Monthly Review, February 2017 - out of the swamp!
Here we are again another month has passed, a lot has happened, I learned a lot, and I was really looking forward to writing this review.
As in january the image above shows every drawing/painting I made during the last month, both personal and client work (thankfully none of this months clientwork has been under NDA). The first thing that immediately shows is that the amount of pictures is a lot smaller than last month’s. While this has good reasons, and I’ve been the busiest and most productive I have been in a loooong time I still feel kind of bad about it, which is probably dumb. Anyway, lets jump right into it:
Let’s start with Freelance/lifestuff first as this has been my focus this month:
As a disclaimer right up front I want to say that I was not sure how much into detail I wanted to go with this as I am by no means somebody who is in the position to give advice on “business stufff” I am very much figuring things out by trial and error and the solutions I found for myself work for me, I may change them up tomorrow. Everything I am writing here is merely a snapshot of my situation and thoughts as they are right now. I do also think that being honest is the best thing I can do here, I do not feel too proud to share my mistakes or possible dumb decisions I am making at the moment. Especially this post includes potentially sensetive topics like rates and “underselling” yourself which is another aspect why I was hesitant of being totally open about it. Maybe the things I do are actually great and correct or maybe they are going to bite me in the ass someway down the road, I am willing to find out.
As I have already talked about in detail in my previous reviews, freelance has been stagnating quite a bit for me, it got to a point where I was basically broke and looking for a non art related dayjob so that I could pay the bills in march.
Before I did that, however, I wanted to sit down and think all of this through. The thought that “this is freelance and not some kind of magic” just kept returning into my head. If it’s not working there is a problem that can be solved. There must be something where I do something wrong and where everyting falls apart. So I took a closer look.
The basic question is this: Why am I not getting any work?
Is it the quality of my work? Is it the KIND of work I do? Am I not visible enough for clients? What the hell is going on? etc...
After thinking about it I realized something. The solution was easy but it was hard to detect for me as (as always) the answer to these questions is mostly “yea kind of everything plays a part here”
I looked back at it and I realized that I DO have a lot of offers from potential clients who want to work with me, most of them with some kind of budget and willingnes to pay for the work. But I noticed that 90% of these potential clients would jump off as soon as it came to my rates. They simply would not be able to pay for the work. I used to be really hard on myself and other artists who would work for too little money, I had rates for certain types of work in my head and I would quote every potential client aorund the same rate for the same kind of work (company xy pays this much for card Illustrations, thus I should charge everyone this kind of money. If they are not willing to pay, they are not a client worthy of my work”).
The real life result of that was that 90% of the people who contact me would not work with me, all I was left with was the occasional bigger budget client who would come along once in a while. I would do the work that I managed to get on a very comfortable schedule as there simply was no other work to be done and still I would not be working for more than 3-4 hours per day on average. One Illustration would take me up to a month if I was given the time. This would not mean better work, it just would mean halfassing it even slower.
I thought about that for a while. I noticed that I acutally had no fixed ideas about “my finances” at all. All I had were made up assumptions of how much my work was worth based on god knows what. I decided to sit down and to actually think about that for a second. “How much money do I need in a month( to pay the bills, to have enough saved up for my taxes and to have enought money to save up for myself)?” How much money would this make on a daily basis? I wrote those numbers down and noticed that looking at it from this side changed EVERYTHING for me, it enabled me to ask simple questions WHENEVER a potential client would come to me and state his budget. The questions are: “If I break my clients budget down into dayrates, how many days would I have for this commission? Am I able to do the work in that time and do a good job at it”
Simple question, simple answer: I realized that instead of one month I would have to finish an Illustration in 4 workdays to make my dayrate. If I could do this throughout the month, my financial situation would be fine. Easy.
Being in the shitty situation I have been in at that time I decided to bite to bullet and just give it a shot. And guess what, I could do it. Not only could I do it, I did good work and I still was having a managable schedule. Even better: My schedule was acutally resembling the schedule of a working human being. I worked a full workday and after 4 days the thing was done. And it was good!
This was so simple but it blew my mind. I did this for every freelance request I got and guess what: IT FUCKING WORKED! Instead of being rejected 90% of the time I was able to land 90% of the jobs that were offered to me.Within one week I was able to get enough work for the next two months. Every day is filled with work. I am not killing myself but the workload is “comfortably intense”. The weird thing is that while my rates would be lower on average I was able to make more money than I have ever been making during the last almost 4 years of my freelance life.
As I already mentioned, this blew my mind. Not only that but it made me think about myself and how I have been handling freelance and myself as an “artist” in the past. It inevitably forced me to reevaluate myself and to think about the bullshit ego I was building up. It also made me think about my work and how good it actually is.
I used to resent work that would not pay me “enough” but until now I never actually looked at my portfolio and thought about HOW good it actually was. It never came to my mind to realize “wait a minute, this is the kind of work you are currently able to get, with the skillset and kind of work you have right now”. I want to make clear that by “this work” I am not devaluating the work I can get, I love all of it actually, I am merely talking about the price tag attached to it. The reality of the situation is that 99% of my clients are either startups or private clients with rather restricted budgets.
Now I don’t know if this is due to the kind of work I do, the quality and style I am able to do it in or maybe just because I am not showing it to enough potential clients with large budgets but to be perfectly honest, I don’t care at all. The lesson in honesty, workethic and cutting out the bullshit was probably the best thing I have learned in years.
Moreover, I am loving the work!! I am feeling this positive pressure of working quickly and focused, I get to do a lot of different kinds of work and the paycheck at the end of the month is pretty good, better than it has ever been.
So yea to end the freelance rant and to summarize: Things are looking pretty good now, it feels like I am slowly crawling out of a swamp and I feel better than in I have in a looong time. The best thing is that it feels like I achieved this by actively working on myself and changing stuff. I would have hated it if things would have turned around out of nothing (as they do sometimes as well). I feel like I have achieved something and that I am in control of the situation. It’s really really good, I am happy :)
One general off topic “life-thing”: My girlfriend and I are moving to Hamburg-Germany in a few days. Having spent the last three months in the German alps, we are changing things up to inhale some tasty sea air. If there are any artsy people who would like to switch pencils for a few beers from time to time, hit me up on the facebooks :)
I will try to keep it short(er). As I have already hinted at most of my days were filled with client work, I finished a lot of Illustrations in many different styles which was an amazing change of pace. I got to do some good old fantasy Illustration, some techy photobashings, even some linework and pixelart for some mobile games.
I sunk most of my free time into a personal piece I wanted to go all out on. I am really happy how it turned out and I think that it might stir my portfolio further into a direction I want to take my entire body of work in. I do somehow need to find more time for general studies as well as watercolors. As thight as my schedule is now there is only time for studies where they are needed at a very particular moment. I must not neglect the general “fundamental” studies.
So that is it for February. I leaned a lot! It has been such basic stuff but sometimes these things are the most important ones to be reminded of.
Stay humble, be thoughtful, be honest and do the work!
