How To Make Money Out Of Art - My Experience Part 1

Hey everyone,

To make a couple of bucks, it's important to understand the options available to you as an artist in the market. This topic will be split into two parts:

Part 1: My personal experience making money with my art since I graduated.

Part 2: Key aspects to consider when building a 'money-making' strategy.

Why two parts? I was planning on making a brief bio of my personal experience, but it turned out to be not so brief, and I consider this context key. But don't worry, part two will be out next week.

Let's dive in!

Bio

In case you want to skip this part, you can see my professional history on Linkedin but if you want some extra context, here is a brief story::

About 10 years ago, after I graduated from graphic design, I landed a small gig making all kinds of designs for a clothing company. It was a niche and quirky t-shirt brand, but hey, I got paid. Of course, my tasks were varied since I was the main artist. The point here is, I didn't have a background in concept art, mostly in traditional illustration. Back then, I used Photoshop poorly, primarily for logos and branding.

From 2010 to 2013, I mostly worked as a graphic designer. A significant part of my education involved analyzing artists' portfolios on Behance. I used Facebook a lot back then, started following artists, joined Facebook groups, and watched YouTube videos about digital painting and concept art. I didn't even have a plan; I just explored as much as I could. Then, in 2014, I decided to create one art piece per day for the entire year, like a 365-day challenge. I'll write soon about this in an article about how I developed my style. Why is this important? This was the point where I started to focus on my digital art as an illustrator to create a portfolio.

It took me two years of insufficient portfolios and many job applications to land a small illustration gig at Paizo (2016), a card game company. They paid $100 per illustration back then, not sure about now. That same year, I applied for a 2D concept artist position at Gameloft Budapest, where they paid 300EUR per week. They didn't contact me; I had to do an art test to see if I could solve the visual problems they had. Why? Well, my portfolio wasn't that clear, and hiring people based on the assumption that they can adapt to any problem is a risk. I'll delve more into how we can avoid this issue in the next article about strategy, bear with me.

I took that money, I asked for some from family and moved from Latin America to Europe. This strategic move also made it easier to legally get hired by companies from countries like the United States back then.

After consistently sharing art on social media, engaging in self-taught education, and applying to anything that fit my skills, I managed to increase my visibility and improve my skills and direction. Eventually, I received an email from Riot Games, interested in my availability. Why did this happen?

You might think it's due to "popularity" only, but that's just one piece. More importantly, I had tons of different sketches, styles, and concepts, as you can see in my Artstation portfolio from those years. This meant adaptability and increased chances of a client finding a specific problem solved in my portfolio, therefore feeling confident in hiring me. Keep in mind, my portfolio was mainly illustration-oriented, as I was displaying technique instead of ideas only. But the gig I got from Riot was not only for illustration but also for concept art (character design, props, environment). In the article "Do You Want To Work For Riot Games? Things You Need To Know (Workflow & Concepts) - My Experience", you can delve more into this job.

After Riot, I wasn't searching actively; I had just moved to Europe and was comfortable. Then, I received some other job proposals but took only the ones that would add weight to my career, like the small gig at Sony for Spiderverse. We're talking about 6 years until landing a job at a big company, and it was a consequence of very poor planning and days of many meaningless sketches.

Conclusion

What does this mean? You don't need to make tons of sketches for years or build a large following and hope to get a decent job. I did that because I was ignorant but passionate. You can do it better and I'll tell you how. The key thing here is to understand what your clients' needs are, ask how you can help them meet their goals, and use your skills to deliver that message to them. In the next post, we will discuss what strategies we can use to meet those goals. Stay tuned!.

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