I’m all for transparancy and I think there’s way too little going around in the topics of artist income and how we actually survive financially out there. In this video I’ll go into what turned out to be my worst financial year and tell you my income as a full-time artist.

Life context

Did I think this year was a failure? Absolutely not! This year was incredibly busy with life. The last months of 2022 and the first month of this year I took time off for me and my partners house renovation because we bought a house last year. This full year we’ve been working pretty much every weekend and lots of evenings to build a bathroom, a kitchen, plumbing, insulation, pretty much everything. Won’t go into that too much but we both underestimated how much energy that would cost us.

I absolutely noticed that in the business side of my career, I just had less energy. Making personal work gives me energy and doing client work in general costs me energy, so naturally I just spent more time on things I liked doing more.

I also invested a lot of time in YouTube and my online lessons I teach via Patreon. I only started Youtube in march 2022 and Patreon in june 2023. I found out I get a lot of fullfilment from inspiring other people to be more creative and even though the payout is tiny at the moment I really believe in that part of my business and I want to grow it more. I’ve only been monetized on youtube since december 2023, so all that time and work has just been an investment in the future.

Earning less hasn’t made me live less. I’ve always been pretty frugal, it’s just pretty natural to me. I splurge on space and time, which is why I got a bigger studio and why I took time off to work on our house renovations. I’d rather have quiet times to focus on something I find important than to do everything halfway and burn myself out.

I don’t feel like this year I had to say no to a lot of things, but I have been cutting into my savings so naturally that needs to build up again next year.

Setting Financial Goals

My biggest long term goal is to not be dependant on sales or client work at all and relying on a sort of community income, whether that’s via Patreon or via a mix of youtube adsense and Patreon. I’ll still give something in return but it’d be completely in my own hands what that’d be.

For example if I make an experimental painting that I just wanted to make because I felt like it and I would depend on that sale, I’d think of making it less experimental next time maybe so that it would sell. There’s lots of artists that make a series of work becayse they know it’s popular and you’re kind of stuck in this one genre. That’s not what I want to do.

By the end of next year I want to increase my monthly ‘community’ income to € 1000. Maybe that’s crazy, but if I set a goal I want it to be at least a little bit crazy. Obviously I don’t know what YouTube is going to do, if the algorithm will like me, but I know I’ll put in the work and if I’m way off we’ll see about it next year.

Other income streams

I also want to sell more originals this year. I had some very good sales this year including my first big work and I just love that feeling of having a painting go to their new home. I’m finding it quite hard to break into the gallery world, so I want to take that into my own hands. I’ll do at least 2 shop updates next year, one with the series I’m working on now and one with works on paper that are more affordable. We’ll see what the rest of the year brings!

My bread and butter of my first years of freelancing has been live illustration and this year I did none of that. I also didn’t promote it much, but I want to get that back in 2024.

I’m planning to release my first workshop series at the end of january and I’m super excited to bring my lessons into my studio. Finally!

Conclusion

I hope you liked this little transparancy peek into my income as a full-time artist. It might feel like a bit of oversharing to some of you, but at the beginning of my art career I wished I had some of the transparent information that’s out there now. You don’t have to be a starving artist, there’s so many ways to gather an income and be independent. Here’s to 2024 being my/your best financial year yet!