The time has arrived!
Well, the day has finally arrived. I don’t think there are words to describe the feeling itself. I have what seems like thousands of ideas in my head of what I want to do and things I want to paint, yet at the same time, I’m finding it quite difficult to know where I should start.
Before I go any further, I want to explain my thinking around this journal (or at least the first few months). Back in June, when I made the decision that it was time to move on, and leave my IT job to take on this new world of being a full time artist, I couldn’t find any reliable information of where or how I should start. Most things that I found on the internet were from either people in my same situation, or those that have been doing it for years, or someone wanting to sell you something to teach you how. Occasionally, I’d find someone in the middle. Someone still growing into the roll of becoming a full-time artist, but no information on how they ended up there. All of the information that I was searching for was missing. How did they get to where they wanted to be? What are they doing to promote & sell their art. Are they happy with what they’re doing? If they could do it all over again, would they do something different with their art, or just find a different career altogether?
I’ll admit, after making the decision to leave my job, I really didn’t care how difficult the road would be. The road that I was on was damaging my mind. It was destroying my health and everything that I cared about. I knew going into this that it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. It was going to take a lot of work, probably more than what I had been used to. The only difference is that I can now control it. If I want to sleep until 10am, but work until midnight, that’s my prerogative. If I want to take a day off and make up the time somewhere else, that’s fine too. I’m in complete control of my own destiny now. I’ll be putting in the hard work, and then some, but I’m my own boss now.
It’s possible that someone may run across this blog next week, or six months from now, or two years from now; maybe this can help you and show you what I did right, or what I messed up. I don’t plan on blogging every day, but often enough to explain what I’ve done and what I want to do. When I’m painting and when I need a break. It will be about how I’m reaching out to others to get my artwork noticed, who is contacting me, and how they are finding me. Pretty much everything that you’d need to know to get started if you find yourself in the same situation.
As I mentioned earlier, I made the decision to leave my previous job in June of 2019, but gave what was basically a 6 month notice. This would allow me to help out my employer with a transition, given that I had been at the job for over 10 years, and also give me time to tie up a few loose ends before taking on something entirely different. My last day would be just before the holiday break in December. I would take a couple of weeks off during the holidays to decompress, before starting back up again, but this time doing what I wanted.
During that 6 months, I was able to get a bit of a head start on things, so even though I’m journaling about things at the beginning of January, I used that last 6 months of my previous job to get a website together, and a couple of paintings that I had done previously, priced and uploaded to it. I also used that time to create a Facebook business page. It didn’t contain much and still doesn’t (as of this post), because I need to start producing art now, to sell. I know that social media is an important tool to use for anything, not just art, so I updated some of my existing accounts and changed usernames to match my new business name ‘PoeSoul Studio’, and created new accounts for others.
Right now, I have a presence on the following:
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Instagram
Spotify (I create playlist for each painting)
LinkedIn
Other than this website, updating my social media accounts, and creating some business cards, I’m starting from a blank slate. Of course, building a website doesn’t happen overnight. It will take at least a few weeks, but actually a couple of months to get it just the way you want it. I had used WordPress in the past, but decided to go with SquareSpace this time. I like both, but wanted something that was easier to manage even if I lost some of the ability to customize things the way that you can do with WordPress. I’m very happy with SquareSpace and like the built-in commerce section. My main goal was having something that would allow me to have more time to paint and create, instead of having to fight with plugins, updates, and so on. That’s for a whole different post though.
And last, but not least. I used that 6 months to get my studio set up and purchase a few things for it that I didn’t have. I have it exactly the way that I want it, so that I can hit the ground running. I guess if this were a true ‘start from nothing’, some people may not have a website set up, and may need to tweak a few things with their social media accounts, but would probably have the things they need to start painting and producing art. The larger your portfolio is, the easier it’s going to be and you’ll just be that much further ahead.
Follow along as I continue to blog and journal about things happening, so hopefully you’ll be able to see what’s working for me, or learn from my mistakes. The transformation over time should be very interesting. By far, the most important thing to know is that success is not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take some time to get things rolling. A lot of time, and a lot of hard work. I’m in it for the long haul. Do your best to ignore a lot of what you find online of negative opinions and failures. I look at it the same way that I look at restaurant reviews. A lot of times people don’t take the time to leave positive reviews, but they want the world to know how bad something might have been. I don’t think I’m naive when I say that a lot of the more successful artists out there aren’t leaving doom and gloom blog posts, or other unhealthy comments online. Some of the negative things I’ve read are from those that want everything to happen ‘now’, or just aren’t producing quality art. Just like everything else, you get what you put into it.
For now, I’m going to each lunch and paint for a few hours. I have a 16x20 canvas with a basic sketch on it that desperately needs paint. Also, sign up for the newsletter on this site if you haven’t already. It will be a good way to stay in touch when I post new artwork that might not necessarily find its way to a blog post.
Namaste,
Patrick
P.S. I know there are other routes to take for someone starting down the road of becoming a full-time artist. A lot of this information that I’m posting are my attempts and shouldn’t be looked at as a ‘how-to’, just a ‘how I’m doing it’, no matter how foolish (or possibly brilliant LOL) the steps may be. :)