I created my first art collection (and opened my online shop) ❤
If you've been here before you know that I am slowly rebuilding an art business after failing at my first attempt, and today I am SO HAPPY to announce that I am reaching another milestone and opening my online shop.
If you've been here before you know that I am slowly rebuilding an art business after failing at my first attempt, and today I am SO HAPPY to announce that I am reaching another milestone and opening my online shop.
Today, I want to introduce you to my new illustration collection, and tell you how I went about creating it.
Last year, I created my YouTube channel, as a first step towards reaching my goal of being an independant artist. I made a list of things to do. I started small. How things have changed since then!
I have always known deep inside I was an artist. But it took me a long time to understand that who I am could also be a job, and so I wandered off my track: I listened to anybody's opinion but my own on what to do with my life, and I put energy into doing stuff that was going nowhere. I could make a whole video on that subject matter, and we could debate if those were years lost, or not... Years of not drawing, of trying to fit into another person's mould... I choose to believe that this was part of my path and made me who I am today.
Two years ago, my partner and I moved to the quiet countryside, I found a stable dayjob with comfortable income, and I started to tend to my metaphorical garden as well as my physical garden. For the first time in ten years, I had a garden again!
Unsurprisingly, the more I tended to both my internal garden and my real one, the more energy I had to put towards creative endeavours. I started sewing again, doing embroidery, silly little craft projects, I took fiddle lessons... I started writing again, too. On with the journaling and morning pages.
This little garden has brought me so much peace and inspiration in those two years.
The end of the first year in my new home, I started reading The Artist’s Way and got into a routine of writing morning pages, and most importantly sketch booking. Inspired by this new creative energy, I discovered many artists who I still follow and interact with regularly : Werka Maciejewska, my amazing friend, Sophie mc Pike (my muse), Kornelija aka Koza on instagram, Céline (Petit crocus on instagram), Lilas (Gruumo on instagram), Apolline Muet, Constance (Yer Ana on instagram)... I filled sketchbook upon sketchbook and started filming for YouTube, and a world of connection opened up to me.
There were moments I compared myself with the greats, the established artists, the people who know exactly what they want and go for it... But this routine of daily connecting with my inner world made it easier for me to hold on to the simple truth. Figuring out what I want to do is slowly coming to me and I need to be very soft and listen very carefully to understand what it is that is my path.
Now, upon building this habit of tuning in, hearing my inner truth is easier.
Last month, I took a two weeks trip to Poland to visit my friend Werka. I had this idea that as well as a holiday from my day job, this would be kind of a work trip for my solo business. A sort of creative retreat. I know that being surrounded by like-minded, business-driven, creative people, is very inspiring to me. And ohmy was I right, because in a fortnight there I painted more than I had painting in the previous months since January had begun!
I came home at the end of march full of inspiration and determined on launching my first ever collection.
I had never worked like that before but seeing Werka do it made it look very easy, and simple : straight to the point. Think of a collection. Paint it. Sell it.
As it turns out, it was a little bit more complicated than that, and a lot of hard work.
I wanted my collection to be very small, so I told myself I would paint ten small illustrations. I wanted to draw gnomes, so I thought, why not garden gnomes? And then came the moment for thumbnail sketches. THUMBNAIL SKETCHES, who even am I?? I used to do only finished drawings in my sketchbook and draw something once and never look at it again. Always had to reinvent myself. And now there I was, roaming through my old sketchbooks to find drawings that I could turn into paintings.
Not all ten thumbnail sketches made it to the final collection. Garden gnomes was my chosen theme, and I saw at some point that not all illustrations fit into the theme, but when I painted my first illustrations it all became clearer and clearer where I wanted to go.
The actual painting was quite fun, and full of twists and turns. In less than two weeks I had come up with over ten original paintings, the finalists being the ten I am going to introduce to you at the end of this video.
But painting was the easy part: what remained was figuring out how I wanted to sell them, at what price, what I wanted to do in regards to prints, stickers... All of this took me days and days of research, talking with artist friends, taking notes, doing the math... And then, I had to take product photos, put things on my website, write product descriptions... Hours worth of work.
One thing that I really hadn't thought of was shipping materials, and the cost of that too. So after long hours of research I chose how I wanted to send out and protect my art, knowing full well that even with doing preorders I could not avoid having some upfront expenses.
