Artistic Voyages — Painting Murals To Travel Full-time
Whether you’re at a turning point in your life or simply looking for motivation to keep doing what you’re doing, this article is for you.
We recently asked Jill, a full-time fellow adventurer, to share her story.
Prepare to get motivated.
You can’t help but take action after reading her story.
Consider yourself warned.
Meet Jillian Amatt
Life has a habit of bringing creative souls together. I met Jill and Chris (Jill’s partner) in Istanbul, Turkey. It went something like this:
Chris was stick-and-poking a tattoo on an Iranian girl’s arm in the common room of Levanten hostel while Jill was talking to an Israeli guy about the mural they were about to paint on one of the walls of the hostel.
A mural!
“Damn,” I thought, “They’re cool. They’re really cool.”
And that’s how I met the people behind Artistic Voyages.
Painting murals to discover the globe
Jillian Amatt (everybody calls her Jill, though) grew up in Alberta, Canada. “I was lucky to be raised in the majestic Rocky Mountains, and I don’t take it for granted one bit,” she says.
Jill just turned 46 (you can still shoot her a late happy birthday message), and she’s had many jobs in her life.
“The one thread that links all that I am passionate about is travel,” Jill says.
She grew up traveling and always aspired to make it a career. “However,” she explains, “society got its grip on me and I ended up following the crowd.”
She went to college, got married, built a house, and started a business. The usual jazz. She even tried to have kids.
“The kids didn’t happen (thank god), the marriage ended, and at 36 I found myself starting over again.”
When the 9-to-5 Wasn’t Fulfilling Anymore
For a while, Jill and Chris were living the classic 9–5 lifestyle.
- They worked.
- They ate.
- They slept.
- They repeated.
And then they snapped out of it.
“We both felt like life should be more fun and rewarding, but we didn’t know how to make a change.”
One day Jill saw the Minimalism documentary on Netflix. Life as she had known it, had changed forever (dramatic but true).
“The reason we weren’t able to travel as much as we wanted was because we had surrounded ourselves with too much stuff. We knew that if we shed it all, we could go out into the world and travel full-time without any commitments to any one place.”
It took them 9 months to sell all of their possessions.
Before they knew it, Jill and Chris were housesitting on a beach in Costa Rica.
The Financial Part
Jill and Chris are both impeccable artists. They upload their designs to different print-on-demand platforms where they sell products on Etsy.
In addition, they have a Patreon page and a Medium profile.
Being a writer myself, I was especially curious about the last one. I’ve thought about trying out Medium many times but have never gotten myself to do it.
How to get started on Medium?
You better believe I took Jill and Chris as a cue for looking into Medium.
The process of starting, as they described, is a difficult one: “Just sign up and start writing!”
Never mind, let’s ignore my embarrassing sarcasm.
Aaanyway…
Jill also recommends taking some time to read other people’s articles. If you aren’t a paid member, though ($5/ month), you can only read 3 articles per month.
“I bit the bullet and got the paid membership, then started reading. After two weeks I felt confident enough to write my own article, and the rest is history,” she says.
Is it hard to work while traveling?
Alex and I have spoken about working while traveling here before. It’s a daily topic for us as we both do it, well… daily.
“It is definitely hard to work while traveling,” Jill agrees. “The key to being successful is to travel slow. It is almost impossible to be traveling fast while keeping up with your online commitments. That is a one-way ticket to serious burnout.”
Want it or not, Jill couldn’t be more accurate.
I tried working from hostels for a while. I wanted to be social full-time, work full-time, and focus on being a functional human being (also full-time).
You better believe that led me to the edge of burnout real quick.
“We tend to do small stints of traveling, but then find a place where we can hunker down for a month, or more, just to focus on our projects and reset. It is necessary to be able to put out the content that you need to be successful online,” she says.
How to travel for free?
Wait for it.
Are you ready?
Jill and Chris have only paid for 13 months of accommodation in 5 years of full-time travel.
I’ll let that sink in.
The trick?
“We also do a lot of volunteering in exchange for food and accommodation, so we keep our expenses low by doing that,” Jill says, “That equals significant savings over time.”
Read the article she wrote about it here.
The costs of an online business
Alex and I pay for our Mailchimp membership and the hosting service for our site. Jill and Chris’s costs are similar to ours but they also pay for cloud storage both through Dropbox and Apple.
If you plan on selling digital art, you might want to take Jill’s and Chris’s example: “It’s important for us to have our artwork accessible anywhere and we don’t want to be weighed down by hard drives.”
The reality of being your own boss
As we have said countlessly in this blog, we wouldn’t change our nomadic lifestyle for anything. However, as we keep repeating, a digital nomad lifestyle is not the picture-perfect dream Instagram makes it out to be.
“Sometimes I just want somebody to tell me what to do and how to be successful,” Jill says, “It is hard work trying to figure out all the hurdles with being successful online.”
The pros
“A big pro to being our own bosses is that we get to decide our schedule. When we wake up in the morning we decide how we want our day to go, which is nice.”
The buts
“But it also means that we have to be disciplined and make sure we carve out time to do work as well. We also have to stay self-motivated to keep going in the face of adversity or setbacks, which isn’t always easy.”
Do you invest?
I was curious about this. Alex preaches investing for digital nomads (read: he never shuts up about it).
