Opportunities come from what you are doing and not from what you are not doing.

As you will find out this blog won’t always be about my work and what I do, as in the artwork, it is also about the experiences and I hope a way of passing on what little I have learnt for others to also learn about. After all every little helps in our journey, a life-long journey which is what art is for many of us, we hope. Anyway…

Don’t you sometimes feel as if you’re doing two jobs but just aren’t getting anywhere? That’s what it’s felt like lately as I, after discussions with my son who now has started to assist me, have started to rebrand some parts of my work so that my fine art works are separated from my more commercial artwork. All this while still holding a job, taking care of my daughter, and trying to make ends meet where you know you won’t make them meet unless you can eventually start making a breakthrough.

I am sure many of you who are also in a similar place with your art will feel the same, the why do we do it? Why don’t we just give up and do something else? The answer we all know, because it’s what we like to do and no matter how many failures, and how many attempts you make and trip over, you will keep on doing it because it’s the one aim beyond anything that you wish to succeed on.

I can assure you I am no expert in how you can make money out of your art, so if you’re looking for someone to tell you how to do so, this for sure is not the place to find out. But hopefully when you read this you will feel that you are not alone and it’s not just you when you have done hundreds of designs submitted them in some place or other and what you see is pennies coming back. It’s a tough market, it’s a mug’s market and there is no getting away from it.

The best advice I can give is don’t believe in luck. Like a good friend, who happens to also be a very successful businessman once told me, ‘luck doesn’t exist nor do you make your luck. All it is are decisions and how you make them. When someone offers you an opportunity, or an opportunity presents itself it’s how willing you are to embrace it and follow it.’ And the truth is that that is true.

The many years of experience I have have taught me that the main reasons I have followed one path or another has been because of the decisions and paths I have taken. The first bad decision in the arts was believing that moving away momentarily from the arts to ‘earn a living’ would see me one day return sooner rather than later and continue where I left off. And the reason for taking that decision was for believing someone who themselves did not believe in their own worth in the arts and believed we would never get anywhere.

For anyone thinking of laying down your brushes, pens, pencils, or tablets don’t. No matter how hard the situation is, keep at it and keep plodding at it, because if you don’t firstly you will regret it yourself and secondly you will never get any of those opportunities crossing your path. Today, after I made a return to actually doing any artwork after some twenty years away, I have learnt to not give up again.

To find the time, the resources, and just keep at it even if nothing really is happening. I live on what you could call the tightest budget you could live on as a working person. Yes, I do have a decent job, but my cost of living means that art takes second, even third place in importance in budgeting, basically there is no budget. What I have with me is what I have to use.

Luckily over the years I have been able to accumulate some devices, like the PC I’m writing this on, a website in which I can post my images, digital cameras which are now some 10 years old but still work, and a few bits and bobs with which I can paint, draw and ink. The most important lessons though in recent months have been the realization that I cannot actually afford the pens I would like to use, the paper I would like to have, the paints I would like to paint with.

But this has not stopped me. Instead, I have learnt how to use what I do have. How to collect packaging from food products which basically means I have scraps of cardboard to use. How to use budget biros as an alternative to expensive finer liners, I do have dip pens and do use them too. I have learnt that whilst budget shop paints can be too liquid and will probably need several coatings and the colors won’t be as vibrant, it does not mean that they can’t be used effectively.

I have learnt that you keep the high-quality paper to one side and use it for something really special not your daily sketch, but if your daily sketch moves you to do something more special don’t stop just because of the materials you are using, keep going and find a way to give it a finish. Even if it doesn’t sell it will make you feel better just having it in your portfolio. You will even start being proud of yourself for having achieved it with the limitations you have.

So why is any of this important? Well, it shouldn’t be. We all know the stories of artists. Always poor, making it when they die, blah blah, blah, blah. We also have heard so many a time yes I love drawing, yes I love painting but its so expensive. And yes it is, if you want the quality materials and that is all you will use. But art is probably the cheapest thing there is.

Neanderthals made marks with whatever resources they had. A stone on stone, mud, branches, charcoal (yes charcoal is what you get when you burn wood, but don’t go burning wood in your living room please.) You can use newspapers to paint on and draw, old books, the backs of receipts even. You can draw with the cheap pencil in the bargain shop, or a biro. Its what you do with it that matters.

You can carve out a little figure with a small kitchen knife from a twig you can find down the road. You can do a drypoint etching but grabbing hold of any sharp pointy object and scrapping lines from your plastic milk bottle you were about to throw away. Or even the tetra-brick, you know the carton of milk. Just use some cheap oil paints to fill the grooves and press it on some piece of paper. Its called printing when you do this. I know, most of this is commonsense, its been said before and its what you are doing (some will tell themselves). But fact is some are not doing it, so I’m highlighting it.

I have even got to the stage that I have been doing small sketches and drawings, taking Iphone pictures of them, passing them to my PC or ipad and using the apps and open source software I have turned them into workable vectors. Lately, I have even been looking at AI as a resource to find elements where I would otherwise be looking for royalty free images or freebies to work with. It is amazing how far you can go, and how much you can do with digital works starting from a zero budget base.

For the more traditional works You can even paint on sugar. Yes just stick sugar on paper or salt and you have a texture and you will have a lot of fun finding out what you trying to mix without dissolving the sugar or salt. I could go on and on with the number of things you can do. Importantly everything you do if you have the devices, and by that I mean a device that takes a photo or image, a PC or ipad, then you can take your work even further digitally.

Yes, indeed, none of these means that you might have a piece of artwork that sells, so its not as if by doing this your art is going to find you a way out of any hardship. But you might actually earn some pennies from it as I have discovered (I will tell you about that in another post).

However, just doing these things you will be learning, developing and continuously creating and this might lead to something wonderful which might get recognized. Importantly, when that opportunity does eventually come, if its meant to, you will be able to embrace it because it will have probably come because of what you are doing and not from what you are not doing.

And that is what keeps me personally going every day now. If anything does come its because of what I’m doing and not what I am not doing.

Until the next one :)”

If you wish to support an artist check out my work at https://www.saatchiart.com/stephenignacio. The images on this page are all available online. Or check out my social media pages and follow and share my work. Even a share is help in promoting what I do without you having to spend.