My Pace
In the span of 5 minutes yesterday, I came across 2 social media posts that both had the message of ‘don’t give up.’
The first one caught my attention, which does mean, that the message applies to me in some way. So then seeing one immediately after did make me pause and chuckle. And it didn’t take long to notice that of course it applies to my art in general. Not that I am at risk of ‘giving up,’ but there has been feelings of lack of purpose – outside of the book project I am working on. Yes, I am building a portfolio, building a style. My goal has just been to come up with lots of different painting subjects and ways about it, to determine, which images I like to paint the most, which ones come with some ease, which subjects or styles feel forced or generally unnatural or unappealing to my painting method, and which things I feel that I like to paint but need to improve (immediately popping to mind: anything galaxy related – mine turn out terribly and not vibrant or dark enough in colour and the mixing doesn’t turn out as I want it to).
So as I browse social media, I see many (pretty much all) artists that have Etsy shops, online stores, print shops, course sales, or selling at market booths, etc. And then there’s me. Just, you know, painting. And not many people care, which is fine. Sometimes the conversation in my head goes like this:
-Not many people care. But who cares, if 11 people liked that painting, that is more than if I just painted it and put it in the stack in mg closet.
-Who am I doing this for anyway? Me. My portfolio, they all become my own reference pieces for what I can paint and how I styled it and how well it turned out.
I think I do want to sell prints at some point, I have to research something like an Etsy shop, but I also want to focus on this book first and not detract from it. My purpose had never been to have the pressure of creating pieces to sell. So any prints will be the ones I think turned out well and want to share. So many others seem to be in a hustle to create and constantly have new things to sell so then I have to remind myself that wasn’t what I was aiming for when I started anyway. Not giving up my specific purpose is the real message then. Go at my pace and what feels right.
Sending Love,
Devon