He has piqued my interest in the topic, but I haven’t made any remarkable investments yet.
The answer Jill gave me made me more excited than I’d expected: ”Chris is currently working on a large NFT drop.”
NFT is basically digital art that is sold for cryptocurrency. “We tend to stay away from anything that is risky financially,” Jill says.
Jill and Chris also have a YouTube channel but they haven’t monetized it yet. If you’re thinking about exploring the possibilities of a nomadic lifestyle, their videos will likely be of great value to you.
As I said, you can’t help but get inspired by Artistic Voyages.
How to leave friends and family behind?
Something Jill mentioned clicked big time for me.
You see, there’s something I don’t talk about too often with people. Not because I don’t want to but because I don’t know how to.
Well, I’ll add my thoughts later but here’s the thing that she said:
“The friends and family you leave behind will likely not be as excited about your journey as you thought they would be.”
She goes on to say that you’ll find that many of the people that were once close to you have shut you out rather than show support.
“Doing what we are doing is very confusing to people.” That goes as much for Jill and Chris as it does for Alex and me.
When I first started traveling alone, I was shocked that, even as months went by, most of my family wasn’t glad about my adventures.
The best “progress” happened when they simply got used to it (still not excited, just emotionless with acceptance.
Jill continues: “We have had very little support on our journey from people that we thought we would. Most of our support network has been built while we have been out on the road by meeting like-minded individuals that understand what it is that we are trying to accomplish in the world.”
The daily schedule of a digital nomad
Jill and Chris’s daily schedule changes depending on their location.
“If we are volunteering, we usually have coffee and breakfast, then get started with that by 10:00. We have lunch mid-day then finish by 3 or 4 pm. We then either head out to find food, or go to a market, and then make dinner. We aren’t partiers and rarely, if ever, find ourselves in bars or anywhere that we are out late. We like nothing more than spending the evenings focusing on our online projects.”
When they’re just renting an apartment, their day is different:
- They wake up around 9 am,
- then get online while drinking coffee and sometimes eating breakfast.
- They’ll spend 3–5 hours working,
- and then go out for a walk.
- They like to cook at home,
- and usually spend time online in the evening, too.
“Occasionally, we will get into Netflix or some YouTube videos and will spend an evening unwinding with a movie or documentary.”
Where have you acquired your current mindset and attitude toward life?
Jill’s dad was a motivational speaker for most of his life. “I suppose I have picked up some of his messages,” Jill says.
And here she is, saying what I’ve been repeating like a broken radio for the past few years:
“Mostly, the most valuable lessons that I have learned have been learned while traveling.”
Jill goes on to say that she’s met older people that have chosen to travel after retiring. “The regret they have for not traveling sooner is evident,” she says.
“I vowed to never be one of those people and to live my life how I want now. Tomorrow is never promised and we need to make sure we enjoy the whole journey.”
How do you keep a work-life balance?
We’ve been trying to figure out that one with Alex for a while. Looks like we’re not the only ones (what a relief, honestly).
“It’s really difficult to separate work from life with this lifestyle,” Jill says.
“We usually tend to just keep going and doing what we are doing until we don’t feel like it anymore. When that happens, we will spend a day or two just watching videos or heading to a park or beach to relax without our devices. It’s very important to listen to our bodies and only do what we feel like doing. We try not to force anything.“
What are your goals in life?
“My goal is simply to be happy by doing things that make me so. This is why I decided to leave my humdrum life and do the things that I enjoy,” Jill says.
Ever since she started combining her art with traveling, there’s been no looking back.
“We will only continue to work hard and live our life to the fullest. At the end of the day, the only things that matter are our memories and experiences. Boy do we have lots of those already, and we make more every day.”
Travel/ work abroad tips from Jill and Chris
Jill and Chris are not subscribed to travel points programs. However, they recommend to
- travel slow — take buses and trains if possible,
- housesit for free accommodation — volunteer on platforms like HelpX and Wwoof,
- offer something in exchange for accommodation — they often paint murals in the places they stay at.
3 recommendations for success
“Everyone’s version of success is different so I find it incredibly hard to give recommendations,” Jill admitted when I asked her for suggestions.
However, she named three major things that got her to the place she is right now:
- Watch “Minimalism — A Documentary About the Important Things” — “Even if it doesn’t lead you to sell all of your possessions as it did for us, it will help you to reevaluate what it is that is important to you in this life. You will be surprised by how much your possessions hold you back.”
- Explore your creativity — “We are all creative in one way or the other. Whether it is writing, cooking, sewing, doing art, folding paper, organizing flowers, decorating your house, or just styling your hair, you are using creativity to do those things. There is great healing available to us through our creativity if we just allow ourselves to explore it.”
- Read “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay — “This book is for anybody and has powerful lessons to take away that will help you to channel your energy in a better direction. No matter where you are in life, I know this book will help you.”
Learn more about Jill and Chris!
Jill and Chris share their experiences weekly on various platforms.
If you’re looking for motivation, inspiration, or simply engaging stories from different parts of the world, I highly encourage you to check them out.
Find Artistic Voyages here:
Website: www.artisticvoyages.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/artisticvoyages
Facebook: www.facebook.com/artisticvoyages
Medium: www.artisticvoyages.medium.com
Patreon: www.patreon.com/artisticvoyages
YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/artisticvoyages
