Monday, April 30, 2007

Don't make her spank you with a keyboard

"Western Gold" ACEO can be bid on here.
Copyright Rita Woodburne

Today I’ve decided to share with you, dear reader, a post made by Maggie Stiefvater. She’s the chocolate chip cookie fueled artist that I mentioned in a previous post. If you were around to read that post you’ll know that she’s one heck of a busy person and she’s also a full-time professional artist. She didn’t come by this as happenstance but rather by employing some good old- fashioned hard work and by giving herself daily reality checks. Good things don’t happen to people that sit around on their hineys waiting for a big break to come a knockin’...they go out and find it themselves.
On Friday she posted a Top Ten list of life lessons from the viewpoint of an artist at the beginning of her career (she’s only been doing this as a career for a few years folks...and is making a living at it). They’re not pretty lessons but necessary ones to learn and accept nonetheless. For all you folks out there wanting to become a professional artist, take a deep breath, and head over to her post here to learn what other artists that sell their work never told you.



After reading that, and I hope you read it thoroughly, I’d like to point out that these lessons can be applied to anyone that is taking the entrepreneurial jump. Something else I’d like to add to Maggie’s Top Ten is that you really and truly need to believe your own hype. Although I’m far from mastering it (but getting better with practice) I think that in order to really be successful you need to be able to toot your own horn...and often. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen artists get overlooked because they didn’t convey confidence in their work to the folks that were looking at it. The artist whose work does sell frequently does so because they’re great at selling themselves and their “artist persona”. It’s not arrogant, it’s not being cocky and it’s certainly not unwarranted. You should always have confidence and faith in your work because if you don’t then why should anyone else?

So go ahead, give yourself that pat on the back and for goodness sakes quit reading this blog and get back to doing your art!

No comments: