Maybe it’s because the urge to make money of my creations has waned a bit, as I have a day job now. I feel I’m starting to like smaller conventions much more than the larger ones. Okay, the smallest I attended where fantasy and sci fi ones, the largest mostly comic-oriented; so maybe it’s not a fair comparison. But what I’m getting at: smaller conventions are so much more relaxed to attend than the larger ones, expecially as a dealer!
It’s been a month already since I attended Fantasticon, the fantasy convention I dubbed the smallest in the Netherlands on my first visit in 2022. This year, I was invited to join a panel about AI in writing and helped behind the bar for a couple of hours. I also tabled with prints and booklets, which would have been impossible to combine at a larger convention. I remember at Dutch Comic Con, during peak times it wasn’t even possible to go to the bathroom; both the visitors demanding your attention as the waiting line made it impossible to leave your booth. Your neighbours would be just as busy so they couldn’t help you out either. And while all those people might drive up sales, it makes the whole experience quite exhausting.
I’d rather stay at the small conventions; where I have the time to chat with other dealers and am able to leave my table unattended for a while. During really quiet times, I can sketch the stand across my table and just do my own thing. Apart from being super relaxing, drawing also sparked new conversations. And in the end, making connections is just as worthwhile, and something I always felt there is little time for at larger events.
I did sell stuff, even though I didn’t dare to hope for it: two booklets, a print and a sticker. Totally not bad for such a small convention!
Will I never attend big conventions like Comic Con anymore? I won’t say never, but probably not in the near future. Bigger means more expensive and most convention ventures up to now ended in the red. Now I don’t need the income anymore, so I can focus solely on the fun.
Newsletter readers know that I hadn’t participated in an exhibition since art school. I also never helped organize one myself. When Feroz asked me to help after Draw Club Rotterdam was asked if they weren’t interested in exhibiting at Nivon, I naturally said yes, though!
Five other Draw Club regulars wanted to participate, so we were six in total. During the first brainstorm it already became clear I had a lot of assumptions about how an exhibition should be organised that the other participants didn’t have. I wanted to go for a common factor in our work and theme the exhibition around that, but others didn’t find that neccesary. I had also liked a title for the exhibition that was a little more imaginative or suggestive, but democratic vote decided otherwise.
In the end I don’t think it was a bad thing that I had an opinion about everything and kept suggesting how things could be improved – I kept my feedback reasonable as far as I know! I am an perfectionist and if you ask me to organise something, I will set the bar high. Also, I had professional interests to upkeep: its marketing assets would appear in my social feed too, the same feed where I also tried to attract clients and sell myself as a creative professional. I did not want that a hobbyist look would reflect badly on me.
All in all it was a succes, all works found a place on time, we had snacks and NIVON provided someone to man the bar. We got about 25 visitors, all friends and family, but again, I didn’t expect much more and for a first time and that’s totally ok too!
Thinking about exhibiting? Here are some tips:
Start planning as early as possible! Professional exhibitions are planned a year or more in advance (also because artists need time to create work for it). If you have already found a space and don’t plan to create new art, a few months should be fine, still: don’t underestimate the time it takes to create good marketing material, expecially working with many people. Also, if you’re looking to get featured in local magazines and newspapers, keep in mind their copy deadlines; they could be months in advance before the issue releases.
Take the time to gather information about the space itself such as facilities and insurance; think of lights and windows, fire exits, but also who is responsible for damage and who can you call in case of an emergency? Because we were with a group I made pictures and drew maps of the spaces our work would hang, I doubt anyone made use of them, but it did help to get an idea of how much space anyone had.
Set deadlines for participants to get their info done! I took responsibility for printing all the info and pricing labels, and I still had change my planning and print the labels later than I wanted to because people weren’t done with adding their info. So make sure you have some wiggle room!
Our exhibiton is open until June 30th, so feel free to hop by on a Friday night when we’re open!
Inspired by Austin Kleon‘s 100 things that made my year list, I wanted to do something similar. I couldn’t get to 100, though, so that’s gonna be a goal for next year. For now, enjoy my 35 highlights of 2022:
Everything around the release of the graphic novel METRO 010: meeting the other illustrators at the release party, seeing the book in bookstores, realizing I’m an published illustrator now!
Being able to give a guest lecture at Mediacollege Amsterdam!
Our cactus flowered for the first time! (and it got cactus fruit too!)
Teaching animation and game design workshops to high school students! It is not always easy but the people I do this with are amazing and it is really rewarding to seeing things ‘click’ with those kids.
Visiting the city archive to look up construction drawings of our house. Going through those old documents was pretty cool!
Working on a very cool game project that has been shelved unfortunately! I hope we will continue working on it someday!
