For me, pencil and paper works best to clarify an uncertain idea; the type of idea that may be a single sentence in a notebook, “A story about how we cannot see the forest for the trees sometimes.”

There are often more bad ideas than good ones to begin with when an idea is this unformed. If I try to flesh this idea out on a computer via a word processing tool or a tablet, bad ideas are instinctively and easily erased. And if they are erased, are they also easily forgotten? And if they are forgotten, does it become easier to generate the bad idea again? To revisit old ground? To feel that progress is slow and circular?

With marks on paper, bad ideas remain visible. The page begins to reveal a map of paths that lead to dead ends. With more visibility of the bad paths, is it easier to find the good one? The right one?

There is a forever-tension between how an artist acquires money to pay the bills whilst simultaneously developing and furthering an art practice. At the very least, if we want to stay alive, we need food, water, & shelter. Some people need people more than others. Some people need holidays and adventures more than others. What it costs for someone to live will be different for each person but, eventually money must come from somewhere.

Whilst I’d love to say there are myriad ways to achieve this balance, there seems to be only 6 options that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

1. The commercial freelancer: This person has a personal art practice but brings in money through selling their work. It’s either pre-made work (I made a painting and you can license it or buy the original), work that actually beautifies something else (my art on a mug), or it’s work-on-demand (creating work in response to a brief). This person may also sell art-adjacent services (teaching, workshops etc). The advantage to this type of model is that one can practice the craft of their art (materials, tools etc). The disadvantage is one may end up creatively depleted and it risks taking away from one’s ability to practice for oneself to develop truly personal work because one needs to focus, ultimately, on a customer.
2. The part-timer: This person works in an unrelated field (like software engineering) and practices their art in their ‘personal time’ (like after work or on weekends). This is about trying to keep one’s creative energy ‘saved up’ by working in a job that doesn’t use that part of the brain/body so that one can spend it outside of hours. That art practice may or may not be income-generating but, because of the separation between ‘work’ and ‘art’, it’s possible that one increases their chances of a purely personal art exploration because one doesn’t need to worry about the customer.
3. The sugar-partner: This person has a partner or significant other that makes enough money to sustain a lifestyle that the artist needs to practice.
4. The inheritor: This person lives off a generous inheritance from someone and they use that to fund their existence while they make art.
5. The prizewinner: Occasionally, an artist wins an art prize and it provides some income to support their practice (for a while) but often either (1) or (2) is still required.
6. The patron/s benefactor: The artist who recieves regular income from people who give you money because they believe in you and they want you to make work (which is distinctly different from being a ‘customer’). These can either be wealthy individuals or many individuals via crowd-sourced micro payments. It’s worth noting though that there is a distinction between true patronage and ‘patronage-for-service’ where an artists ‘trades’ patronage for ‘special access’ to certain services or content.

An artist’s journey may, at different stages, be funded by any one or all of these ways of income-generation in service of their art. As the artist evolves, different priorities emerge or recede. But there is no escaping commerce.

Having spent some time being no. 1 and no. 2, I’m finding that, right now, no. 2 is my preferred path forward.

In a restaurant where the menu is delicious and extensive, choosing which few dishes (and how much) to order can be difficult. While ‘the market’ will generally say, ‘more choice is a positive’, sometimes, the paradox of choice kicks in and we need another way to decide.

This is where ‘just feed me’ or ‘chef’s recommendation/banquet’ options shine. For a little bit more than what you would pay for each dish individually, we can outsource the selection to someone who knows better than we do; someone who’ll get the flavour combinations and the portion sizes correct so we, the diner, can sit back, relax, and enjoy whatever comes to us.

As an illustration business, I could offer limitless customisations and personalisation to the work I make and who I make it for. An enormous selection of prints & products so that, no matter what you need, I have something for you. Or, I could limit the options I offer; provide an ‘artist’s banquet’ because maybe, just maybe, someone will pay me because I’m only offering them what’s worth buying.

We often talk about having the luxury of more time. With more time, we could do more things, we tell ourselves. But without time constraints, it becomes more difficult to prioritise; to know when enough is enough. Sometimes, having no time is exactly what we need to help us make progress, to finish something, to move on to what comes next.

I have more ideas than time in my life to write or draw them – to turn them into something that someone else can experience, consume, consider, and use. And, whilst making something for someone else isn’t the only motivation to make something, it’s certainly an important factor when I prioritise something. Sure, the work I make helps me, but will it also help someone else? The former criterion is art, the latter, a service. If that’s true, then art is inherently a selfish act, a service to one’s self. Whilst work for others is an act of generosity; my time for your experience.

Can a selfish act also be generous?