I decided on a preorder system for the prints and stickers, this way I can assess the popularity of my paintings and avoid unnecessary costs. All paintings and prints will be sent by the end of May, so you still have a bit of time to decide which paintings you want to purchase!
I still have a little way to go. I still want to design thank you cards, and certificates of authenticity for the lovely customers who buy me original art. But I am here, ready to introduce you to my lovely paintings collection, GARDEN GNOMES.
Did you ever see your cat meow at something, or someone, that you thought was here but couldn't see? Then you might have garden gnomes living nearby… If you’re quiet, patient, and if you leave them something to snack on, you might be lucky enough to befriend them one day…
Have you ever roamed through your garden and thought you spotted a tiny speck of red between two salad leafs?
Then you might have a hungry gnome living in your quarters. If you’re very patient, soft, and keep still, they might someday show your their face.
Did you ever look at a patch of clovers, just one second, and spot at first glance a famously lucky four-leaf clover? This might well have been the works of a lucky gnome that took a liking to you. These garden gnomes like to help the dreamers and give them a little nudge, just a speck of hope…
There are rumours that at night, when all is sleeping except for the owls and the mice, little people come out wearing all their favourite colours and dance to the stars to help your vegetables grow...
Do you know of these orange flowers called Escholztias, that have pointy hats, and look just like little gnomes? Well, I heard that the night before their flower buds open into delicate petals, you can actually see them dancing in the starlight…
Did you ever notice in your rows of radishes, just one or two radishes vanishing when you could have sworn they were there just a minute ago? This is without the shadow of a doubt the work of a garden gnome. Friendly to all creatures, even slugs, they can be a menace for your tiniest vegetables who they depend on to feed their families… So don’t forget to always leave a radish or two for them, and you might gain a friend…
If you look at your plants, while you walk around the garden, you might spot a freshly cutted branch or two. This is probably the work of a garden gnome… They like decorate their houses with beautiful flowers or colorful leafs. It has been said that the branch of the Moonwort (lunaria annua) is one of their favourites, as it is said to bring luck and prosperity to a home…
Have you ever wondered what the frogs and the gnomes do on rainy days? Well, just like us, they like to sit back and enjoy the sounds of nature, while sipping on warm tea and telling stories… So if you want to spot them, I would suggest building a little pond, at the back of your garden, and then of course be very patient and wait for the rain to come…
Did you ever take a walk in the forest, and hear crackling sounds followed by the ruffling of leafs? Have you ever spotted a freshly cut mushroom foot, when nobody was around? This sounds like you might have encountered a mushroom hunter gnome. These are the most adventurous of garden gnomes, they sometimes wonder out of bounds. If you are a lucky one, though, you might someday see the top of their hat even in your own little patch of land…
If you could grow hope, it would take the shape of a watermelon. Gnomes are not oblivious to the revolution, and they want to inspire you to sow seeds of resistance. One watermelon at a time.
My shop is now officially open, and i am SO HAPPY to tell you that if you join my Patreon for five euros you can get a 10% discount on all my shop. I am very grateful for the support and enthousiasm I have here thanks to all of you, this shop would never have opened if it wasn't for your kind words and all of the time you have spent watching my videos!
Sending you love and warm hugs.
Tata,
Pip pip
What not buying new art supplies for three months has taught me.
“Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.”
At the beginning of 2025, the holy year of my thirtieth birthday, I decided that it was high time I matured and started managing my money - which I had been metaphorically throwing out the windows for the past years.
I had absolutely no savings whatsoever. And I was starting to build my own business that I might want to invest some money in.
So yeah, I decided to do a low-buy year.
If you know me, you know that I am a sketchbook and overall stationary hoarder. I LOVE MY ART SUPPLIES. Paper, pencils, paints, but also stickers, prints, notebooks… The list is endless and OH MY are those things expensive.
I am a little bit ashamed to say that last year, I went through a phase of mindless spending, during which I purchased a LOT of art supplies. Way too much for one person. All my money would go towards these frivolous expenses… I mean, not exclusively, but I did buy a lot of art supplies (and art. And other stuff too…).
So at the beginning of 2025, the holy year of my thirtieth birthday, I decided that it was high time I matured and started managing my money - which I had been metaphorically throwing out the windows for the past years.
I had absolutely no savings whatsoever. And I was starting to build my own business that I might want to invest some money in.
