The Path of the Indie Artist
Here is a basic breakdown of the components that go into an independent art/creator career. Keep in mind that this is simplified down and wont reflect the complexity of an individual's actual experience. I'm making this to make it easier to understand these concepts from a macro view.
The 4 Components
Creative Voice & Craft [The Art]
Online Presence & Audience [The Marketing]
Building a Website & Mailing List [Branding]
Monetization [Product & Sales]
These are the main sections of the path but do not try to do them one at a time. It's a constant cycle where you will improve on all aspects at all times. You may decide to focus on the art for a period of time but this can easily become a trap where you never post anything and get consumed with the feeling of inadequacy with your art.
All 4 sections require their own unique skills, being a great artist doesn't mean that branding will be easy. Learn them slowly and experiment
The Art
Creative Voice
This is the hardest component of the entire process because there are no one-size-fits-all strategy for finding your voice. Knowing what you like can be difficult, it personally took me 8 years of failing until I realized what I actually wanted.
The key thing to understand is that art is about flavor.
Flavor is easier to understand outside of the visual art realm, take a look at hip hop artists such as Future [the guy that made “Mask Off”], he's not an amazing lyricist and it's not like he has amazing vocals. What he does have is flavor, you don't get the sense that he’s trying too hard to be anyone but himself.
Within the art space I think an artist like Yoshitaka Amano is a perfect example of someone who is filled to the brim with flavor. It’s not about technical ability, most of what he creates is not anatomically perfect but its beautiful because it reflects what he actually likes.
Strategies for Finding Your Voice:
Art Detox
This is a strategy that Daniel Warren [co-creator of Steve Lichman] has mentioned many times and it’s a useful one. To do an art detox you take 3-6 weeks where you stop consuming any type of art and spend as much time drawing in your sketchbook.
The goal here is to move away from the standards and expectations of other artists so that you can get closer to your natural voice. Comparison can easily lead you astray and constantly consuming work by your favorite artists may keep you blind to your true voice.
Make sure to use a medium where you can experiment and create as much work as possible.
Art Challenge
This is the main strategy that is used on One Fantastic Week, you pick a theme and a medium for a set period of time and complete 4-12 pieces within that theme. Give yourself a short timeframe for these challenges so that you will be more likely to experiment. Your natural voice will come out when the pressure makes it difficult to hold onto expectations.
Expectations vs Natural Voice
The main challenge with finding your voice is that your expectations will get in the way of your natural voice. For example, on my journey I kept thinking that I had to do paintings because they were “more impressive” when the reality is that I just love doing ballpoint pen drawings. I actually did a ballpoint pen drawing in 2018 that I really loved but it took me till 2021 to realize that I should lean into it.
One great example of this disparity is the journey that Justin Donaldson took on the 1FW show. His expectation was that he had to do figurative paintings when in reality his natural voice comes through his landscape work. You can watch the full journey he took below.
Artistic Blindness
One of the barriers to seeing your own artistic voice is that what is natural to you will seem too easy to be valuable. You might be under the impression that if something is easy that means it has no value.
Easy =/= low value
Think about this in terms of your friends, which of your friends do you value the most: the ones that you can be natural and carefree around or the ones that you feel anxious and worried about? Now think about your art as a friend, which one do you want to hang out with, the art that makes you anxious or the one that makes you feel free?
You will be blind to what makes your work special, but you will know that you are making the right stuff when you just love the process. This is hard, most people don’t find this naturally but you will if you allow yourself enough breathing room to find it.
Technical Ability
The less complex part of the art side is the technical ability that goes into your creative voice. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you want to develop technical skills that actually elevate your voice. You don’t need to learn how to draw cars if the focus of your work is all organic materials.
If you dont know your voice fully, learning anatomy and basic perspective skills is a great place to start, but make sure that your day always involves some type of exploration. Dont get caught in the “Study Trap” where you just do studies without any real direction. Your art will flourish when you combine technical skills with your artistic voice.
The Marketing
When we talk about marketing we are mainly focused on Social Media. Marketing can seem like a dirty business word but the reality is that marketing is about human connection. You want to approach your marketing with the sense that you have the opportunity to connect with people who are like yourself, people who have great taste ;D
The opportunities within the marketing space is always shifting, each of the platforms are ever changing which means that you will have to keep an eye out for what is currently working. At the time of writing this, short videos are doing well online as all the platforms are competing with TikTok. Does this mean that you HAVE to do videos? No, there are plenty of artists that arent, but it is a huge growth opportunity.
