How I Earn Money as a Visual Artist
I meet a lot of people who are passionate about visual arts, but haven’t found the means to support themselves through their passion yet. This article is for them.
I was lucky to have known professional visual artists since I was a kid. One of my parent’s best friends, who I’ve known my whole life, was a professional graphic designer, photographer, print maker, and painter. I also met many professional visual artists who had created successful lives by doing what they loved when I was a teenager just beginning on the path. The stigma is often that to be an artist is an impossible way to make a living as a healthy and successful adult. I’m here to tell you that that is simply not true, and that there are literally thousands if not millions of people in the world supporting themselves as an artist. Because I already had known many people when I was a kid who were making a living as an artist, the idea that I could never make it as a visual artist was never part of my program. My parents also always supported me in my decision to pursue my dream of becoming an artist and helped to support my education to realise that.
It is worth noting however, that although I did attend a standard art university, The Academy of Art University in San Francisco where I studied both Illustration and Fine Arts, that attending art school is not necessary to either become a great artist or a successful professional. I have known many astounding artists in a huge variety of mediums who are completely self taught, or pursued education through books, online tutorials, or by seeking out specific workshops, mentors, and teachers. I have had many mentors and teachers throughout my life, and have been an attendee of many workshops as well. I owe much of my growth of an artist to these teachers and mentors. I will write more about this in the Education section of this article.
I have been passionate about visual arts since I was a teenager, and have been making some amounts of money by selling my creations since I was in High School. I have lived almost completely off of the revenue generated by my services and creations as a visual artist since 2012. There is unquestionably a lot of room I have left to grow within the professional sphere of my life, and I am only 26 and I am still learning and developing, both as an artist and a professional. I have also had my fair share of struggles, and my ability to support myself has not always been a success. There are infinite ways to cultivate a professional practice as a visual artist, and I admit that my path has been a little less traditional than many, but I have still managed to support myself off almost entirely off my art alone for many years now. This is a little bit about how I have managed to do this.
My intention for this article is that someone who is aspiring to create a professional career as a visual artist could read this and gain something valuable from it and to be able to make their dreams a little closer to reality.
Diversity
The first thing I would say that has helped me greatly in my ability to support myself as a visual artist is diversity. I have different streams of income based on different things I do and have done within my professional sphere. These include but are not limited to creating and selling original paintings, creating and selling prints of digital art pieces, creating and selling merchandise, creating and selling jewellery and clothing, licensing my art to companies to create products (which also sometimes generates royalties,) illustration and graphic design, portraits and pet portraits, tattooing, murals, creating custom works of art for people, teaching and coaching, leading workshops and retreats, live painting, and live visual projections. I also used to create and sell a lot of screenprinted poster prints, which I often made for bands, and I made some small bits of money doing custom airbrushed artwork on snowboards, shirts, and other things. Each of these has been supplemental to help me live a somewhat abundant life and they’ve also each been helpful when I am not selling any paintings for example, or for whatever reason I’m having a dry spell with my tattoo work to help income flowing. I’ll unpack all of these more in a bit.
I also work in a variety of different mediums which include digital painting and graphic design, tattooing, acrylic and oil painting, and traditional graphite, pen, and charcoal drawing. These are the mediums I work the most in but I have explored many others as well. I find that not only does having different outlets for my creativity help me express myself more thoroughly and accurately, but also every medium I explore seems to cross over into other mediums and lends itself for me to perform them more proficiently. For example, tattooing has greatly increased my accuracy and precision in my painting work, and lengthy classical art studies in graphite have given me the skillset to slow down in my paintings and to work with greater depth and subtlety.
If you are still a beginner on the path as a visual artist, I cannot encourage you enough to experiment as much as possible. Experiment and learn from every single medium you can get your hands on, and not just within the visual arts. Try charcoal, watercolors, sumi ink, oil painting, spray paints, digital painting, and sculpting. Try dancing, try singing, learn about music, writing, and poetry, and learn about documentary filmmaking. Every single artform and medium lends itself to every other artform, and will make you a more rounded and more skilful artist.
