Earlier this week I was watching a webinar about creative ways of getting the attention of companies, and it made me think, if a freelancer does that how much can you do up front to get the companies attention without giving your service away for free. If you’re out fishing and dangling some bait, the bigger the bait the more likely a fish will bite but the fish won’t come back for more …oh wait, the fish doesn’t swim off full, I forgot how fishing works… ignore this analogy.
The webinar was great and definitely inspiring, showcasing how creative individuals have gotten the attention of big industry titans in hopes of being employed by them, which is a fantastic way to do it if your end goal is a role at that company. But if I a freelance illustrator try to get a company’s attention by drawing something of theirs and tagging them, they can just repost my art, surely they’ve then already got the very service and outcome I’m trying to pitch for them… effectively getting it for free.
Then that had me spiralling, whilst I was waiting for the kettle to boil I thought of all the times I’ve tried to get a brand or celebrities attention by drawing them and posting on Instagram, all the emails I’ve sent to no response, the proposals left forgotten about, endlessly updating my portfolio, updating my social medias, creating content to keep my audience engaged…
I realized I’ve been working for free for the past 27 years.
Passion projects or endless unpaid training hours?
Admittedly that was quite a big spiral, all that in less time than it took for me to pop some pasta in a saucepan. Obviously, I’m not saying that when I was 2 years old I was cracking out artwork that was getting published and I wasn’t getting a penny, although whenever a drawing of mine appeared back on the front of the fridge I don’t remember mum or dad paying me a usage fee…
But it did get me to thinking, how many other occupations demand this much free work to make it happen. Most occupations you start off inexperienced and get paid to train (an apprenticeship, a junior/entry level role etc) then you learn on the job all whilst still cutting a cheque.
But with creative pursuits you are expected to have to put in thousands of hours of practice before you’re at a stage to start charging even the most minimal amounts for your work, and even at that stage attempting to secure any payment for creative work always seems to be a discussion.
I know there are some grey areas because it is a passion and a hobby and we weren’t thinking of monetizing this passion when we were 6 years old doodling on our living room walls but imagine an electrician training from 2 years old to 16 years old or imagine training for 14 years of anything else and not necessarily seeing ‘a return in investment’.
I’ve been drawing for 27 years, in that time how much money have I spent on sketchbooks, pencils, pens, paints; how many hours have I spent drawing and drawing and drawing, how many hours have I spent posting my work up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube or Behance in hopes of getting noticed or trying to build an audience.
Just a sliver of the supplies we all plough through whilst we hone our craft…
Very very little of the work I put up on my social media is paid work, it’s all self initiated work that I do either in hopes of someone buying it, gaining a bigger audience from it or to add to my portfolio so it might catch a potential client’s eye. Imagine someone working on a checkout and swiping up 10 peoples weekly shops before someone finally decides to turn round and pay for their groceries, or an electrician rewiring 15 peoples houses before house no.16 finally chucks some money their way.
So what this boils down to is, even if you finally get to a point where you can sell a painting for 5 figures, that’s only just going to start paying off the 27 years we’ve been working at this for free plus recouping all the material costs it’s taken you to get to the level you are and on top of that the endless hours you’ve spent attempting to get people’s attention or even get an audience to sell to.
They say when you start a business you should expect to make a loss for the first year, break even second year and hopefully profit in the third year. With art you spend most of your life making a financial loss, some may even break even and only very few get to make a profit.
But even after all this I couldn’t imagine my life without art, and this has been a very cynical/business minded outlook on it all. But to all of us who are trying to make it a career, nothing keeps us going more than the thought of ‘this next piece could be the one’ and I’m happy enough to keep creating with that in mind.
So here’s to that next piece!
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