I painted my (second) first commission as an official art business (super cute story time)
Happy tuesday, friends! Today, I am off from my day job and so I really wanted to get painting for my FIRST COMMISSION AS AN OFFICIAL ART BUSINESS!! Well... It's not actually my first...
This commission is a cute pet portrait! The last I will do in this thicker, acrylic style :)
Did you know I used to have an art business, way back in 2020? When the days were grim and I had recently rekindled my love for painting and I decided during lockdown to quit my job and give myself ONE YEAR to make it as an artist (without any prior training in business, social media, or managing money for that matter lol). It was a very bad idea, but I thought I had nothing to loose and I was desperate for a change, and to live a creative life.
*
Let me paint you a picture: I am someone who always, always was drawing as a kid. And I was good at it. So it could have made sense to me that I would become an illustrator... But growing up, I found myself having multiple interests, and the idea of being an artist as a profession wasn't particularly valued or respected where I grew up so, as I was quite good at many school subjects, I focused on being a good scholar and listened to my parents advice. I studied maths, science until I was 17, and come time to pick a school or university I was so unprepared to try to get into art school, that I didn't even realise how unprepared I was.
I applied to ONE art school. A public one. I got rejected. (Of course, I was. I was super immature, and also I was one in a million other candidates, many of whom were adults with a proper portfolio, and I had just made fancy photocopies of my sketchbooks and written a motivational letter than ran along the lines of "I wanna be an illustrator" lol).
So I had to go with my second choice, which I never even thought I would have to go to, because of how blind I was, and I went to university to study Musicology!
As a people (parents) pleaser and a teacher's pet, I decided to continue my studies until I finished my Masters degree. I really love music. I did so many cool things at uni, and met so many people I still love and am friends with, people from all around the world... I discovered my deep love for musical theatre, I sang a lot, went on adventures...
And then I decided to try to pursue musical theatre, found a school... took a year off before finishing my masters and enrolled in a one-year theatre program.
Did I mention that during the whole of my four years of uni, I had completely stopped drawing?? Well, at theatre school, I was feeling happy and creative and alive and so I started drawing again. A spark was back. Very small, but alive.
Then a year later I finished my masters, was on my way to apply for a THESIS and then BAM! COVID!! So I had loads of time to think during the first lockdown and sat with myself and thought : I should stop pursuing musicology and just pursue ART. Visual arts to be precise. So I said goodbye to my studies, goodbye to my student jobs and tried myself at buiding an art business.
I had no particular goal, I just wanted to make art. And I failed terribly. I did do a few commissions for friends, maintly pet portraits. I undersold myself and spent everything I earned on art supplies and so I never seemed to make anything. I think in one year I must have earned about 2,000 euros. Which is better than nothing, but it depressed me and I decided to stop, and start again later when I would have a better plan.
Said commission, circa 2021
One of the commissions I had painted at the time, in 2021, was a pet portrait for my sister's best friends. She had just lost one of her cats and was grieving him, and my sister thought she would be happy to have something to remember him by. She was indeed quite happy, and moved by the portrait I made.... :) 💕
FAST FORWARD TO : the end of 2024. I get a message from my sister's friend's friend. She tells me she would like to purchase from me a painting of the other cat, who also passed away. I tell her I don't have an art business yet but if it can wait, I will gladly do it.
My style has evolved so much, but I really wanted to honour her beautiful kitties and make her something that would go well with the first portrait, that she could hang together, that would look coherent.
I started working on a few research sketches
So I built my business again so that I could do this commission. I set goals, I moved fast(ish), and executed my vision.
This is the first commission I made as an official art business again, and it will be the last that I do in this style. Because I want to take commissions in a more illustrative style, that is more me now, but it felt important to close this chapter properly.
This piece means so much to me now, it is a last goodbye to the immature, naive but also very brave youngling that I was a few years back when I tried and failed. I might fail again this time. Who knows, but what I do know is that at least failure won't kill me.
I hope she loves this one too, I even made a bonus tiny painting of her two cats together. I had fun painting them, and was very moved while working on this commission because of how loved I know those two cats were, and still are.
Look at these little angels :)
That was my little story for today, happy tuesday my loves,
Ariane.
On building a new business in a crazy-paced world while having a full-time job but STILL managing to focus on myself and not burn-out
It all begins with an idea.
Hi. My name is Ariane. This is my first blog post (well, first -it’s all relative. I’m a child of the nineties so of COURSE i have had countless cringe-worthy blogs in my teenagehood and young-adulthood). I am a self-taught illustrator and I currently work a full-time job while building my own art business. And I can confidently say that I am indeed not burnt-out (let’s try not to jinx it).
Last year I started my own Youtube channel on which I have posted consistently every week (almost). So. What is my secret? How do I manage to create illustrations daily? And also weekly videos? And more?
Well, first, let me acknowledge my immense privilege. Let’s not be hypocrites and remember that although I am a neurodivergent non-binary fairy, I am still very much white, middle-class, cis-passing, in a relationship with a cishet man who is also middle-class. We do have income. I work five minutes away from my house and I have a very tight family and friends support system. My time is not everybody’s time. I come home to my cat and my man, who most days will have cooked dinner for me. So it’s pretty comfortable.
And yet, a few years back, with all the same privilege, I could not make myself draw daily whatever I tried. I would burn out consistently every few months. There would be a high moment, when I drew daily and had oh-so many projects in mind, and then a crash moment. And the cycle would play itself time and time again.
What has changed?
I did, indeed, toot.
I learnt to listen to, and understand my body.
Wow. That is a biggy. First thing that changed was when I started fertility awareness, which I thought was hippie code for “dancing naked to the moon and shouting TERF nonsense on twitter” but I could not have been more wrong.
Learning to listen to my body was the most loving thing I could do when every month I was paralysed by the pain of my period. I couldn’t do anything about it, numbing it didn’t work, so I learnt how my body functions and what its signals meant and slowly but surely, this led me to making serious choices about how I want to live my life. Taught me to breathe deeper and follow my guts.
It wasn’t a one-day change. The change occurred slowly, in a non-linear and unpredictable way. But here I am today, living in the countryside and feeling more at peace than ever.
I learnt to observe my habits, and shift them.
I am someone who will try anything to be more productive. So you would think I am productive. I am surely very well-organised but SO susceptible to procrastination. The thing about it is I realised my main coping mechanism was to AVOID. As soon as I am stressed, I will try to avoid the present and escape it. Can you sense a theme here? By learning to be more in my body, and then more in tune with the moment, I slowly turned to neutral observation of myself and my habits that allowed me to change them slowly. Most of all, my morning routine.
Reading the Artist’s Way was one of the key moments of this shift, because I finally found an excuse to write in my journal daily, I found a template for the morning routine of my dreams, and I have never looked back since.
I do my self-portraits most often first thing in the morning. I am often very tired when I do them.
I made space for daily time with myself.
Returning to me - to my center - to who I am in the moment and what I am feeling without trying to change it but accepting it fully, is the practice I have been building for the past five years, in and out of therapy. Writing morning pages, connecting with my body signals, being a neutral observer of my habits… It all led to this. Carving out time for my hobbies on a monthly basis, and carving out alone-time on a weekly basis, but most of all spending at least thirty minutes each day laying out all my heart and soul and brains on the wonderful, oh so magical morning pages.
*My little secret (which I learnt in therapy) : in order to make a habit stick, I needed to be very flexible with myself while also having impeccable rules. So: I want to write daily. Why? In order to touch base, to remember that I am creative, and that I can keep an engagement towards myself. What is the goal? To write morning pages every day, even when I feel bad. Flexibility : I can write from 1 to 3 pages every day. At least, my strict minimum is one sentence (for days when I am at my lowest). If I feel amazing, I am allowed to compensate by writing over 3 pages. But I want, most days, to be writing two to three pages. See? Flexible rules. Impossible to miss my goal 🙂
What happened when I made space for myself?
This might not be a surprise for any of you who have studied human psychology, but the more I made space for myself, daily, as I was, the more I accepted myself and found myself thriving. Also, the more time I allowed myself to do the pages, the more I wanted to spend on them. In a good way. I started very quickly feeling like drawing again. And self-portraiture began feeling like a sort of twin of the morning pages. I realised day after day that drawing my face in the morning was the same process as laying my heart out on the page. But in illustration form. It’s a practice of acceptance, of non-judgemental observation, and of artistic expression. Doing it daily helped me build self-confidence.
But Ariane, you like drawing your face but your ultimate goal is to draw cute gnomes and launch a stationery collection, no?? So aren’t you losing your time drawing longer and more intricate portraits of your own face??
NO. Actually, the more I spend time with myself, the more joy I find in drawing, and so the more I find myself reaching out for my other sketchbooks and having fun drawing many other stuff too. It’s all a virtuous circle. I am not even kidding (I know I sound like a guru).
One day, I will launch a stationery collection with images of gnomes. I know I will, it’s just a matter of time.
So : how can you apply this for yourself?
A little goes a long way. I did not start my shift in attitude and habits by immediately spending an hour a day writing and drawing intricate self-portraits. I started by forcing myself to spend ONE MINUTE drawing, and building the self-confidence I needed to know that I was able to meet my own expectations for myself. It took time. And moreover : sometimes, I failed, and I still do. I stopped drawing self-portraits for a while. One time, I missed a day of writing my morning pages. The trick is, when I fail, I observe without judgement and try to understand just what led to this, and I very promptly get back on the horse.
That’s it. More on that later I guess, if you would like…
What about you? What are some daily habits you would like to build? And how are you going about building them?
I would love to hear from you.
Tata,
xo