Why Artists Should Get A Job

There’s a huge stigma that if you have another job, part time or full time, then you’re not a proper artist.

If you’re not sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor of a tiny studio and eating stale bread sitting around waiting for your big break, aka, if you’re not suffering, then you cannot call yourself an artist.

I find it soooo wild that we all have romanticised Van Gogh’s life style to the point we consider it the epitome of what being an artist is.

People demonise having a job alongside your art almost as if it taints the work or distracts you.

But from experience, nothing can distract you more from painting than panicking about where your rents gonna come from.

Whilst some of that pressure can light a fire under your arse to get things done and hustle, there’s only so long you can continue creating in a fight or flight state of mind.

You’ll burn yourself out and because you’re living so hand to mouth, you can’t afford to take your foot off the pedal.

So you end up taking whatever work comes in because …what’s the alternative?

You aren’t in the position to negotiate because you need whatever money anyone offers.

Which means you end up doing work that’s poorly paid, that ultimately devalues your craft, devalues the worth of an artist overall and leaves you needing to find 10 badly paid commissions to earn enough for a food shop.

There’s such a discrepancy in the rates creatives charge and there’s a hundred different reasons why.

One is that everyone is in different phases of their life, £20 to 20 year old me is my food shop, £20 to 30 year old me is a snack.

If someone can go to both of those artists and get an illustration, one for £20, one for £1000 then why would someone pay 50x the amount, they’d just go for the £20 option.

And as long as that cheaper rate option is available, then the worth of an illustration is always going to be less, I’m not begrudging 20yo me for taking the commission, £20 is £20 and to earn it doing what I love, sign me up.

But as long as those options are available, it’s hard to get a universal starting rate for work, one that is enough to cover the artists time, experience and expenses.

Which, is only fair!

Would I go back to working for Tesco for £5ph? No. So why am I expected to when creating a drawing, people expect you to take a pay cut just because you enjoy doing it.

But that’s a topic for another time.

My point is that these hugely fluctuating rates do a disservice to art as a craft and as a viable career path.

It’s up to us artists to specify the rate we want, I’m not saying let’s all band together and ransom people for £1m or nothing, but at least a rate that covers the time we spend on it.

We’ve all taken a commission or a project on that once you’ve divided the rate by hours worked, I might as well have dusted off that Tesco uniform.

So to set the standard and get taken more seriously, we need to set the rates as opposed to just accepting whatever monetary carrot someone wants to dangle in front of us.

You don’t walk into LV with a tenner and expect to walk out with something.

You don’t walk into Tesco with a fiver and expect to walk out with a £12 beef joint.

The price is the price, you either pay it or you don’t.

LV don’t discount it just because you’ve only got £200 and the jacket costs £1800, Tesco doesn’t knock off £10 from a chicken because you only put aside £6 for your Sunday roast.

I mean look at lawyers, they all charge a certain rate because the experience and the knowledge they have is valued at that, they don’t half their hourly rate cause they need a quick hit of cash.

So why do we?

Most of the time it’s because needs must, we need work and we’ll take what we can get, any money is better than no money.

So this is why having another job is the solution!

If you have a job, you have the power to walk away from a commission or a project that isn’t priced correctly, whereas if you don’t you have to take the job because it’s that or nothing, therefore making you do more work for less money, undervaluing your craft and the role.

When I was starting out there were a year or two after I had just graduated from uni, I was trying to get work in as an illustrator, I took whatever jobs I could find for whatever money I could, which like I said earlier, ended up me having to work far more hours than I should for far less money than it was worth.

But money was money!

But I put my rate up when I began working another job full time, because my rent was paid due to my other job, I could set a more realistic rate for myself and if they didn’t wanna pay it, then no skin off my nose.

I had the luxury of not having to sell myself short.

And I know what some of you are thinking, but I don’t want to do another job or have to balance 2 jobs.

But the reality is there’s no structure in place for becoming an artist, you don’t get employed as an intern, work up to assistant, then manager and then director, all roles that are there to be filled and are all paid for.

There isn’t that blue print in place.

There isn’t a role for you to fit into, every creative career is different and you need to build up your own, your own clients, your own niche, your own style, your own lane.

You can’t just apply and slot into somewhere that role has already been defined and done, your role doesn’t exist.

You’ve got to make it, so expecting to pay your rent and bills and everything else from a role that’s only been freshly made is unrealistic.

Most jobs have a training period, you gotta learn how to do it before you can do it, and getting a career as an artist is a lot more than just getting good at drawing.

It takes time to establish yourself and find your footing within the industry, so be patient!

When I left uni there wasn’t a fashion illustrator who specialises in live events, creates online courses and enjoys creating flip books for me to shadow then eventually take their space.

I had to build that role up over the years, through clients, jobs, etc so that there was enough of a role and repeat work there for me to fill.

I couldn’t have done that without another job paying my bills in the meantime.

To have a creative career you need to hone your skills to a certain level, build up clients and be consistent.

You don’t just post on instagram or get a website and gain an immediate list of clients, it all takes time to build.

It usually takes quite a while to start getting enough work in to have it feel like you’re balancing two jobs, so you use the comfort that the other job has given you financially, and use that time to plant seeds for your own career.

This will take the stress off, give you a longer timeframe to see results and lead you to not fizzling out.

A lot of us want to harvest our crop immediately, but creative careers aren’t like other jobs, like I said there’s not a role for you to fill that someone else is stepping down from.

You have to plant the seeds, water them, get clients, take on work, build up a client list, build up your portfolio, it takes time, took me 7 years!

But if you do this long term, then it’s much easier to get a bountiful harvest from a field full of crops after waiting a season than it is from you chucking some seeds down and coming back the next day.

Look at me, I play Stardew Valley once and I think I’m a farmer.

So the main message is to be patient, get a part time job that you enjoy doing and balance your workload.

If everyone had a job whilst they built up their own clients and skill, they wouldn’t need to take badly paid jobs to get by and the commercial worth or value of art would be respected more.

Then you can quit the other job once your own work is starting to show the fruits of your labor.

So to round up!

Artists, having a part time or full time job is absolutely acceptable and shouldn’t be shamed!

It’ll allow you to price jobs suitably, give you breathing room financially, give you time to build up your portfolio and clients naturally all whilst helping to keep the rates acceptable for creative work!

So win win!

x

And if you’re wanting more advice and help on how to create the career you’re after…

My Sold Out How To Become A Fashion Illustrator Masterclass is reopening 30th May!

So keep an eye out for that!

More info to come