First step towards success
There is eternal question "What makes you an artist?" What do you think? Is it a degree from arts university, is it a number of exhibitions you had, or just the fact that you know how to draw an apple so everyone can recognize it? Maybe it is a fact that you are able to survive with being a full-time artist. I honestly can't put together a solid definition.
Lately I've read that selling art and living of it doesn't necessarily mean you are a good artist, it only means you know how to sell your work. But does that makes you an artist or a salesman?
Maybe you are defined as an artist when you have the passion for art and you pursue this passion even when whole world thinks you are worthless. Or is it enough to consider yourself an artist when you do 22 things that creative people do differently than the rest? (BTW, I'm totally in all 22, so?)
As I told you before I started to follow my dreams with, what I call, my "art job" last month. Am I considered to be an artist? I don't know. Did I sell anything? Hmmm, not much. Do I draw perfect apples? Not really, no. What about that passion? It's there, but is it enough? I don't know.
Last week I submitted eight of my artworks onto Society6 page. (If you know how it works, please skip this.) It's a community with literary millions of artists who submit their work with intention to sell. It's one of those POD (print on demand) pages, where customers can order many different products with various art prints. Society6 deals with their order, print and post, customers pay them and finally the artist gets paid their share. What is important to know is, that everybody can submit their work and hope to sell, but in this humongous mass of wonderful design it is hard to stand out and the point is to get your work in Society6 Shop. This you can achieve only with promotions from other artist if they consider your work interesting.
And... being an artist or not, who cares... I've got 3 emails today from Society6 that my prints were included in their shop. Yay!
"Hello KrasArts, Congrats! We're excited to let you know that your Print "happy C" has been selected to be included in the Society6 Shop. Click here to enable additional products to be sold along with this Print. Don't forget to share the great news with your friends and fans using the following link: https://society6.com/product/happy-c_print
https://society6.com/product/fly-free-the-branches-collection_print Thanks again for being a part of Society6.
Society6 offices are located at 1655 26th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404."
I'm very well aware that it doesn't mean I'll start selling tomorrow, but it means a lot because I've been promoted by artists whose work I find magnificent and since most of them had already so much promotion I believe they really liked my work and didn't promote me just with expectation to be promoted back.
And if we returned to THE eternal question... maybe being an artist means exactly that... to be accepted as one by your fellow artists.
