It is a decade since I completed my 1st degree. I thought those 3 years of study would be all it would take to secure myself a job right away that I would love. One in which I could utilise my skills as an artist…..boy was I wrong.
Following University it seems like you open those double doors not to opportunity, but to a cliff edge. It is a matter of sink and swim or sink..and sink even more.
A month in and people I knew were already flipping burgers or serving beers, some had spent what was left of their University loan for rent and had to move back in to the parents house. I myself spent 3 months day and night on the laptop trying to avoid these fates.
I started applying to the high grade jobs assuming that that was what I had earned through coming out of Uni. 30 k or above. We were all told that now we are graduates, the world is our oyster. We were promised great careers so we could pay our £50,000 worth of debt back to the banks.
The 1st month I looked at graphic design jobs, art director jobs, stage painting, book illustration for big publishers. I asked to join agencies, I posted my art on websites hoping it would sell. I either received no reply or a reply with sorry you lack experience and you must be signed up to [this] association. Many art websites expected a yearly fee which I could not afford.
It hit me for six but I kept trying.
By month 2 I was on job seekers benefits. In the UK they pay about 60 quid for you to scrape by pay bills, travel fare. Its not really enough to live on. I was changing the strategy. I should perhaps apply to some office jobs, it is the opposite to what an artist does but at least it would pay moderately well. Again, same answer or no response. My email account was running out of space deleting all of the declines. I was living in my ex’s attic at the time and this was not going to last long, I knew that. However on month 2 I did make £100 from a painting commission for a guy who wanted himself to be painted nude so that when we was old, he could at least say he looked alright at 40.
Month 3 and my search turned from relying soley on online job applications to knocking on doors. I was in my hometown of Cwmbran and I knocked many window panes until I got to a bed store. My ex was near to keeping me out so I had to do something and quick. Nothing much to say other than I had the job the moment I walked in. The last girl had left due to “issues”…? Or so I was told.
I worked my ass off for 9 months. Now please bare in mind that I am an introvert. I was even worse back then than I am now. I was content enjoying my own internal conversation rather than trying to engage with small talk.
I sold many beds, furniture packages with 0% interest free credit. Many people came in to complain so I was also customer service. By month 2 of the job I applied to study for a PGCE. If I was going to have a 9-5 surely it should be paid better. I was paid an “hourly base” of just over a fiver an hour. It was not even minimum wage. For it to reach minimum wage I would have to sell at least 1 bed a day….in a small town selling 1 bed a day would be seen as a miracle. The manager had been there for 20 years, before that a door to door salesman. Every day he talked about looking forward to retire.
I really did not want to live every day waiting for retirement. I did not want to be a one holiday a year person.
I spend a year studying for my PGCE. It was nice to be a student again, back to reading, writing. Spending time creating art as I now has time to do it.
I taught for two years but little but little I felt my spirit collapse. There was more marking, more critisism and more stress.
I went back to being a student. I did a Masters, this time in Art Practice. It was nice to be painting for a year. I managed to create over 40 oil paintings day and night. There was a section of the course which changed my thinking, that there are no jobs for me after this, just the daily grind. That is, unless you create your own work. They helped us all set up an enterpreneurial venture. I worked with an artist…I was his personal assistant but most of the time I was paid to roll his joints and listen to him talk about hallucinatory experiences. I somehow articulated my experience into a professional looking power point. I did not mention the illegal drug use. I talked about the importance of researching existing competitors, the many streams one must take to acheive success, how to set up a well formed website to show case artwork for prospective buyers.
I stepped out of the course a freelancer, I did all of the PA work that I had did for the artist guy and I did it for myself. I was emailing, advertising, researching and seeking all the info I would need to work for myself. I even went to a short business course to ensure I would learn anything I had missed out.
I created videos of my artwork, posted these to Youtube and Facebook. By the third video I had a customer. They wanted a portrait of their dog. Soon enough 5 customers. I priced by the size of the canvas and the hours it would take me. I had a portraiture business. Now I had limited friends on Facebook, so I advertised in as many groups as I could to the point that I was spamming. I got told off for posting so much so I had to figure out another way.
