Every fucking time I have a friend or family tell me that art is an 'easy' degree I want to slap them in the face. For many reading this it's preaching to the preacher but to continue trying to make it on my own or with a tiny group of friends is not easy. I'm not trying to work for a big company, I have my own stories and ideas that are bursting to be released. I'm like a zombie but instead of craving brains and entrails I crave time and paper because I always have ideas. I have ideas I think I can sell, I have ideas that I think people will buy and I have skill and talent, and it's hard. I always want to draw, but I'm always up for social engagements, take tonight for instance: I have my journal comic that I need to continue inking and preparing to upload. I have pages I need to go back to and refine and I need to rescan everything I've scanned/posted so far because days didn't have full shading, but I went to listen to Christian Lander speak instead. Dude was funny and it was a good evening, but I didn't work on my comic. I need it get off the ground so I can start selling my fiction and not just my reality.
What makes art so difficult is that even as I'm laying on my be typing this my fingers are itching to pick up a pencil and draw something, ink something create something anything and I have a million other things I need or want to be working on first. I have offers left and right to create things to sell, which I need to get going on before I forget for one thing, and I have other offers to get my name out there and be published once again in my college newspaper. I want to drop out of college so I can devote more time to comics, but I don't have the money for that. I want to take out a hypothetical loan on my future for now, I'm not going to because there are things I want to improve while I'm in this environment to find ways to make things better. I'm working at getting more of my work known and out places. And art degree is serious and difficult business because of the market. The work isn't especially 'hard' because you're selling what you can do, but it's harder then other jobs because every project is tailor made for whoever you're selling things to or creating things for. I'm taking everything I'm learning now, flipping it on it's head to make it all work for me.
In doing all this I talk big. People tell me I sound like I know what I'm doing. I don't, I'm fucking terrified. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to move home, that I'm going to fail and I'll just keep dreaming that I made it in comics and sequential art. I'm also terrified that I'll succeed, I'll make comics that people like, I'll have fans and people will want to buy every stupid thing I draw. I also fear staying in the middle, being known to a handful of people and selling some things, but spending most of my time in some horrible office job were people didn't know I spent my night and weekends creating comics and my life ever got better.
These ideas keep me from picking up a pen and being jealous of everyone who has made it. It also inspires me to grab hold of a pen even sooner so I can prove my worth and get my foot in the door. I want to be known, but I'm afraid of what I have to do to get to that point. That time comes every night where I have to buckle down and get things drawn, it's time for me to work on my journal comic, I've put off doing more than a few pieces of spot shading for a about a week and I need to be prepared to spend Monday scanning and prepping more pages. I can make it, I'm not so afraid and my work is good enough. People will want to buy my pieces and I won't be too afraid to sell them.
Jasmine P.
Showing posts with label self esteem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self esteem. Show all posts
September 16, 2010
July 23, 2010
Self Esteem and Vanity
This is about my creative ability. I finished pieces and proudly show them to my friends, I love showing them work. The down side is that none of them draw so even the crappiest 15 second scribble gets as much love as a piece I'll slave over for hours. It's almost insulting and I have to explain why the 15 second doodle sucks, or why I don't like it. They just can't get it.
When I try to actually consider selling my work I balk. I freeze in my tracks. I can dream of selling my work, I can imagine and plan, but when it boils down to actually selling it, I want to run. I feel bad for charging my friends for my pieces and then there's charging them for some and not for others. Gifts, or random doodles that they decide they like I have no problem giving away. If I really like something I feel bad about trying to charge them. It's less that I'm trying to short change myself, it's more that because they're friends I feel weird, I feel bad about charging. I don't really want to do the 'friend discount' because I have a lot of friends and plenty of them might try talking my into discounting their friends.
See, I'm worrying about something 80 million steps down the road, I haven't even sold a piece and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with pricing. In the long run for actually pricing pieces I have to be fair and charge everyone the same, and then there's actually charging for a piece. Should I just charge based on the size of the piece and completion, or should I just charge by how long it takes me, with completion factored in. I don't want it to be arbitrary chosen with every piece I sell and if I sell something I did for me, but decide I need to sell, how to I price it then?
Tucked into all of this I've been offered an awesome opportunity, it's a cross between a commission and being allowed to just plain sell my work somewhere. I'm trying to figure out if how I'd end up making money would be fair. I also have to think about how much work I'm preparing, how long it would take and then how long it would be until I ultimately saw any sort of return. I want it to be fair for both me and the person who suggested this idea, but I'm trying to figure out the likely hood of my making anything from this project. I just about have to figure out ten things concurrently before I even get to work on this project, and in my mind I want it ready for next fall to sell. But based off it's sales I could have a relatively simple series to get going. I dunno, I'll hint at more information when I have more figured out. Buuu.