It is worth noting as well that many artists specialise. For me diversity has been something that has not only kept my creative life more interesting and engaging but has also supported me in my financial life. I enjoy the challenge of new mediums or creative projects I may not have tried before. There are plenty of artists who earn a living by specialising in almost completely one thing, including doing contract work with a single company or organisation, etc. That said the most successful artists I know almost all have multiple income streams.
Being an independent artist often feels like having to work many jobs at once. I do not have a team of assistants, though many more mature artists do, and this is something I aspire to incorporate into my life. Being an independent artist means you need to be your own motivation coach, manager, agent, tour assistant, online marketing expert, social media guy, etc, etc. It’s a lot of things to juggle. It’s definitely not a lifestyle that has a clearly defined path, like going to college and then climbing the corporate ladder might (but I literally know nothing about that) and it demands your creativity at every step along the way.
Here we can unpack a few of the things I mentioned before.
Creating and selling original works of art.
This is something I’ve been doing since I was a pretty young kid, when I first sold drawings through the internet to people I mostly met through online art forums. The first works of art I ever sold were about fifty dollars each, which to me at the time was a lot of money. I’ve now sold works of art for several thousand dollars each. I create paintings in mostly acrylics nowadays, and they are time intensive and meticulous to produce. I’ve also sold original oil paintings, and drawings in both graphite and pen and ink. I have exhibited works in galleries and have had some success in selling art that way, but the vast majority of art I’ve sold has been through social media. I’ve even sold many works of art through social media before they were even finished. I ship my art worldwide.
Prints
I sell prints, both online and at events (mostly transformational music festivals) of both digitally and traditionally painted works of art. This is good because as long as it’s not disclosed otherwise in a contract, any time you create a painting you can not only sell the physical artefact, but you can also produce and sell prints of that painting for years to come. I have upheld a habit of paying a professional photographer to take a high resolution (at least the same size of the artwork or larger at 300DPI) of every painting I finish for many years and it has been a very worthwhile investment. I sell prints on both paper and on canvas, both as less expensive standard prints, and high quality giclee archival prints that are usually hand signed and limited edition. Some artists like to include a sketch on the back of their prints that makes the prints inherently more valuable and having a limited edition of something makes it more valuable as well. I also now work with a third party fulfilment company for my prints, which means that I don’t need to produce or ship the prints myself. The quality has been good and it’s much more convenient this way. Many other artists sell their work through third party websites like Society6.
Creating and selling other merchandise items
I have both produced my own merchandise and worked with several companies in collaboration to create many different types of merchandise items, including clothing, tapestries, holograms, blankets, and stickers. Most often I find people are more inclined to buy something that they can wear than to buy something that they can put on their walls, and a lot of my audience are the gypsy adventure seeking type that don’t even have walls to put my art on. Making clothing gives people more options and also gets your art out there by turning each person who buys a piece of clothing into a walking billboard for your creativity. I sell my clothing both online and in person at festivals and events, and have occasionally sold amounts of my merchandise wholesale to stores around the world. Selling wholesale is a great option for selling your art and merchandise and I’ve had success just bringing things into stores and asking upfront if they’re interested in selling my merch. You will face some rejection but it’s nothing to take personally or to let discourage you. Confidence is key.
Tattooing
Tattooing has been a huge part of my journey in recent years. Again often people are more inclined to pay for a tattoo than they are to buy an original work of art. And also every person that gets tattooed by you is a walking advertisement for your art. My first inspiration to tattoo was to have a trade that could support me while I traveled anywhere in the world, and I have already tattooed in many countries and found that this can indeed be the case. Tattooing is extremely complex and difficult and I underwent an apprenticeship to learn which was intense and challenging. It is also rather expensive to get started and has a steep though exponential learning curve. I find tattooing to be very meaningful as it is a very intimate and sacred experience to share with someone, completely unlike anything I’ve found while creating paintings.
Illustration and Graphic Design Commissions
I’ve made a lot of custom illustration and graphic design work, mostly for bands as album covers, logos, or posters. I’ve also done some shirt designs and things like that. There are a lot of opportunities as a commercial freelance illustrator including character design, book covers, website designs, etc, etc. I prefer to take on less of these now I as I prefer to focus on my personal artwork, but it has definitely supported me a lot in the past.