The first step you have to take is to open accounts on all the main platforms, here are the ones that I would recommend: Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Artstation.
Youtube
Like I mentioned above, marketing is all about human connection and the best way to connect with someone is to actually talk to them. Youtube is easily the most powerful platform IF you are comfortable with creating videos. Just because a platform is powerful does not mean that it will be powerful for you specifically.
Youtube is currently promoting their “Shorts” style videos, so if you have some experience making TikTok vids or any type of short form video then this is a huge growth opportunity for you.
Twitter is a great place to connect with people because it is a more lively exchange of words. People actually take the time to respond to replies and there is a culture of retweets and sharing. I do not have tons of experience within this space but within 3 weeks of being active on it I have made a lot of connections.
This platform is also a place where people actually click on links, this is a big deal because eventually you want these platforms to help you promote your main website, Patreon or Kickstarter.
Add links to your description and make sure the main link at the bottom is your website. In this image Im directly linking to my Zodiac Gallery because it is what Im currently promoting.
You also want to create a Pinned Tweet that has all your links and a showcase of your best work. This is the first thing new viewers will see and what a lot of people will be sharing around. So make sure you repeat the links from your description, people retweet these quite regularly.
To create a pinned tweet you first create a tweet with a short description, links and the images then you tweet it out. Once its published you can click the three dots at the top right corner of the tweet and press “Pin Tweet to Profile”
Google SEO
SEO might sound fancy on the surface but its quite basic, the question you have to ask yourself is “what would people search to find my art”. Here is a video explaining the basics:
Apply google SEO to your website, I will cover more of this when we get to building your website.
Pinterest is great because it is low maintenance and its easy to share stuff from your website. Upload your work to a site and make sure to use good SEO in the titles of your images. Once you have that in place you can use the Pinterest share buttons off your site to pin to your page.
Make sure to go into your pinterest settings and Claim Your Website (guide: https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/claim-your-website ) This helps the pinterest algorithm know that you are creating original content so they will promote your site.
Pinterest is also switching into a TikTok like format where you can post “Pin Ideas” which are essentially vertical stories that dont disappear. The platform is currently going through a lot of changes so you will have to experiment as things change. I will update this if they settle into a format.
TikTok
There are many ways that you can easily share your process through TikTok and if you make that type of content you can share the same content on Youtube, Instagram and Pinterest. If you have never made video before this might seem intimidating, but you can take short clips using your phone camera and combine them together in the app.
I dont have a lot of experience with TikTok but people seem to have a lot of success there. Learning to make short form video will be valuable regardless of the platform. The only challenge with TikTok is that it might have lower conversion rates since its mostly a mobile platform.
Instagram and Facebook
For some reason people think Instagram is the best platform to post your work. Do post your work there but I wouldn't recommend it as your main platform. These two platforms have very low conversion rates, its difficult to get anyone to go from your instagram account to your website. Instagram is great for discovery and there is plenty of value of posting there but don't get caught up in the numbers.
Having 1k followers on twitter will yield more actual engagement than 10k followers on Instagram. I mentioned earlier how marketing is all about human connection, most followers on instagram have a very fleeting connection to who they follow. It's no coincidence that the biggest creators on instagram also have big YouTube followings.
Facebook pages recently changed their algorithm so there is more discovery there. Do share your work on both of these platforms because their audience is so huge that you have the opportunity to connect with a lot of them.
Presentation
How you present your work is quite important, if you work traditionally you want to take great photos of your work and also give your photos some context. If you share a sketch you will want to put the pencil in frame so that viewers can see the context in which you made the piece. Pete and Sam Discuss this at length here
The Brand - Website and Mailing List
Your website will be the home for everything that you do, which makes it the central meeting point for all of the marketing that we discussed in the previous point. A well designed website can drastically increase the connection that you have to your audience. You want to invite people into your Artistic Home and you want them to keep coming back.
Building a website can seem expensive at first but it’s worth the investment if you want to create a great experience for your viewers. A basic plan on SquareSpace is about $120/year, even if you did this as a hobby it isnt unreasonably expensive for how powerful it can become.
I will be using SquareSpace as my example because it is what I have experience with, I do believe its worth the money and I havent seen anything like it. Building a website is super easy on SquareSpace so you will save so much time by just paying a little extra upfront.
TO BE CONTINUED..