Professional Artist means more than just doing Art

When I started my career in Art, I thought that the only thing I really need to care for is doing art all day long. I will design and be creative 8h a day or longer and work for clients or do my own personal pieces. If I'm lucky I can play games besides that, out of resources, because that's what game artists do all day right?

But the truth is, being an artist means, that you are only 50% an artist and 50% of a business person. That belongs a little more to artists who want to be independent, freelancers, or who build a side business next to their main full-time studio job.

If you are someone who is working a full-time job in a studio, then just go back home and relax, because the job you are doing in the studio is way more than enough creativity for you throughout the day. Then that's awesome! There are more than enough people out there who just want a secure, regular job at a studio, create and design for 8h a day for satisfaction, and then don't do any more art or creative things at home, because they don’t need or want more. There is nothing wrong with that. Everybody has different goals and priorities in life. If you don't want any side hustles in art, then most likely you are having a higher % of art in your life. That's just the truth.

Comparing that to artists who are freelancers working for different clients and companies, want to build something on their own like more on the entrepreneur side or making passive income with their skills and creativity, these artists need to keep in mind, that being in this position, is more than just doing art daily. And these need to be willing to do more than drawing and sculpting.

What do I mean by that?

I heard from a lot of successful artists, that they do less art in their daily routines than they did in the past. Why is that? Well, I guess mostly because they are already good in their craft and don’t need to hustle so much anymore, BUT there is another reason.

"To make a living with your art, you have to do more than just art."

That doesn't belong to hobby artists and the ones you are fine with just having a full-time studio job. But for all the others, they have to take care of a few other areas.

MARKETING
You need to make sure to get your art seen online, so you have to make some content for that. This is the part where you have to be creative, but being seen is not only posting art. You also have to engage with other artists. You have to talk to them, build connections, support others, sharing your thoughts and visions with your audience. Showing, sometimes yourself, your personality (you can do that over video, audio or text. It depends on you what you like using the most. Some are not really into videos and showing themself so writing blogs or just using the voice is a good alternative). All these interactions to get yourself out there, take time throughout a day. (Important: Don't spend too many hours on social media. That is a killer of productivity and your time. Just use it for your business, to engage with people a bit and then go off again.)
If you want to see what your audience need or want, you also have to make sure to look over the market. What is a good seller right now, are there any trends, what are other artists doing who are successsful, which niche and audience you want to attract, in which medias you want to dive into (magazines, courses, education, shops, interviews, entertainment, music, kids, nsfw etc.) A lot of things you need to think of. Building business, building client connections only really works, when you put your head down, think what you want and then do the research.

FINANCIAL
Next to all the management stuff, you also have to care of your financial situation. This all comes with a lot of paperwork, bureaucracy, sending emails, talking with accountants, keeping an eye out for your expanses and incomes, maybe caring for investments, creating tables or using apps to get a better overview, doing your tax, reading contracts, getting everything right on place so you dont have any problems later on. The more clients or bigger jobs you have, especially when it comes to building your own company, the more you have to dig your head into all these things. At least you should, because thats the reason why people have the 'starving artist' title. These people dont make enough research, dont care for their finances, dont have any real plans and goals, doing only little actions and only focusing on doing art. (and i can say.. man.. its sometimes a struggle how many rules you have to take care of when it comes to finances. This can drain your energy a lot.) But this needs to be done, when you want to reach financial freedom or to make sure you have a good amount of money to live from in the future so you can be secure,
If you have enough money, you can hire people to help you with pecific things. That would increase your time again because people take care of the other areas. But in the beginning, we normaly do all these on our own. But having a team, employees or just other people working for you, you also need to put your head into another area then to make it work.

PLANNING & ORGANIZING
What brings me to the next point. Doing just art is easy, you sit down and be creative. But when you need to take care of all the other areas, especially when you have a team you work with, then you need to take your time in planning and organizing things, so nothing ends in a chaos. You have to plan your goals and steps in each area which you are working in. Just an example, you need to plan content for YouTube, making researches, scripting, filming, cutting, marketing. Then you have an online shop which you need to work for, making research on what people like, researching how and which amount you wanna sell your products, sharing it online so people see it bringing it to the market. Then you have maybe team or employees you need to plan and organize, so everybody knows what and when things to do. That also comes often with meetings, phonecalls or meeting in real to get things rolling. What is also time consuming without doing any art at all.That brings me to teh last point.

PREPARATION
Depends on what you wanna do, but preparation is something you also have to take care of as well. When you are someone who goes to conventions and you have a booth there, you have to first organize it but then take action. Packing everything for the the time beeing, driving to those places, building the booth up, clean everything afterwards, sending stuff away if you have people who bought something. Or you are having interviews, podcasts, meeting you need to be prepaired for. Or going live on Twitch or Youtube mean, you have to prepare the technical side, fix things, take care of things which dont work and set everything on place to THEN dive into art or doing content. Time what is not put into doing art.

You see, that there are more things you have to take care of or think of than just doing the actual art. I don't want to scare you away with that at all.
It is not a bad thing, it just depends on what you want for your art career.

I just wanted to make that clear for you and help you to understand the whole art industry better, because when young people get into the industry, they often think that being an artist, just means drawing all day long. But there is more than that behind the scenes to make a successful career.
I mean there are many ways to raise the part of art again. As I said before, you can hire people for your finances, for cutting your videos, for organizing your teams, for doing research on the market, for uploading your stuff online, and many more. But this is mostly connected with paying money. (what we rarely have in the beginning)

So overall, I hope this will help you to not get this dreamy vision of being an artist. Don't get me wrong, being an artist is AMAZING! So many ways to express ourselves, to share our visions, passions, and ideas, and to create new worlds and bring that into film, games, music, theaters, museums, and many more.

But it also has its shadow sides and sides which don't have anything to do with art. To be professional, to be independent, and a bit more educated, I can definitely recommend putting your head into all these areas to make the best out of it and to have more control over your business.

Just remember. If you want to be a professional artist working in the industry, then you have to be more than just to be the creative person.
Level up in your business and in your personal development and go beyond that, to get the full experience of the whole industry.