It’s been … one year since you patronized me
It’s the one year anniversary of setting up my account on Patreon, and I have to say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made regarding my art-as-a-business.
For one, it’s given me some hard deadlines to make art on the regular. As everyone knows, practice is what makes one better and I’m definitely making improvement in my skills, both mandala design and the technical parts of using Illustrator to achieve what I want.
Relatedly, being in the practice of creating art regularly for deadlines gets me in the mindset of creating more art that isn’t part of the deadlines. I think I’ve made more art in the last year than in the two or three years before it..
For two, let’s be candid here and say out loud that Patreon has been the largest source of my income this year. Which is amazing and has been super helpful for framing myself as a professional artist. It’s still a small-scale profession, but I feel a lot less need to hedge it about with phrases like “hobby” and “quasi-“.
The last year has had some other changes in my life (largely in a good way!), and I’m currently re-evaluating how to approach my art as a profession in terms of those changes. This will likely mean shaking up some things in my Patreon and how/what I share on social media, and I think you’ll like my tentative ideas.
Lastly, I’d like to say thank you to all the folks who have been my Patrons so far. It’s deeply appreciated by me and I hope that it’s been worthwhile for you. In so many ways this has been a work in progress and I’m glad to have you all along with me.
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