So, another project that I addressed a few weeks ago on Twitter was for a small published comic. In my mind it's regular comic sized, anywhere from 10-20 pages. I want that to have two short stories, I have one sketched that a friend has agreed to review for me before I actually draw the pages for publication. I don't have much more than fleeting thoughts for the second story. They'd be non-sequiturs, but I want the print to be worth it for whoever buys it so I figured two black and white stories comic book sized and only about $5 would be fair. Two people said they'd be interested in it, which was a friggin' ego boost, especially because this story would only be available offline, meaning it's not being posted on blogger, or on deviantart. It would be offline only. It would be a hard sale because the stories are so short I can't preview more than a few sketches or pin-ups online without telling more of the story than I want to online. And I would try selling the books online and see if my comic shop would be able to sell them. This would be an even smaller printing because it would be all paid for by me, but I feel as if I have to try. I love the first story, and it's incredibly open to interpretation and I think I would damn near die if I saw it published. I want the second story to be more concrete but equally engaging, I just need to figure it out. I was also thinking about adding one or two sketches or tiny tiny versions of the original sketches as special pages. Not too sure or set in anything yet. That I want for this winter, but unless I get the second story written/drawn it's going to have to wait until next summer or later.
This is all what's been going through my head, it's something I've been thinking over and fretting about. In my mind I see myself selling books or having people see me in the coffee shop selling one of these books and ask for a sketch or something and truly liking my work. I love my friends but I don't always feel as if I can trust their opinions about my work, I don't want them to say something is good because I made it, I want them to say something if good because it honestly is. It's weird, I seem as if the only people I can trust for this are faculty, they'd be supportive and would give me encouragement, but I also feel as if I can trust their critical eye to point out faults that I can work on. I feel as if I can get an honest opinion that I should try to sell my work, but also be told in a friendly way what needs to be improved upon. I feel as if they could ask the right questions.
I think I fear succeeding. I think I want to ask my teachers their opinions because they're not just going to tell me something is good. I also want to ask them because they have the ability to draw, they're creatives so there's in a way weight to what they'd have to tell me. I feel bad not wanting to accept my friends' opinions but I know they don't want to hurt me. It's an odd form of trust and not trusting people it seems.
If you look over these past two situation you'll see me proudly thinking of my art as sellable then turning before I get too far into the clouds and beat me back to having low self esteem and no body wanting to buy my work. Selling things is like a friggin' fantasy, like flying like a bird with wings and not inside a plane. I keep bringing me back to reality, even though what I want is entirely attainable. What I wonder because of this type of thinking is, is this me being frightened by people not liking my work or am I equally afraid of succeeding and never thinking my work is good enough.
I consider showing my work to my friends me being vain. I love showing off, I love getting the attention. It's always weird and different, difficult for me to deal with people giving me attention that I didn't command. When I take people's attention and force them to focus on me, that's one thing. When people invite their attention I feel like I'm inadequate of receiving it. [Holy fuck, I think I just realized something about something going on right now. Will think about and address later, maybe...] Maybe that's why I fear selling my work. Now to get to believing my friends when they tell me my work is good. Seriously, when people tell me my writing or my art are good I don't really believe them. In my creative writing class I was told my poetry was really good, I don't understand why I didn't like any of it. But another time, another friend, told me a blog was well written, I considered it to be more of a rant than anything impressive or well done. I mean, I understand and I know I can write well, I don't think it's impressive. I consider my abilities and skill to be normal, I don't feel as if I work all that hard to accomplish something. I mean, I rarely give these more than a typo skim, if even that, and I post them. I am now circling back to my blog from a few weeks ago about being intelligent and knowing I'm intelligent. Two radically different ideas.
Well cheers! I hope you enjoyed me fretting about my drawing ability and fear of selling work. I'm going to clean the apartment a bit, and maybe write some ideas I've had for the movie blog I've had since yesterday.
Jasmine P.
When I try to actually consider selling my work I balk. I freeze in my tracks. I can dream of selling my work, I can imagine and plan, but when it boils down to actually selling it, I want to run. I feel bad for charging my friends for my pieces and then there's charging them for some and not for others. Gifts, or random doodles that they decide they like I have no problem giving away. If I really like something I feel bad about trying to charge them. It's less that I'm trying to short change myself, it's more that because they're friends I feel weird, I feel bad about charging. I don't really want to do the 'friend discount' because I have a lot of friends and plenty of them might try talking my into discounting their friends.
See, I'm worrying about something 80 million steps down the road, I haven't even sold a piece and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with pricing. In the long run for actually pricing pieces I have to be fair and charge everyone the same, and then there's actually charging for a piece. Should I just charge based on the size of the piece and completion, or should I just charge by how long it takes me, with completion factored in. I don't want it to be arbitrary chosen with every piece I sell and if I sell something I did for me, but decide I need to sell, how to I price it then?
