Forge your path Tanya Combrinck meets three artists to find out how they make a living working on their own passion projects
Taking commissions isn’t the only way that you can make a living as an artist. If you value holding on to your creative control and working on your own terms, there are a number of ways you can do your own thing and still make money.
The traditional route of working to commissions was how Inna Vjuzhanina started her career. “Unfortunately the most common scenario for ‘breaking into the freelancing industry’ is taking a lot of underpaid projects just to make ends meet,” she says. “I was doing a lot of highly detailed illustrations in a short period of time for really small pay. That’s a recipe for burnout.”
Feeling increasingly drained, she began a gradual transition to making her income from Patreon and print sales, which took about two years.
DIVE INTO PATREON
Inna recommends Patreon as a way that you can jump in immediately, because there are no fees unless you make some income. “You lose absolutely nothing by making one right now,” she says. It’s important to remember that Patreon doesn’t give you any promotion or enable people to discover you, so you have to bring your audience in from elsewhere. “Growing it has been a really gradual and long process for me, so you have to be patient,” says Inna.
Once you’ve started up your Patreon, Inna says that repeated promotion is the key to success, and that you shouldn’t worry too much about being annoying. “You’re an independent creative individual and it’s your job to let people know about all the cool things you offer. Everyone has busy lives and it often takes multiple reminders to get people to hit that pledge button.”
As well as monetary support, Inna has found a “family-like community” on Patreon that she deeply values. “I treat my Patreon as the most personal type of connection to my audience,” she says. “People choosing to give you their money every month so you can keep creating means a lot. So in return, I share not just art with them, but a lot of myself as a person.”
TAKE CONTROL
Like Patreon, print sales was a revenue stream that grew gradually for Inna. She started out using printon-demand websites, but found the profit m
