Social media, being niche and NFTs
We all have our own individual, unique ideas about what we dream of becoming; famous, rich, beautiful. For me it’s artistry, I want to be an artist. I want to create.
There are many different forms of art, from digital to film making, for me it’s a little more traditional — I love to paint. But how easy is it to be an artist in such a fast paced, ever changing movement where the Apple pen rules, and you’re only allowed to paint different coloured cats?
Social Media
When it comes to creative businesses, or even a business in general, social media is king. It’s the biggest and some say the best way for exposure, because if you aren’t on Instagram, you don’t exist. When it comes to art; a very image based industry, if you aren’t seen you aren’t known — so you have got to get your head around using social media as a tool to grow. My advice when it comes to using social media is that you can’t expect to just use it and think that that will be enough, unfortunately artistry in its many forms is becoming hugely saturated online, and having only one voice on one platform is not going to launch your career from the first post you upload. So work out what platforms suit you and your art the most; art is very image based so platforms like YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram are going to allow people to see what you can do, if your art is word based then blogging, and Twitter might work better. Don’t do them all when you don’t need to; it’s way better to put all of your focus into a few rather than spread yourself thinly doing them all. You have got to be consistent and can’t just drop off every time you lose a handful of followers, and it’s a job; a lot of people in the industry work more on their marketing than they do on their art.
I myself have struggled with social media for a long time, it doesn’t particularly do anything for me, I much prefer slower forms of content like reading and video formats and the idea of having to put your work out there for likes, or hearts, and maybe the odd comment for the first few years (social media is also a slow process) isn’t enticing. There are ways around this feeling; the way we treat social media needs to change, our relationship with perfect imagery, or perfect videography has to get better, and instead of only putting yourself on the well known platforms, try finding ones that aren’t as popular but maybe their ethics are more along the lines of your own, you’ve just got to find them. I myself do not buy into social media, I also don’t have any expectations from it. And neither should you.
Style and Niche Markets
I’ve spoken before about how much I feel about the ‘style trend’ that seems to be circulating the internet lately; I hate it. Niche markets have been dominating the business world for years; restaurants only serving pancakes and champagne, shops with multiple different paper clip sizes and colours, okay I made those up but you get what I mean. This works incredibly well for some businesses, but not all — for some they become mere gimmicks that are social media worthy and have all the aesthetics, but eventually fade away when the next super niche business rolls into town.
It crept into the art world quite significantly, people panicked and desperate to find the key to unlocking their style, their niche. Whilst for some this works well, but for many of us who are constantly trying to build on our techniques, and who haven’t quite found our voices yet, it can stunt growth. People don’t want an artist with many talents and interests, but rather an artist with just one signature one.
I’ve found it personally frustrating trying to seek out a style, bouncing around ideas such as illustration; drawing cute things with pencil detail like some beautiful illustrators have, I’ve dabbled in watercolour, and played with gouache. We as creators will and should be trying new things, and we should be documenting our own personal periods, like the periods of all the greats. I will be going with my own artistic flow, and won’t succumb to this need to have style, I want collectors to follow my journey, and I want my work to show progression rather than stagnation.
NFTs
So if it wasn’t complicated enough to start up a creative business, now there’s NFTs, or Non Fungible Tokens to consider. I am in no way an expert on this side of the art world but in layman's terms an NFT is a digitized item that cannot be copied or reproduced, that people can buy the ownership of; a one of a kind asset. They can be bought and sold, and similar to bitcoin the value of the tokens can go up and down in value over time. Are you confused yet?
Like stock and bitcoin the risk is always how much value the NFT holds as it can appreciate or depreciate over time, there’s also gas money to consider; the price it costs to mint your piece can get expensive, so if your serious about selling your work as an NFT your going to have to factor in this cost. Then there’s just the sheer volume of people that have flocked to every NFT platform and saturated it with, in my opinion, pretty cruddy art. Cats flying on a rainbow, pixel heads, and Logan Paul’s face on a Pokémon card, is what’s making millions right this minute, and I am awaiting the moment real art that real artists make will take hold of this volatile world. I’m definitely on the fence when it comes to NFTs, and whether it would be worth my investment, I am currently not in a position to pay heavy gas fees, but it will be interesting to see where it goes, and i would never say never.
So is becoming an artist during 2021 a viable option? Is there room out there? I think it comes down to some pretty old fashioned work ethics:
Work hard — there’s going to be multiple things your going to have to do in your day, from marketing, to making art, to reaching out to people or companies for opportunities, this is a slow process, and you can’t just wait for a post to go viral or to sell an NFT for thousands of pounds.
Dedicate some time to self development with whatever it is that you want to do, for me it’s painting so I need to constantly be learning my craft, developing new skills such as what I draw or the way I paint. Experimentation also comes in at this point, playing with materials and feeling your way round your pieces is great practice. Study from old masters, take elements from new ones, sketch from real life and sketch from photographs. Self development is like stretching your muscles out before a big race — you need to do it.
A multiple income stream; don’t just rely on one form of social media or one selling platform. I thought at one point that if I post on Instagram everyday and keep up with being present then people would come, they didn’t, and my attitude started to turn, and I posted less frequently taking weeks off at a time before I made myself known again with a new style and promises that i didn’t end up keeping, again. All very bad mistakes to make on a platform that relies on its algorithm in order to show you to the world — I was invisible because I was fed this complete lie that social media brings sales and I thought I’d be a sensation. It brings traffic, and if I knew that at the beginning I wouldn’t have gotten so emotionally involved, leading me to almost deleting my account completely. You need more than just one social platform, you need more than just one place to sell your art; multiple streams of income mean that you aren’t putting all your eggs into one basket hoping you’ll go viral and sell thousands of paintings in a year. Like I did.
It may be a complicated age we live in, filled with digital assets and flying rainbow cats, and it may not be the easiest option, but I’m still going to work towards my dream of making and selling art. And if there’s any artists out there wanting to do the same, good luck.
