The Struggle of Being An Artist

Most people think that being an Artist is a life of leisure, fun, and doing whatever you want because you're eccentric. I'm here to tell you that being a serious Artist is hard work! I don't even know when the last time I got to take a vacation day was because of all the work that constantly goes into being in this field. Don't get me wrong! I love it, and wouldn't trade any other career for it!

Now, let's cover a few things that make being an Artist such a hard job. There are four things that I can think of right off the top of my head, and those things are being your own Promoter, Employee, Manager, and Supplier all at the same time!

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Promoter

For independent Artists being your own Promoter is necessary. The cost of hiring someone to do this for you is not worth it because you can do it all on your own. There are many different template based website builders out there that you don't have to learn HTML and CSS anymore, or you can use a program like Adobe Muse. So, that takes care of your website, but what about actually building traffic to it and building your brand?

Social media. The best way to build traffic to your website is to be very active on several social media sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc. This is the hard part for me because I generally get on the computer, do what I need to do real quick, and get off. In order to be successful you need to be posting periodically throughout the day about things you're working on, places you're visiting, quotes, and other similar things. Try to keep the personal drama off of your social media pages though!

Over the past 3-4 days I have completely reworked all of my social media pages. You should have your website listed, a way to contact you, and links to all of your other social media profiles if possible.

Employee/Manager

I'm going to group these two together because, for me, they go hand-in-hand. As an independent Artist it is entirely up to you to do research, clean your workspace, create work, promote yourself (see, it's a full time job), and any other tasks that may come across your easel.

This is the hardest. What I do is turn on music that gets me in a good mood, turn it up loud, and just go to work. When I don't have anything going on I am usually looking at other art for inspiration, studying technique, promoting myself (always), or trying to find something productive to do with my time. There are always going to be those times when you just plop down on the couch and say, "I'm not doing anything today", and that's ok. However, you have to find that motivation to get up off the couch and get to work.

Supplier

Any company I have ever worked for had suppliers that delivered their product to them. They usually had a business office that paid for that product, so it was basically like having an unlimited amount of whatever we needed. Not so as an independent Artist! Sure, you can order your supplies online, but sometimes you actually need to be able to feel the item, like canvas. Then there's the matter of paying for the supplies--if you're not off the couch working, promoting yourself, and selling work then how are you going to pay for supplies?

Falling short in playing the role of the Promoter can be detrimental to your career as much as not making any work. All these roles are constant jobs of an independent Artist.