Teaching
More recently I’ve delved more into teaching and coaching. I’ve led a few workshops and one retreat thus far. This is very meaningful work because it combines my passion for art with the beautiful gift of helping someone else along in their journey. I actually gave my first art workshop when I was 19 but I was giving private lessons in painting and digital art from the age of 15 or 16 years old. I would really love to work with more people both one on one and in a class or workshop environment to help expand and assist people’s creative development. This article is somewhat of an extension of that.
Collaboration
I think collaboration with other artists is one of the best ways to earn income as an artist while exploring unique and exciting creative projects. Collaborations can come in many ways. I’ve collaborated with a lot of bands and musicians, creating artwork and imagery for their music projects. I’ve also collaborated with musicians for the purpose of live painting on stage during their performances. I’ve collaborated with other painters on paintings that we made and sold together, and I’ve also collaborated with many clothing designers and creators of different physical artefacts. I’ve not yet done any tattoo collaborations but this is something I would like to do more of in the future. I welcome new and exciting creative collaborations and find that it’s much easier to build energy and excitement with other people than it is when I work by myself on a project.
Murals
This is the last division of my professional practice that I’ll dissect, because not only are murals fun but they are also an excellent way for a visual artist to earn income. Plenty of businesses and restaurants want mural art to spruce up their decor, and there are organisations that pay many artists for street art as well. You can probably get work in this way by offering your services to a restaurant you enjoy eating at. My first forays into murals were painting them on abandoned buildings, and then later taking them into friends houses, and then into businesses. You can also potentially trade your mural services to get free food or free services from the business you are painting for.
Devotion
To be a successful artist, devotion is really key. You really need to love making art because it will demand everything of you. Chances are you will need to sacrifice a lot. You may need to sacrifice your free time, your habit of watching television, relationships that are not supportive of your path as an artist, etc, etc. It will take a lot of time and constant effort to grow your art career. You have stay headstrong, humble, passionate, and hard working. One of my favorite artists Alex Grey says you need to only do 3 things to succeed as an artist, 1 “Do your best,” 2 “Be yourself,” and 3 “Never give up.” There are probably more nuances to it than that, but fundamentally that’s about all you need to be successful. Be yourself, hold your art to high standards, work hard, and never give up. Be willing to invest everything you have into your art, your time, your money, your pride, your social life, what your parents think of you, etc, etc, etc. I personally am not in support of people sacrificing their physical or mental health for their art, however.
Most importantly, you need to truly love it. All artists I have met who are successful with their work are that way because they totally and truly love making art. That love is going to give you the power and motivation to succeed.
Exposure
Gaining exposure, and building an audience is key to becoming a successful artist. I think every artist has their own way of making this happen. I owe a little bit of my ability to have built an audience to luck. I think that I found myself in the right place at the right time, and connected with the right people which gave me an opportunity to expose my work to an audience that would receive it, which was primarily through transformational music festivals and the visionary art culture. Social media has also been key for me, and is a very useful tool to build your following. Some artists have been able to build a big following from the comfort of their own homes by just posting online and through social media. I have found, however, that a lot of my success as an artist has come from literally putting myself out there, and I have made hundreds of appearances with my art all over the world at festivals and events, connecting one on one with an audience in person. I am grateful for my social graces which have allowed this to happen, and the most famous artists have all been skilful socialites as well. For the introvert, there are certainly many artists who have gained success from the safe comfort of their home studio, but I would challenge you to get out there and muster the confidence to make appearances, go to the right parties, and to be social. It will only benefit your work.
Education
Options are numerous for education to become an artist, and there is no right or wrong way to do it. I studied in a mainstream art university, and then spent time in 3 other private art Ateliers studying traditional drawing and painting techniques, and then did a tattoo apprenticeship in order to learn the art and trade of tattooing. I have had a lot of training with some of the best artists in the world, and I sought them out specifically and traveled far to go study with them. Ironically, despite my education and training, I would consider myself primarily a self taught artist and I would say that this is a key to all highly skilled artists I know. You can’t expect a school or teacher to give you all of the clues to make your art. A school can give you a valuable structure but you have to put in the time and energy to learn and study yourself through trial and error. I read countless books on the subjects of drawing and painting and art history, spent time in museums, and attended many workshops. When I was younger, most of my education was online and there are infinite ways to self educate through youtube tutorials, facebook groups, and online art academies. There are online courses for every subject related to the arts in every medium, including tattooing.