So yeah, I decided to do a low-buy year.
The rules? I wasn’t allowed to buy any new :
art supplies
stationary
books
clothes
courses (I have a whole thing of buying online courses and not taking them…)
If you want to know how the low-buy is going, I have a first quarter review video on my Youtube, and I also talk about it in depth in my monthly Patreon podcast (become a free member to gain access to it).
What I want to talk to you about, is what doing this has actually done to me, how it has impacted me, and why I think we should all give a try to doing a low-buy.
First, let me acknowledge my financial privilege. Europeans or not, we have been living through intensely hard financial times recently. This recession has us working hard, and while everything costs so much more, our salaries do not seem to be following the inflation quite enough… And here I am, bragging about doing a low-buy after one and a half years of spending mindlessly. I know I am one of the privileged ones not having had to worry too much about that.
Last year was the first year I really had a salary. I found a day-job, with nice advantages and a reasonable salary and after years of working very crappy jobs with ridiculously low pays, it was a whole new world for me to have spending money. I have never really been educated about money (which also comes from the privilege of having enough of it).
So when I first discovered the joy and comfort of still having money left to spend after paying rent, I started consuming. And after a few rough years, I felt like treating myself. The thing is, I was starting to believe that the more I consumed, the happier I would be.
But did buying a shit-ton of stuff make me happier? My fears and doubts of not being a good artist still existed. I was still unsure about my path. And there was this stress, this underlying frustration of feeling like I never had enough, like I’m always missing something. Like if maybe I had this or this art supply that an artist I love is using, maybe I will feel like them? But I didn’t. And yet, my identity was starting to dangerously merge with the stuff I owned. With how much I consumed.
Also, being an internet person - building a career online - made me more vulnerable to thinking that I needed to be and look perfect in order to find success and, therefore, happiness. And perfection seemed weirdly linked to consumption.
At first, doing a low-buy and not buying new art supplies was super easy. Especially because I had been hoarding them for the past year, so I had way too much actually, or more than enough supplies to last me for the rest of my life.
So I was riding the high wave of self-sufficiency, trying to use all those fun art supplies I had been hoarding. I was (and I have been) drawing daily. I even cut my social media consumption for a while, by deleting apps from my phone and working on my business through my iPad.
Slowly, but surely, I started noticing the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that people are always trying to sell me stuff. This is the world we live in. And even I do, I use social media to try and find illustration clients, to present them with my work and make them want to work with me. But I never used to give much thought to how much I am surrounded with ads - when I scroll Pinterest, I not only find inspiration but I am also BOMBARDED with them. Same on Instagram. It is very hard to resist the urge to buy.
But by compartmentalizing, by cutting my screen time and therefore drawing more, I was starting to wake up. Had I been completely hypnotized by my apps, so much so that I had become blind to the fact that I was only being used by brands to make me believe that my self-worth was linked to something other than my soul, how I love, and the alignment of my actions?? Did I really believe in the fake happiness that they were selling me?
Waking up was a bit hard on my ego, I’m not going to lie to you.
But having a goal - a clear financial goal -, and having a tool to track it, has been helpful to me. It gave me motivation, when I forgot and was suddenly again swayed by some advertisement, to resist and think on it. Sleep on it.
And obviously, not buying new art supplies has given me the golden opportunity to use the ones I already have.
When I finish a colored pencil that I have thoroughly used during a daily self-portrait, my instinct is now to try another one, to see what I could replace it with from my own supplies. Because I could very well buy another one of the same colored pencil, but isn’t it more fun to switch it up a bit? Very fun. And how cool would it be if I had a collection of very tiny, completely used colored pencils?? VERY COOL.
Basically, not spending time yearning for what I don’t have has allowed me to focus more on the process and to appreciate what I do have. By romanticising my own stuff and my own life instead of dreaming of having another one’s, I find myself trusting myself more, drawing more, and feeling that much more confident
The secret is in the doing, it would seem. To end this blogpost, I give you this wonderful quote from The Artist’s Way, that I am currently re-reading :
“Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.”
This quote from Julia Cameron invites us to forget results and focus on the process, and this is the main tool I preach to anyone who will accept to listen to my unsolicited advice : instead of focusing on how things look, learn to fall in love with how you feel while doing the things.
That’s it for today, pip pip, my loves.
I painted my (second) first commission as an official art business (super cute story time)
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.
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