Insider #21 - The Path of an Accidental Artist
plus 5 ideas to help you sell your art.
👋🏼 Hello Insiders!
Becoming an artist was not part of the plan. The idea, when I left academia, was to be a novelist and cartoonist. And I was supposed to have two or three novels out by now. But here we are, and I think I am thankful for all those things I have not (yet) accomplished.
Instead of writing novels, stray decisions made under the influence of extreme curiosity turned me into an artist. I articulated this path in a recent Tweet thread. Follow the journey below!
I mention on The Seen and the Unseen Podcast that I took permission* from a lot of different people in order to do the things I am doing today. One of the first people to give me permission was Randall Munroe, who makes XKCD. He gave me the permission to draw with just stick figures in my comics. Suddenly, I was able to make jokes and tell stories.
Read here the 3 Types of Permission every Artist needs.
But after 7 years of running The Testimonial Comics on FB, I was frustrated by the limitations of stick figures. After becoming a full-time creative, I knew I had to put in the time to become a “proper artist”. Nothing less would do for the stories I wanted to tell.
So this was my first entrepreneurial decision in my new creative career - Investing time and effort into skill building.
In order to become a proper artist at the late age of nearly 30, I would need to put in a lot of practice. Many hours over many weeks. I would need discipline and sustained effort, two things I am not very good about.
The only way I could think of to bring them into my art practice was to combine the practice with another thing I really wanted, i.e. to have an excuse to walk around the beautiful city of Chicago just looking at things.
I started a self-imposed project titled 30 Days of Chicago, to explore a new neighborhood everyday for 30 days with my pen and sketchbook. I made this challenge more interesting by only carrying a fountain pen. No opportunity to erase my lines meant no steps backwards.
I can be quite self-conscious. I think about what people will say and what they will think. But every time I actually speak with people, I realize most of what I imagine is a figment of my, well, imagination. Big expectations of praise and criticism are alike a problem of one’s own ego. People don’t care. Most are happy to see you’re doing something. We are our own worst critics. This is a good lesson to imbibe.
It is good to think about how people use various platforms, and how someone goes about finding content relevant to their interests. Instagram is good for certain things, Twitter for others, and TikTok for still others. But there is also Reddit, and it can be a wonderful place to find an audience.
Reddit is where I made my first sale as a Sneaky Artist. Read here some essential reasons why every artist should use Reddit.
We are our own worst enemies. Many of our obstacles are mental hurdles of our own creation. You need to discard self-imposed labels and old baggage that you carry on your shoulders.
The more time I spent in America, the more I found myself drawing SneakyArt. The fiction writing petered away over time. Still, I would introduce myself to others as a writer. After some time, I realized how strange this was. Nobody in my geographical proximity knew me for my writing. But a lot of them knew me for my art.
I understood that, regardless of whether I permitted myself the use of the word ‘artist’ when thinking about myself, others had already identified me as such. I was the only one pushing back against my artist self.
Unlike other tangible objects, there are no fixed scales or measures for how expensive a piece of art should be, or what it is worth. A piece of art is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
The idea of selling art therefore is not about being the best artist…
It is about making a connection with the buyer, a connection that makes them want to pay the amount you ask of them. Those who make ‘good art’ and expect that to be enough reason for customers to buy it are in fact disrespecting their customers. I have seen more than a fair share of artists who just don’t seem to understand this basic fact.
Here are some good questions for an artist to ask themselves -
Who is my ideal customer?
How would they engage with art in their lives?
How much money does the ideal customer have to spend (on a leisure expense)?
How does my piece of art demonstrate its stated value to this customer?
Here is how I answered these questions when I set up a stall in the Artist’s Market of Eau Claire WI, right next to the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market in Phoenix Park -
My ideal customer is the rural Wisconsin person who pauses for a moment to look at my prints while going to buy groceries at the Farmer’s Market.
They engage with art via Instagram accounts, or in real life via galleries. They probably do not buy a lot of original art to be framed in their homes.
It being rural Wisconsin, I imagined this amount to be $5. So I sold prints at $5, $10 and $20. I sold out my $5 print stocks every week.
SneakyArt tells a unique story of their town from the fresh perspective of someone who is witnessing everything for the first time.
Stepping out of the comfort zone is crucial. It is the only way to level up your skills as I explain in this post.
🎯 Five Ideas to help Sell your Art
Think about yourself - make art that resonates with your personality, temperament, and inclinations. I am impatient, loathe to edit and refine my work. I am perfectly suited to on-location drawings, and ill-suited to almost everything else.
Identify your market - understand, in precise terms, who is in your market and who is not.
SneakyArt in Eau Claire WI was made for the people who lived in that town, and those who visited because their children studied at the UWEC.
Craft the product - keeping both yourself and your market in mind, calculate the right price points that will allow everyone interested to walk with at least something. No one should leave empty-handed!
Tell a story - why should someone give you their money? Your work has to connect with them at a deeper level than things they can see instantly through their phones. You have to be unique and authentic, not simply talented.
Repackage, recycle, and re-sell - always assess what sells and what doesn’t, and how people relate to your work. Do the act of making art once, but diversity that into multiple products to meet a potential customer with multiple ways of using/flaunting your work. E.g prints selling at different sizes, scans shuffled and reorganized into collages or zines or printed books, creating greetings cards or giclee prints or stickers out of the same drawing.
This Friday, I am releasing a new episode of the SneakyArt Podcast, featuring a long-time favourite guest. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover!
I will organize a Listening Party for this episode on the Discord server this Saturday at 5pm PST. A Listening Party is when we listen to the episode together, and pause whenever we like to discuss ideas and share thoughts. It’s a lot of fun to do!
Do get in touch if you don’t have access to the Discord server yet, and I will send you a link.
In the next issue, I will speak about my Master’s degree education in Control Systems Engineering and how I apply it towards becoming a better artist and writer. Thank you for your generous support, and for your time and attention!
Thanks for the Reddit post link again. I was recently searching for it from your Substack archive, but couldn’t locate it.
The main reason I wanna explore Reddit is one of the reasons you’ve shared—to connect with like-minded people. (Since I realised that I like connecting with online communities.)