Crafting Your Artistic Identity in a Digital World
I was at my desk, wondering what to talk about today.
Then, suddenly, this thought hit me among others.
I was about to start a piece about money actually (and I will, because it’s dramatically important)… Then that made me think about it from the perspective of people all around the world. People we may know or follow; they all live in different countries where money have different value related to the cost of living.
Having access to these different realities is both an advantage and a disadvantage for an artist who’s starting their career.
A blessing, sometimes, because you may find work or commissions more easily, having all of the world connected to your phone, tablet or computer.
A curse, because it’s easy, when we fail to do proper research, to be tempted to accept a job that we think is paid enough but in its original Country would be paid much much more.
That is an article that needs to be written and explored with the proper depth of investigation. I need to be sure to report data as accurately as I can.
In the meantime I can honestly advice everyone to at least take a look at Glassdoor (for example) to have an idea of what’s the average pay of a certain role in a certain Country or city. Within the UK alone, there is a huge difference between salaries in London and well… Every other British town or even city. That is, again, related to the cost of living.
But there’s much more about to explore about navigating the internet as artists of course!
Because on internet we have instant access to a lot of things:
- Fellow artists and professional giants. They can inspire us. But if we don’t pay attention, we can get overwhelmed by the difference between their art and ours. In terms of results or – even worse – as a result of followers comparisons. Or likes.
- Teachers: how can we understand who could really support us when we’re starting to learn? Finding a person, among all of the offers on learning platforms, who we can entrust with our professional development can be a challenge. This is especially true when we’re moving our first steps.
- Social media presence: is that important? For whom? And why it is – or it isn’t?
COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS IS UNHEALTHY
Let’s start with saying this, loud and clear. You should never ever do that.
One thing is to follow the work of someone we admire and study their process and technique. This way we can understand what we like about it and why. Which is a beautiful and most useful thing to do.
A complete different thing is constantly comparing our results – in terms of skills and fanbase – to the ones other artists have achieved.
We may sometimes panic because they’re younger than us. Or they are in an environment with more opportunities. Or because their progress is faster than ours. Or they have more followers and sponsors. And so on.
For each of these circumstances there are a lot of explanations. Each people go through life with a different skillset, in a different living situation and is exposed to different learning and working opportunities. They may be more or less supported. Having a knack for marketing. Having a better or a worse financial situation.
This latest one, for example, is interesting. People tend to believe that starting from a better financial situation automatically gives you better opportunities.
It is true that you can buy more tools, easily attend schools or pay for private mentorships, attend events. You can keep your time studying and refining your skills because you don’t have living expenses to cover.
And yet, among my friends, the ones who are paid the most as artists often are the ones who came from dire financial situations. People who really wanted to be artists but who had to learn how to make money in order to survive, sometimes from a young age. If you have no one in life, no one will pay for your rent and your food.
I met a guy once who lost his father very young. He left him some money for him to become a professional artist but it was just to cover some years. He really gave his all. He wanted to become an artist and he wanted to honor his father’s memory.
Today he works for his dream company.
People who goes through hardships, learn soon the value of time and money. And the sooner you approach the work with a professional attitude, the better your chances to become a well respected – and well paid – artist.
Let’s also dive in a bit more through the previous pointers:
Some people start to make art after us in life and they are exposed to better learning material than what we had when we were younger.
And that’s ok. We surely did something else and useful with our time. Something that will give us a different kind of advantage.
Maybe we experienced strong and impactful emotions. Maybe we are avid readers and we have a solid knowledge that our creativity can draw from. Or we started with a disadvantage -financial or of a different nature – but we have a strong sense of how to create a studying plan and stick with it.
Or we just choose to have more than one thing going on in our life.
It can be all about art. And it can be not.
We may decide we can allow ourselves not to be on the top ten world list of the best artists.
This way we can take care of our family, of another dream, of our pets and plants or other hobbies.
Everything needs to be well proportioned around what we need to be happy.
Not around what we need to be like others – or to satisfy other people’s expectations.
If you want to be a professional artist you need to master the fundamentals and to grow your skills, for sure.
But depending on your lifestyle and your ambitions you don’t have to be THE ONE.
I’ll tell you this.
Once I heard an interview to an artist. He was going on about the fact that for him everything was about work. That when he wasn’t working he was fine tuning his skills, studying exercising. That he had a pregnant wife but that WASN’T AS IMPORTANT AS THE TIME spent with his art. That he didn’t spend much time with her even during this event. His art was more important. Now, everyone is free to assign the priorities in their life as they see fit. And maybe his partner is happy like this, you fullfilled your reproductive role oh artistic husband, now let me live my life. I believe it can eventually work for some people. As long as it is making everyone happy in that scenario, I guess it’s ok.
But would that lifestyle go well with everyone? Because sometimes you need to make choices. You may want to stay single, or to ignore your loved ones for your art. Or you may want time to socialize. And of course you will have less hours to practice. It’s all about what you want. Not everything revolves around top tier results.
Internet is like a giant spotlight that makes everything feel flat. On the same level. We better not fell for the trick.
CASE 2: We feel slow. Everyone seem to get it. We are starting from the same point, yet everyone else is getting somewhere, improving their art, getting the good jobs… And what about us?
Again. We can’t be in competition when we all are in different circumstances: financially speaking, relationships wise, accessibility to resources… And the most important thing. What drives us?
Because one of the things that tends to happen the most is that people force themselves into doing stuff they don’t like. Or maybe they like, but not as much as something else.
Why is that?
