I love creating art that brings people joy and a respite from this chaotic world. It only made sense to pursue this passion as my business as well.
The biggest challenge has been figuring out how to market myself while pursuing my art dream. I know I have beautiful creations that appeal to people; the problem is how to get them in front of a wide enough audience? How do I find the people who have discretionary spending? Sometimes it has made me want to give up. But I have just kept persisting - reading as much as I can about art marketing, posting on social media, making sure I present myself as an artist to everyone I meet. I am finally starting to make some inroads.
The biggest challenge has been figuring out how to market my art.
I have had many challenges throughout my life, but I think the biggest one is in trying to make the shift to doing my art as a profession instead of a hobby. It presents quite a conundrum because you have to have money to pay the bills. You need to spend time working on creating art but also marketing and sometimes it can seem impossible. When I shutdown my previous business, my husband was always on me to find another job and make money. Yet, I knew if I went to work for someone else again, I would never have the time to really make it work. I wanted to pursue my dream. So, I took on some part-time gigs that I can do at my own schedule, and made sure I had time every week to work on my art as a business. I just had to have faith in myself and stay determined. As I started to make gains, I was elated and excited for what may come.
I wanted to pursue my dream.
Being determined to bring in money from my art, I was recently asked to design a logo and sign for a company. Now this is something I have NO background in and my computer skills are not the strongest. But I was determined not to walk away from this potential paying job! I ended up having to do three complete logos before they decided on something they liked. But then the hard part came in turning that logo into a lighted sign. How do you take that line drawing and turn it into a vector? How you you make a transparent background? How do you create the design so that it is in a format that a sign company can use? Of my goodness, I spent hours banging my head against the computer trying to figure that all out! But, I believe I can learn and do anything, and there was good money at stake, so I persisted. I am at the tail end of this project now.
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