Nuki News #28: Priorities and Education!

Previous Artie Asks Artists Post:https://www.patreon.com/posts/41431795

I’m having another double-feature post for this one, since I actually went over the ‘scheduling’ part in a previous Nuki News this year, but I’ll go into something about the aspect of prioritizing I gleaned from reading the responses to my questionnaire to full time furry artists. 

Scheduling, and planning will set up your road ahead to keep you accountable. Break down your needs by the week, month, and year. Deliver work timely, and as well be clear on what you’re able to do for a commissioner. 

I definitely feel this is something I’m already pretty good at- I used to be much more strict with it though back when I lived at my parent’s. I talked about blocking out my time in a February Nuki News you can find here: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34379777

Going to art full time means I’ll need to also break down my goals into weekly or bi-weekly chunks- I’ll likely be focusing on taking a certain amount of commissions per week or bi-weekly basis. Right now I usually just reserve commissions for the latter half of the month, and I do make monetary goals to hit each month- this year I was hoping to manage $600 a month, it didn’t always happen, but most of the months thus far have hit almost twice my goal which makes up for it. Of course, how many people at a given moment want to commission me isn't directly in my hands- but I feel I am at a point where I can find work with my art regularly. 

I also should be considering the quantity of art I get to post. As an artist, regular posting is what is going to keep me in folks’ mind and also be the one they want to go to for commission work. There’s often a quantity vs quality debate, but I’ve decided quantity at this point is what’s the most important to fulfill my desires with art. Relating to fulfillment though, is learning- setting out to learn about a subject, specifically.

Find time to invest in education; even if it’s not art related! Learn a new skill or hobby, that you could re-implement in your artwork or art business. Consider what it is your audience would want, and all the things you can provide for them. 

I’ve taken this to heart more recently actually - I’m learning how to play Pokemon competitively! I got a book on it too; I watch competitive pokemon a *lot* on YouTube; you could say it’s my hobby outside of art! But I never personally thought of going into it myself. But I came to find the value pokemon has behind it- it’s a strategy game, but there’s luck and chance involved. Attacks can miss, or critically strike, throwing all your plans and calculations into the bathwater. But because of that I think it teaches a great lesson of accepting the unexpected, and learning from defeat. Each game is a test of decision making and planning, and assessing your chances. I’ve already felt myself become more clear in my decision making even when drawing, and I probably have competitive pokemon to thank for it!

For the last sentence there, it’s sort of related to this in terms of finding the things to learn about what your audience might like! It won’t work with everything; I know my audience generally likes pokemon too, but me playing competitive pokemon doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll make me draw more pokemon(okay, well, maybe it has). But if I were to learn about massage therapy, for example, I might learn about massage techniques I could try to draw Artie doing, and it might inspire someone to want Artie to give their sona a massage! Ahaha, just something to throw out there. Everything ties into everything else in some way, if you let it! 

That basically concludes the conclusions I’d gotten from the questionnaire responses I’d gotten from 12 full time furry artists! A good amount of these are things I’m already thankfully doing or have made a habit out of! But I feel the things I need to work on(and all of them are a perpetual thing to keep up with) is my physical health, having a personal project, and getting to a point where doing art full time won’t have any regrets for me. It doesn’t mean I have to perfect them all to make this work, and I’m sure I’ll have adapted these things naturally after I’ve made the leap into doing art full time. But the more prepared I am, the better. 

Thank you so much for your support on my journey, by the way. Even if you’re just reading this a few weeks from when I posted it, it means a lot I have folks reading and knowing what I’ve been up to. It’s been holding me accountable! Next week, I’m going to be reviewing the 3rd quarter of the year and see what we can make of the last 3 months ahead of 2020.