Being Over 40 in a digital art field
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The self portrait on the cover of this post was done for School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an assignment when I was 18 years old. That year I got married for the first time and was forced to drop out of school for about 1400$ of expenses I couldn't come up with in loans or scholarships. It wouldn't be until 2013 that I would finally earn my degree, and even then it would be in a different and more commercial field of graphic design.
I am now 45. Nearly 46. I doubt my profession will change again.
I first started hearing voices and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder late in life, back when I was about 30 years old. I spent ten years on medication that muffled the symptoms and gave periodic relief. Finally I have found medication that gives true relief from voices and doesn't ravage my body like the others did.. Haven't had them for nearly two years. I am able to focus on my designs and manage my uploads for the print on demand work very well right now. For this I am forever thankful.
I was a stay at home mother for 20 years and have a hard time interviewing for office jobs. I don't even have a printed portfolio anymore. Employers didn't seem to look at my online portfolios and I have had a few. Let me say the simple photo pile with neverending load adobe uses is great. You can embed videos from youtube. As long as you pay your adobe bill, you have the site. It is a great place to see the scope of an artist. Behance profiles are just transferred to the site.
It is not to say I haven't tried to get graphic design work. My portfolio going print on demand has become too flamboyant for warehouse office supply chains that want an in house graphic designer. That's all we have out here. Everyone is about an hours drive away and I am not comfortable with that kind of commute on my meds. Really Print on demand is the only place left for me. Don't get me wrong, if it were lucrative, it would be my first choice. Print on demand is like a dream. Passive income and freetime to make new art. Sell while you sleep and all that. Nobody to review your work, you are your own boss. It is a dream job. It just hasn't found my paygrade yet.
That could be me. I only started uploading my full range a few years ago and my tagging was a bit impeded by my medicated self at first. I have noticed I am writing better descriptions nowadays and tagging much better. Still, to have so much of myself out there and see such a lull in sales over these pandemic years has been disenchanting to say the least. I appreciate every sale. I do have them. But i want the hours I spend to translate to earning a home. Get off food stamps, etc. In am thankful. Print on demand is a place to turn for someone homebound like myself. I dream of making new art everyday and uploading nothing but stunning passive income winners week after week. The reality is I am just getting some of my best older designs up on some of my best sites and exploring what works on a handful of others.
Really this used to be a vector art only gig. Tshirt designs used to be vector art only. If you didnt know illustrator and the pen tool, you had no business designing a t-shirt. Now we have the advent of sublimation print techniques and all over print and cut and sew print shops. They are all changing the game. Now us photoshop artists have a fighting chance in the t-shirt and clothing design world. Digital painting drawing collage and photomanipulation is what I love and drawing digital patterns for the tessellations.
How to describe abstract work and flower photographs in a way that stands out? This I have not yet figured out. Many people have figured out like myself that flowers are one of the few things out there not copyrighted AND that have enormous design potential. My best opinion is that sites have tailored their search scripts to sell, not to have random artists found regularly. The only solution is to make product videos and write about your products and develop a solid following. Marketplace search results gets you a bare minimum monthly income. From what I can gather on the successful blogs I have read, you need to treat it like a full time job. I have constantly pondered what exactly this means.
I am excited to get to fall the beginning of our best time of year selling season as Print on demand picks up, I hope to get some new designs out and rearrange some old favorites from the past few years. A lot of the ordering of products by artists fuels the ordering of products by customers. Artists present their purchases with complete real world 3d views and quality concerns and give the customer a real window into what is often priced higher than a big box store product of the same sort. Our products are greener than big box stores. However, they are a few bucks more in most cases. You pay for the individuality of the artist designing. You fuel the marketplace to introduce new products. This fuels new designs by artists and brings in new artists. The whole thing just grows. I love ordering my own stuff. I have a few more headbands from art of where coming this week and will blog about both batches once they arrive. Art of where is one of the four or five print on demand companies that gives you a marketplace storefront, and integrates with shopify. Great company. I wish some of the big three or four like Zazzle, Society 6, redbubble, cafe press would introduce shopify integration. That would be an incredible boost. Right now the biggest one is Pixels, Also under the fine art America umbrella.
Well, off to make some more designs and uploads! Thanks for stopping by to read. feel free to comment. Oh an by the way I am also sober over ten years and I can not tell you the relief I feel that the bag of tobacco I packed when moving to my non smoking sister's house was placed in my closet after being found this weekend on a shelf too high for me to reach and with a box atop to heavy for me to move. I have cigarettes, and a rolling machine, just out of reach. But yah know what, when the patch wears off I have a nicorette lozenge and wow I am really handling this. Been a couple weeks now without a cig. Longest I have gone in twenty years. So this is me. The maker of the art you buy. Hopefully this answers a few of the what is she thinking about questions when you look at some of my work. Now go out and follow some artists in print on demand and save up to buy something nice from them, then youtube the arrival of the package and tag it with their marketplace and circulate it on socials. begone! You have works to do! as do I. This blog is intended to convey a sense of hope and combat the isolation of a work from home environment that us print on demand artists live in.