Episode Details

This podcast is sponsored by, SVSLearn, the place where becoming a children’s book illustrator starts!

Oh The Places You’ll Go! This is the season of people embarking on the next step of their life journeys, graduating from high school, college, etc. In today’s episode we discuss ways you can move forward in your creative journey.

In the last few weeks Jake has been visited by a handful of high school kids and college underclassmen asking for advice on what they should do to prepare to get a job in the art world. In response to that, he asked a bunch of his artist friends at Emerald City Comic Con what was once piece of advice they had for someone graduating high school who wants to be an artist for a living. To watch that video click here
Lacking from that video was our advice. He has some things to say to people who have chosen to walk the creative path. If that’s you, then settle in. If it’s not you, please share this with a person you know who’s going to art school, or recently graduated. You can read it too, of course. This advice is universal and it just might help you no matter what stage in life you’re at.
To read Jake’s blog post: click here. Or keep reading since this show is a mix of Jake’s thoughts with Will’s and Lee’s, that’s why we call it 3 Point Perspective, of course.
A Career In Art Is Possible.
By now you’ve probably figured out that it is possible to have a career in art. Some art careers make more money than others. Some are more stable than others. But for anyone who has the skill, the drive to improve, a healthy work ethic, and isn’t afraid of the unknown it’s possible to get to the point where you can support yourself and even a family with a career in art.
In school there are grades and personal opinion that plays into things, but in the professional world it seems to sort things out. It puts everyone where they are supposed to be, the good people get work, the average people struggle to get work, and those that aren’t so good don’t get much work. It really rewards talent and drive and is pretty fair, there aren’t too many people who are super talented that aren’t getting work.
It also depends on what you classify as success. A lot of people land in art related jobs that weren’t exactly what they were aiming for but for those people they end up loving them. There are some who have book deals and who struggle to make ends meet between book deals, and there are others who struggle to get book deals but are really good at business and are making even more than those with book deals because they are good at freelance and are business minded.
There is a combination of being business minded and finding ways to generate passive income and those who are really good at the craft and struggle with the business side of things.
There are two sides to the coin if you want to really be successful as an independent artist.
This is mostly for independent artists. There are some people who have day jobs who work at studios. This is good for people who aren’t as business minded, you show up and provide a service to the company and they pay you for that service, and then you go home, and repeat.
If someone had sat us down and told us these things as a high school kid it would’ve saved us years of spinning our wheels.
1 - Focus on one path.
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose. “ -Dolly Parton
You need to be a heat seeking missile focused one thing. A heat seeking missile works by finding a heat target and then ignoring any heat signal that doesn’t come from that target. That’s why heat seeking missiles don’t just fly straight towards the sun when they’re launched.
Picking one thing to do does not