How To Earn a Living as An Artist in 3 Steps

I recently discovered a fantastic site called Zen Pencils. Melbourne based artist Gavin Aung Than finds inspirational, thoughtful or otherwise motivational quotes from cool people and illustrates them in a comic style. The results are beautiful and effective and I love browsing his illustrations. His most recent work is of a quote by the super kickass John Green (author as well as host of the best Youtube series ever, Crash Course World History). The quote is great and the artwork stunning, but what really hooked my attention came from the comments. Matt Staples left the following 3-step process for earning money while doing what you love: [list list_style="grayDot" style=""]

• "Step 1: Make stuff you like. Make it as great as you can. Love it as you do it.
• Step 2: Show it to people. Whether in person, or on a website, be it a personal one or a general one (like Deviantart). Be happy when they love it. Work harder when they don’t love it so much.
• Step 3: Give them the option to buy. But don’t shove it in their face."

[/list] This pretty much sums it up. Sometimes it can seem too simple to be true, but I've seen it work again and again. As he pointed out, it's exactly what Zen Pencils is doing! There is a certain "If you build it, they will come" philosophy behind this process. It's not about putting together a slick demo reel and then shoving it in the face of everyone you meet; that just turns people off. If you want people to listen, write something worth listening to. If the work really holds merit the audience will come. When I am asked about how to making a living as an artist in the future, I am absolutely going to refer people to this process.