Sure enough, I found something. It was a free website just for freelancers. People outsourced workers for their projects so that it could be carried out remotely. The projects were temporary and you would have to bid for projects relevent to your skills. It made me think alot about my own skills. I could draw, paint. in fact I was able to render anything if I put my mind to it. I applied to projects ranging from portraiture to book illustration to tattoo design. I was not a digital artist but I used the fact that I created everything entirely by hand as a unique selling point.
By the way that website was Peopleperhour. I still work on there and I have 5 star reviews from well over 75 clients. There are many pros working at home. One of them is that I get to spend time with my cat. He is a clingy guy so Leon can’t be left alone for long periods. The big plus is I can choose which jobs interest me. I don’t have to bid for a job where I am drawing a school table…that is unless I really want to.
The first loads of jobs were portraits, then a band approached me after I had been working on there a little while. I designed their album cover. Next the flood of individuals who wanted a custom design for their tattoo. In 2016 a really exciting job came up, at first the brief was asking for a portrait of King Kamehameha. I was expert at portraiture so naturally I applied. That portrait I created was used to design a Hawaian minted Bitcoin. The back was designed iaround the history of his sailing into the great unknown.
It has been quite a few years that I have been freelancing. The only time that I needed a “Job, Job” was when me and my wife came across a rough patch and became borderline homeless, had no internet which halted alot of my work so I had to gain money to bring a roof over our heads and get an internet connection installed. A month after being able to go online I went back into freelancing full time.
The only con is that freelance websites take commission from your job. It can be a percentage between 10 and 5%. If you have lots of jobs it doesn’t really bother you but if you only have 1 job that week it is a bit of a bummer.
There are so many positives to being a freelancer. I am able to set my own hours. I can have days where I decided to work for 12 hours. Some days if I want to go out and have some fun I just check admin and catch up the next day. I don’t get up at aset time. I spend up to two hours chilling before I start work. Other days I work with my morning cuppa in hand right away. I love the variety it brings. I never know what I will be working on next so that keeps it exciting for me.If I feel like it I can even try things outside of my comfort zone, like I can do voice acting or data entry. If I feel like bidding on a job, I can. I can also accumulate my pay in the account and pay myself monthly, or if I need to go out and buy something then I can shoot it straight in without having to wait. I am my own payroll. I have met some clients who return to me for my work. I am able to market my skills for free by placing up hourlies so prospective buyers can purchase a tattoo design or a portrait with aclick of a button. All I have to do then is get cracking.
Thinking forward and into the future, I can already see blockchain freelance platforms beginning to pop up. The other day I was checking out coinlancer and I bought for tokens on HItbtc as they were super low.
I think once people get started on this platform it could explode. They want to be a competitor to Upwork, People per hour and Fiverr. As with anything time will tell, but the biggest positive here would be if there is a dispute it will be rectified alot better than the system we have now. I once lost my pay on a job as the client was not happy with the end result. It was a style issue. He already knew I applied paint rather than use photoshop but to paint without leaving one brushmark is kinda impossible as well…its paint. I worked 2 weeks and never got paid for that one. It really knocked my self esteem. Blockchain technology would have really helped sort out our disagreement.
This week I continue to work for a couple of clients located in Canada and Europe and the US. I will be designing a distillery ranch, a few Trump caricature tees and painting a bat crossed with a rabbid rabbit.
I think more and more people will begin using these platforms, like me to cross the bridge away from the rat race. My advice is keep doing what you are doing, and do it well. as soon as you are good at something, somebody will want to buy it. That is a fact.
Whilst my crypto grows, I keep looking to alternative sources of income, this is one of them. It is a form of active income, whilch means putting the time in, but on the good side, I really enjoy being able to work on my sofa, in a cafe or on a bus. Being able to take my work anywhere is one of my first steps to freedom.