Tucked into all of this I've been offered an awesome opportunity, it's a cross between a commission and being allowed to just plain sell my work somewhere. I'm trying to figure out if how I'd end up making money would be fair. I also have to think about how much work I'm preparing, how long it would take and then how long it would be until I ultimately saw any sort of return. I want it to be fair for both me and the person who suggested this idea, but I'm trying to figure out the likely hood of my making anything from this project. I just about have to figure out ten things concurrently before I even get to work on this project, and in my mind I want it ready for next fall to sell. But based off it's sales I could have a relatively simple series to get going. I dunno, I'll hint at more information when I have more figured out. Buuu.
So, another project that I addressed a few weeks ago on Twitter was for a small published comic. In my mind it's regular comic sized, anywhere from 10-20 pages. I want that to have two short stories, I have one sketched that a friend has agreed to review for me before I actually draw the pages for publication. I don't have much more than fleeting thoughts for the second story. They'd be non-sequiturs, but I want the print to be worth it for whoever buys it so I figured two black and white stories comic book sized and only about $5 would be fair. Two people said they'd be interested in it, which was a friggin' ego boost, especially because this story would only be available offline, meaning it's not being posted on blogger, or on deviantart. It would be offline only. It would be a hard sale because the stories are so short I can't preview more than a few sketches or pin-ups online without telling more of the story than I want to online. And I would try selling the books online and see if my comic shop would be able to sell them. This would be an even smaller printing because it would be all paid for by me, but I feel as if I have to try. I love the first story, and it's incredibly open to interpretation and I think I would damn near die if I saw it published. I want the second story to be more concrete but equally engaging, I just need to figure it out. I was also thinking about adding one or two sketches or tiny tiny versions of the original sketches as special pages. Not too sure or set in anything yet. That I want for this winter, but unless I get the second story written/drawn it's going to have to wait until next summer or later.
This is all what's been going through my head, it's something I've been thinking over and fretting about. In my mind I see myself selling books or having people see me in the coffee shop selling one of these books and ask for a sketch or something and truly liking my work. I love my friends but I don't always feel as if I can trust their opinions about my work, I don't want them to say something is good because I made it, I want them to say something if good because it honestly is. It's weird, I seem as if the only people I can trust for this are faculty, they'd be supportive and would give me encouragement, but I also feel as if I can trust their critical eye to point out faults that I can work on. I feel as if I can get an honest opinion that I should try to sell my work, but also be told in a friendly way what needs to be improved upon. I feel as if they could ask the right questions.
I think I fear succeeding. I think I want to ask my teachers their opinions because they're not just going to tell me something is good. I also want to ask them because they have the ability to draw, they're creatives so there's in a way weight to what they'd have to tell me. I feel bad not wanting to accept my friends' opinions but I know they don't want to hurt me. It's an odd form of trust and not trusting people it seems.
If you look over these past two situation you'll see me proudly thinking of my art as sellable then turning before I get too far into the clouds and beat me back to having low self esteem and no body wanting to buy my work. Selling things is like a friggin' fantasy, like flying like a bird with wings and not inside a plane. I keep bringing me back to reality, even though what I want is entirely attainable. What I wonder because of this type of thinking is, is this me being frightened by people not liking my work or am I equally afraid of succeeding and never thinking my work is good enough.
I consider showing my work to my friends me being vain. I love showing off, I love getting the attention. It's always weird and different, difficult for me to deal with people giving me attention that I didn't command. When I take people's attention and force them to focus on me, that's one thing. When people invite their attention I feel like I'm inadequate of receiving it. [Holy fuck, I think I just realized something about something going on right now. Will think about and address later, maybe...] Maybe that's why I fear selling my work. Now to get to believing my friends when they tell me my work is good. Seriously, when people tell me my writing or my art are good I don't really believe them. In my creative writing class I was told my poetry was really good, I don't understand why I didn't like any of it. But another time, another friend, told me a blog was well written, I considered it to be more of a rant than anything impressive or well done. I mean, I understand and I know I can write well, I don't think it's impressive. I consider my abilities and skill to be normal, I don't feel as if I work all that hard to accomplish something. I mean, I rarely give these more than a typo skim, if even that, and I post them. I am now circling back to my blog from a few weeks ago about being intelligent and knowing I'm intelligent. Two radically different ideas.
Well cheers! I hope you enjoyed me fretting about my drawing ability and fear of selling work. I'm going to clean the apartment a bit, and maybe write some ideas I've had for the movie blog I've had since yesterday.
Jasmine P.
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