Sometimes because they don’t know yet what they really like to do. Sometimes because they feel it would be the right choice, the one with more chances to find a job. Sometimes they are led astray from people on the web. They end up believing not having enough followers demonstrates their work isn’t valid.
Truth is, a bad work can get viral and get hundreds of likes in minutes. A good one can simply not resonate with an audience.
Or a million other reasons. A good work would still be good, even with 0 likes.
But it’s hard to feel like this when internet is the source of our validation.
EVERYONE CAN TRY TO TEACH WHAT THEY KNOW. THE POINT IS WHAT WE WANT TO LEARN.
I’ve wrote “can try to” for a reason.
We can be very experienced in something and be completely unable to explain that something to other people.
Teaching is not easy.
And even when someone has captivating way of speaking and presenting themselves and their topic in a video, that doesn’t grant that, on the other side, the pupil will be able to understand what is important.
What lies at the core of the teaching itself..
So, first thing first. Don’t get discouraged. If you are trying to learn from your favourite artist, following their lessons, doing the exercises… And the results are still not there.
It can be that:
- The audience intended for a particular lesson was more advanced than your actual level. That doesn’t mean you will not learn anything. But surely it will be useful to revisit it in the future, after you learn the fundamentals you discovered you’re missing now to master the exercise later on.
- Sometimes we just don’t resonate with a particular person style of teaching. I have some people I adore. One of them is considered incredibly boring from a friend of mine. And another one is cryptic for another friend. And some of their favourite teachers are boring or not interesting to me. It can happen. We’re human and the way we connect with people is not always the same.
- You may follow someone with a huge fanbase but not enough real experience as an artist and even less as a teacher. It can happen with some influencers for example. They have great abilities into making interesting content, they speak the right way to the right audience, sometimes because of a similar young age. But then their content is eventually not backed by personal experience, which can make it not as useful in the long run. Still fun! But it depends on where you are with your career and the results you want to achieve.
When we are looking for a teacher we need to ask ourselves:
- What’s my goal?
- Do I like this person’s work?
- What kind of experience has this person and can it be useful to me in order to reach my goal?
You can go a bit further and try to read reviews about their courses. See if they are brand nw, old but still with a high engagement, part of a series. What kind of students go to study with them and their portfolio of works. Is not always easy information to find, but it’s absolutely useful!
SOCIAL MEDIA ARE POWERFUL, BUT THEY NEED TO BE A TOOL WE USE WITH A PLAN
Otherwise they are just stressful.
When you are on socials, you’re not a person for the users. You are content.
And when you are content you are on the market. They want you to be offering competitive levels of product, aesthetic and entertainment.
And the comments can be harsh.
All this, and sometimes the results doesn’t even arrive.
Does it mean you’re not good?
This is the wrong question.
That can mean loads of different things for example:
- You are a professional BUT you are expert in fields people follow less like, for example, environment design. That doesn’t mean you can’t grow an audience in time. Even without one, you can still attract potential clients interested in your craft. But narrative driven pictures or portraits of humans and animals and characters in general will always attract more people. Faces over full figures. There is a reason for that: as human beings we tend to connect and we connect better with other alive beings (better if humans) than with inanimate objects. So you should not compare the profile of a portrait artist with the one of a weapon artists for example. Unless there is the proverbial exception, usually they simply work with different audiences.
- Maybe you are not a professional and you still need to learn. That doesn’t mean you can’t find people who like to follow you and encourage you but, of course, you need to respect the fact you are early in your learning curve. It’s just natural. And it’s ok.
- Maybe you are a professional artist but you do too many things and you don’t have a specific audience you can speak to. That would be my case. I am a generalist artist and most of my pieces are widely (and sometimes wildly) different from each other. I’m happy like this, I’m not a fan of social media mechanism in general, I just want to share my things with the people I know and, for professional needs, I have my portfolio. But you need to know that having too many things at once can drive away attention from your profile. That is because no one can find content related specifically to their passion on your page, unless once or twice in a while.
- Sometimes you have great technical skills but your works doesn’t communicate with the public. The best way to engage people is through stories, narrative and the expression of emotions. We are human, we connect with emotions and content.
Also, you need to make the algorithms happy. Which is something I don’t have the energy to do in my life so I cannot give useful advice. I may be able to recommend a couple of courses but…. these things changes basically every 6 months, has it even any sense? Unless you are a social media manager I don’t know.
But having a solid plan about what content you want to share and how to do it on a consistent and curated basis can help a lot, especially if you want to create work with a signature style, maybe selling commission or having a shop with a distinctive and unique character.
Well, I hope some of these considerations were useful.
My hope is that, among many things, you will be free from the anxiety of being judged by strangers on the screen.
Always remember these things:
- Social media are made for people who wants to consume content, being that news, images, video… The users only think about the content, not about the creator. Make a plan for your content but use social media as a tool. You can gather information, collect data but you shouldn’t tie your own value as a human and as a creator to your content, because that is not the right place. You may start from the wrong assumptions and drag then wrong conclusions about yourself. And remember: for some people harass others on the screen is basically a sport. Just let them be.
- Social media and chat platforms like Discord and Slack can offer a fun way to connect with other colleagues and grow together, studying togethere, creating team projects, hanging out. That is a much healthier way of connecting and growing. Also, having people on your side can help you to get honest and more useful feedback than from social media users in general.
- Internet can give us access to everything. Do not rush into things, do your own research and you will be less and less prone to make choices you may regret (like accepting half of the pay you deserve or overpaying an art course from a person who never actually worked as an artist for a day).
Be That Artist 
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