11th March 2022
Again, another fairly quiet week, but I’d like to focus on the fact that it is now essentially spring, where the days get longer and brighter, and when I come out of hibernation, feeling optimistic (despite all that which is going on in the world at the moment, but I try not to dwell on things beyond my control because that will make me feel worse off than I was before), as well as feeling ready to take on more work and to do more things, simply because it feels like there’s more hours in the day, which means that I can realistically accomplish a few more things that I couldn’t really have done in the winter, mainly due to a lack of motivation and inspiration which comes with winter.
However, I’d better not jinx it, because ideally, I’d like to be able to start advertising commissions (something that I’ve been meaning to do for a few weeks now), so that I can at least have a higher chance of getting work, because one thing I’ve realised is that I enjoy having a brief (usually set by someone else, but I like to balance it out by having some personal work going on) that I can work towards, given that I’ve still got some creative control over my work, and my only regret is that I didn’t do this earlier on in the placement year since I was too busy trying to chase an idea which was always out of my reach, no matter how fast I ran in order to get it, since that original idea was a bit hard to grasp due to the fact that it was just outside of my comfort zone and skill set.
Had I not tried chasing that idea, forcing myself to fit into that box (even when I knew that I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried), I would have been able to take on freelancing a lot sooner, but better late than never, and this is coming from a born early bird.
Ironically, I’m deciding to create a professional website (my original idea did involve creating websites, but not in the professional sense, and to this day, I still have no idea why I thought it’d be a good idea to create websites with barely any experience, when I clearly have at least 5 years’ experience under my belt with creating illustrations, not to mention all the times that I tried dismissing my strengths simply because I found them too easy, but I’d rather have a business focusing on what I can do, rather than having one which I know nothing about, because it’d probably be easier to just get a job instead), because let’s face it, my current site looks nothing like a freelance illustrator’s website at all.
It looks like an artist’s website, and art is highly subjective, which in turn means that my current site focuses on the niche genre of internet art as well as a few other tidbits of something something working at the intersection of art and technology. Highly pretentious and largely inaccessible, if you ask me, although this time last year, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, mainly because of its slightly unconventional layout, there being no images on there, and having most of work hidden somewhere behind links, forcing the user to just click on them, in order to be greeted to a small pdf of work, instead of them just casually looking at my work (highly visual, mind you), like how a normal illustrator would, because it’d be silly not to. This is what going to art school and studying fine art does to you (despite the fact that I originally chose the combined course so that I’d do both art and illustration, but I’ll save this for another time), since it makes you highly conceptual when all I want to do is to just create visually appealing work.
I’m not sure whether I should create my professional website entirely from scratch (like how I did with my personal/current one) or whether I should gasp use a website builder in order to create it. I think at this moment in time, I’d still like to create it entirely from scratch so that I still have some creative control over how I present my work, although this time, I’d be using Dreamweaver to help me do it since there’s no way that I can feasibly do it on my own. Whether I code it all by myself or use a website builder, the effort’s pretty much going to be the same, so I might as well code it by myself (even if it means using Dreamweaver to make the job a little bit easier for me, especially in terms of actually displaying images) since it’ll help me learn to code effectively, and having a highly visual and creative person who knows how to code is a bit rare these days, so it’d put me at an advantage.
In terms of doing the work, I’m almost done refining it, and so far, so good. I like it, the client likes it, we’re good. At least I’ve actually got experience working with a paying client, and now I’m eager to take on more work, so that I can at least get paid for doing what I actually enjoy (although money isn’t the reason why I’m doing it, but it feels nice to get paid to do what you actually want to do instead of having to work some job, although when you’re starting out, you have to go to work and do freelancing on the side), because creating illustrations doesn’t feel like work to me. It feels more like play, where the hours feel like minutes, and that’s what I like about it.
So, that’s been my week so far, and so far, so good. Next week will probably involve me in doing things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while but kept putting off, but I’ve got to realise that when you’re a freelancer, you have to cover ALL aspects of everything, not just doing the fun stuff all the time, although I wish that’s what I could do all day everyday, just being paid to draw things and having a right good time at that, but that will be at some point in the future, because for now, I’m just starting out, and I have wear all the hats ever.