart investment. It's okay to have a second job. It's okay to ask your family for help. It's okay to try something new, have a break or to give up. You have time and if something doesn't work now, it will in a day, month, year or two. Or even maybe you'll find something different that brings you joy you'll have a chance to turn it into your source of income
