The Freedom to be Unhinged

Today is my first day since I decided to take a step back from trying to sell art and already I feel like a huge weight off of my shoulders. I'm fortunate that I have a job working for my wife as her paralegal, so I don't rely on art as income, but it has long been a dream.

The problem with trying to sell art and this isn't criticism on any artist, but the system itself, is you find yourself trapped with the algorithm. I love doing abstract art and crazy and weird characters. But people like when I do things like cats and animals or actual things that make sense to them. Also helps if its on a t-shirt with a catchy slogan.

I really love making crazy and unhinged characters with my art. The more batshit crazy they look, the more fun it is to create. The above drawing, I don't have a name for it. It was just something I made last night and he looks like how I felt last night. See my previous blog for how my day yesterday went. The cliff notes version is it was madness.

I like to just relax and let my stylus or pen go and see what wild shit comes from the depths of my disturbed psyche. Usually its something like this or really weird and bloody. I sent some drawings to a local State Representative candidate recently and asked if she need any help with art or logos. She responded a bit horrified though ended it with an "LOL" so at least she was a good sport about it.

I realize my art isn't for everyone, or very few people maybe which is why its likely so hard to sell. The artists I know who make tons of sales do fan art, or make actual things. One of my favorite artists is Jamie Koala and she makes some beautiful dark and macabre art. I own several of her pieces as well as her art book. She's been at this for a really long time, so she deserves her success.

I could go down and list tons of artists who I think are great and are pretty successful but that would take a whole different blog post. And I realize many of them have been at this since their teens. I started about 3-4 years ago. I think I've improved a lot in that time, but also I think I picked the worst possible time to try and make art a career. The economy is shit, and social media sucks even worst. Meta is putting every basic feature behind paywalls now for creators making it harder and harder to be seen.

So, I'm here blogging my art and for me, it feels really good. Before I did art, I tried my hand at writing awful horror books. I had some moderate success before I blew the whole thing up with poor mental health and bad choices. But once again, by the time it was over, I wasn't even enjoying it anymore. It was about grinding out as many words as I could a day to release a book a month, to feed Amazon's algorithms and keep my name and sales up in at least in the middle tiers.

I've heard it said once your passion becomes your job it stops being fun. That is probably true, at least it was for me. I don't want art to become that. I love my art more than I ever liked any of the books I wrote. Blogging itches my need to write and express myself through words, and art helps me show how I feel or what I have to say about things.

So, why mute myself on either front? Let it rip is one of my slogans at home. I usually say it in regard to farting or burping, but it goes with anything else too. If you have a wild idea and want to draw it, write it, paint it, or sculpt it, no matter how unhinged or crazy it sounds. LET IT RIP. Just make it as insane as you can. Safe art of any kind is never remembered. People remember shit that made them think or feel something, even if that feeling was confusion or fear.

So, that's my word of advice for today. Take it from a not-so-successful artist, that you should just take your unhinged ideas and let it rip. Don't be afraid, don't chase sales or algorithms. I often ended up with my art in the trap of trying to only draw or paint what I think people wanted. In the end, I wasn't happy and the crap didn't sell anyway because people didn't believe it. When I create things based on how I'm truly feeling, even if I don't get a sale, those pieces get the most attention than the "safe" ones.

I'm still going to create art, a lot of it. It will just be shared mostly here and some on social media without pressure for sales. I like this format of doing a piece and arranging a blog around it. Though I may not do that every time. Some will probably just go up on socials with "Look at this weird thing I drew" and hope people do find their way here.

I want to build a community here of artists and creators, we can share art and discuss blogs and other cool things. No algorithm here, no moderators (Ghost is open source) and no corporate freakshow to decide on a random day to sell the whole thing. Just our words and art together.

Maybe that's a pie in the sky dream, but Ghost blog already gives us the place do to that. We just need the people now. I'd love to hear your experiences with trying to sell art, any tips you have for others or even your frustrations. Leave them in the comments and if you haven't already, subscribe to my blog/Newsletter for free so you can get this in your inbox. I hope to do some kind of content daily, but there maybe some gaps here and there. Thank you again for reading!