I tell myself I am a generous person – that I prioritise the wellbeing of others within safe limits of my own wellbeing. Living by this criteria has provided me with wonderful relationships and experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise had. It gives me the feeling of being in service to something greater than myself. But, because of this, it also prevents me from prioritising art. Work that is in service of just one person – me.

But, in the very few cases I have prioritised art – work that is only for me – there have been unexpected consequences. Others have engaged with it and have been moved, changed, and healed. Others have been confused, underwhelmed, unsettled. A service provides a generally positive feeling to many, art provokes a generally polarising reaction – intense but different.

In a world where algorithms are flattening and homogenising our experiences; maybe there’s enough work being done as a service. Maybe it’s time to start being a little more selfish; to find the edges of what it means to feel human and provoke intense and deep emotions, positive or negative, before we forget how to feel. A selfish act that, when offered to the world, becomes an act of generosity.

Most people think that creative work has a better chance of completion if there are fewer constraints. But, working within structure helps because it eliminates some options and through elimination comes focus. Despite what we think about ‘freedom’ in creative work, structure is everywhere.

In graphic design, we use grids to give us an underlying structure on which we build interesting and varied layouts. Newspapers, magazines, books, and the web all have underlying structure (columns and rows) that provide a certain consistency for how content spatially relates. Structure helps the creator make decions and the reader interpret the work.

In comics, panels are typically laid out according to an underlying grid – again, of horizontal and vertical divisions. Rather than this grid ‘getting in the way’ of creativity, it unlocks it – it defines the rules under which most work can be made and a certainty that the reader will use past experience with such grids to be able to read and interpret the creator’s story or message.

Beyond physical structure, there is conceptual structure, too. Stories themselves have structure. Beginnings, Middles, Ends. They have a central protagonist and antagonist. Supporting characters. They have 3 acts (or 4, depending on who you talk to), each with a different purpose and goal. Get all these right and you’ve got a story that most people will understand. Structure doesn’t, however, guarantee a good story.

That’s not to say that we don’t, can’t, or shouldn’t break the rules sometimes. But, you can only break something that wasn’t broken in the first place. When we break the grid or the structure, it’s often for a reason: we want to surprise, we want variation, we want to emphasise a feeling. But, largely, breaking structure is the exception not the rule.

I’ve been struggling to prioritise which story or drawing idea to work on next. They all have interesting bits within them so choosing based on ‘interesting-ness’ isn’t going to work this time.

Same goes for learning. One would improve my drawing skills, another would improve my comics skills, another would improve my colour skills – so choosing by what skills I want to improve won’t work either.

Then I started reading “Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression” by Bruce Barnbaum. In the context of choosing which subjects to photograph and how, he writes:

“The first thing to look for in determining your interests is enthusiasm. I cannot overemphasise the importance of enthusiasm. I once heard that three human ingredients will combine to produce success in any field of endeavour: enthusiasm, talent, and hard work, and that a person can be successful with only two of those attributes as long as one of the two is enthusiasm!”

It struck me light a bolt of enthusiastic lightning. When I’m enthusiastic about a project, it dominates everything inside me. It’s as if every other project I had in mind drops away (forgetting to eat and drink properly included). In a rational world where we’re supposed to weigh up pros and cons of everything before choosing a course of action, I realised there was another, more emotionally-drive way – might enthusiasm work for choosing my next project?

With this lens, the choice became much easier. I simply picked and began.

The problem with enthusiasm, of course, is that it can be fleeting and inconsistent. Enthusiastic one day, not enthusiastic the next. Most ideas I work on begin with plenty of enthusiasm and I think “this is the greatest idea that ever existed!” Then, at some point, they get difficult. I get stuck or I realise I’m lacking a skill to progress it. It’s important to remember that this moment happens in almost every project and is a natural part of creative work. The challenge for most of us is to know that it will pass and get better – overcoming those challenges, improving skills is fundamental to the process. It’s what Bruce would call the second ingredient (for those without talent): hard work.

Noodling is a word I use to describe when I’m messing around. A bit like play. Maybe there’s some idea, or starting point, that sits me down with a pencil in hand, but often there isn’t. Most of the time, when I sit down to draw for fun, I truly have no idea where the marks I’m making will go.

But, I also know that without a little noodling, I’ll never make a pasta. It’s become one of the most important parts of my art practice.

My work is meant for books and stories, not gallery walls. Sometimes I wish it were another way – I like the idea of ‘exhibitions’ and evenings at a gallery. So, I try to experiment with what it would take to make something beautiful for beauty’s sake but no matter what happens, I end up in the same place – I need more panels, more backstory, a stronger character, something more than beauty to drive the work forward.

So, I will never be like them, the gallery artists, but it’s also likely true that they will never be like me.

What the market wants is lower cost, more efficient production, higher output and easily reproducible steps. If that becomes one’s criteria for running an art practice, it’s not an art practice anymore, it’s a business.