Putting in the time
There are no shortcuts to development as an artist, either in regards to the technique, practice, and craft of your art, or in the professional sphere of your artistic practice. At the end of the day you just have to put in the work. Something I’ll mention which seems important is that at the beginning of my artistic journey, I took pretty much every opportunity I could in regards to my artwork, just to gain experience and exposure. The pop-psychology 10,000 hours rule seems to be fairly accurate in regards to how much time you need to put into something to become fully proficient with it. I would recommend taking any job you can get that’s related to your art, even if it doesn’t pay very much or not at all. The first commission pieces I made were random and sporadic, and all very low paying. I think I made about $25-$50 per commission when I first began. I made t-shirts for friends at school, an album cover for a friend’s garage band, a logo for my dad’s friend’s business, etc, etc. I took any job I could get because I wanted to learn and because every time I did something it took me one tiny step closer to achieving my dream of becoming a professional artist. I also did hundreds of live painting events without being paid any more than free entry to the event, and occasionally meal tickets, because it gave me an opportunity to network and to expose my artwork to an audience that would receive it. I did the same for gallery exhibitions, taking any opportunity to show my work no matter how small the gallery was or if my art was just one tiny piece among hundreds of other artists’ work.
Why aren’t I making any money on my artwork?
Sometimes the river is dry and it’s hard to earn income as an artist. Sometimes things are flowing. In my experience, however, it a little bit unstable. Sometimes I make a lot of money in a short period of time and sometimes a few months go by where I’m barely making anything. I’ve learned to embrace this as part of my journey as an artist and stability is one of the things I’ve learned to sacrifice for the joy and freedom that comes with being an artist.
If you’re not making money right now as an artist it doesn’t mean that something is necessarily wrong. Nor does it mean your art is no good. Many things could be happening. It could mean you aren’t reaching the right audience. It could be a good time to get back to the drawing board (literally and figuratively) and look at things from a different angle, to use your will power and creativity to find a new solution. It’s probably time to work harder, not to take a break or to quit.
There are also people I meet in my journey who express despair to me about not making it as an artist, who’s art simply isn’t good enough yet. This is a hard truth to swallow. They haven’t fully put in the time and work required yet to gain mastery of their craft and to build a following, both of which require a lot of tenacity and patience. Many of these people haven’t fully embraced an artist’s lifestyle, and they still leak a lot of their free time watching television or other invaluable activities, and they don’t put in the effort needed to study and learn and improve. Realistic perspective and self criticism is crucial to development as an artist (as is, ironically, a healthy dose of self confidence) and some people are unwilling to really examine the flaws that exist in their work. I’ve met many people who are willing to suffer by not making it as an artist but aren’t willing to put in the hard and disciplined effort that it takes to really make it. Every successful artist I’ve ever met is constantly striving to improve their work, and is humble and always seeking to learn more and more. The day you think you know everything is the day your growth as an artist begins to decline, and a real master understands that the ceiling is infinite when it comes to exploration and development. Even the most skilled artist is like an infant in comparison to the artistry and perfection of nature, the highest source of all of our inspiration.
Conclusion
These are a few of my ways of how I earn money through my visual artwork. I hope that if you are just beginning on your path to becoming a professional visual artist that you may take some value away from this article, and that it may help you come one step closer to making your dreams a reality. As I said before, I am still young and developing and do not by any means consider myself a full fledged master, nor absolute authority on art, either professionally or creatively. That said I have achieved the goal of supporting myself off my art alone while traveling the world for about 7 years now, and so I am happy to share what I know about this process. If you are interested in working more with me to bring your dreams closer to reality, I also offer one on one coaching sessions, and I present workshops and retreats worldwide as well. If you would like to see more of my artwork you can do so on my instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jkobrinart/ and on my website at https://jakekobrin.com