BNO Start studio visits! Through this program by the Dutch Designers Association, I visited the studio of Hansje van Halem, CLEVER°FRANKE and Afdeling Buitengewone Zaken. Inspiring, even though they do very different things than me!
Visiting Irene Goede at her atelier ‘t Koewegje during their open atelier day!
Accidentely seeing the film Moonage Daydream (long story short: I came for another viewing that was cancelled and the lady behind the counter took pity on us and gave us tickets to this film)
I also got U2’s Rattle and Hum for 50 cents at another shop!
Analysing my social media and figuring out what each platform has actually brought me! Something I can recommend every artist and creative business in general, because where you spend most time and/or effort might not be the platform that actually does something for you.
Collecting CDs from trift shops!
And last but not least: blogging more! I still have a lot unfinished drafts laying around that I might never finish, but writing a bit every now and then is something I really enjoy and I’m happy that I was able to do so this year!
It is already a week ago that I traveled to Nijmegen to participate in The Big Draw‘s Artist Alley at the Mariënburg Library. After doing OK at TomoFair, I was curious how this would go: I expected a different kind of public here.
Saturday
Unfortunately the weather wasn’t good: I arrived with a wet suitcase and a soaked coat. This must have had it’s effect on the visitor’s count, though it’s hard to say to what account. On the other hand, hosting the Artist Alley in the library, we also had people browsing who didn’t know about the event at all and just came to lend a book. In fact, at the start of the day, there was only a A4 taped to the door about the event, it wasn’t advertised very clearly, so I wonder how many people visited the library with the intent of browsing the Artist Alley vs. regular library visitors who stumbled upon us.
Following the arrow I drew here is not intuitive at all, you probably would go straight ahead where most tables are.
To be honest, I also didn’t have the best table spot in the library. Most tables were in the large space in the center of the building, and we were kind of behind that between the bookshelves. There must have been visitors that have missed us because of that.
Nevertheless, I sold a few prints, one of them to a little girl who kept telling her mother that she really really wanted that print. Those are the best customers! I also met a lot of new fellow illustrators and creatives that are still studying or just graduated. I think half of tables were from artists from the St. Joost Academy from Breda / Den Bosch. A different community than Rotterdam, and fun to meet!
Sunday
The weather was much better now and we could move our tables outside. That was the good news! I suddenly had to flip my table design as I now expected people walking past from right to left instead of left to right, though. I had thought I needed half an hour max to prepare my table, now the library was already open and I was still setting up. Stressful!
Instead of being tucked away, now were were right at the entrance, no one could miss us! There were banners about the event too, it felt like a much larger event now. And The Big Draw is actually quite a big event with workshops and expositions all around the city! The Artist Alley is just one thing on the program.
Unfortunately though, I only sold one print and two stickers on Sunday, despite the weather being much better. In my experience Sunday is always more quiet than Saturday on two-day conventions, though, although I hoped differently now we had a better spot. It proves once more how much uncertainty is involved in this business.
The Verdict
The Big Draw is much more than just the Artist Alley and being part of an event about all things drawing is rewarding in itself too. I wish Rotterdam would get its own edition, so I could see more of the event myself instead having to leave early to travel back home.
If I sold one more sticker, I would have hit break even. Tables were free but traveling from Rotterdam to Nijmegen both ways is around 45 euros. That’s a shame, but on the other hand this is the cheapest convention I’ve attended, the location was great and there was even lunch and snacks provided at no costs. No way you get something like that at a regular convention. I probably would attend again if I got the chance!
Nevertheless I will take a break from conventions until I have more original prints and merchandise to sell. Tables were only 120 cm wide and I worried if I would be able to display all my prints, but in the end I had actually quite some spare space. It made me realize I actually don’t have that much to sell, and simple business sense tells me that I automatically will sell more if I simply have more to offer. Conventions take quite some time to prepare, so I think it isn’t a bad idea to step back once more and use that time to create more personal work. After all, I should do that more regardless of creating merchandise of it!
I can’t remember how I got notice of this event exactly, but it must have been on one of my travels into the depths of obscure Dutch fantasy publishers and Facebook groups.
I have been on the fence whenever I should visit this event. From what I can see online, it seems a tiny event only insiders know of. It’s free, held in a local community center in a tiny town just south of Amsterdam. I honestly had never heard of Nieuw Vennep before. Additionally, the people behind this all seem 45+ and have websites that don’t seem to have changed since 2002. All in all it gives me the impression that this is more of a hobby club than a professional affair. But then again, the line between hobbyist and proffessional is very thin in the art and design space.
Anyway, enough assumptions and judgement beforehand. The only way to figure out if this is something for me is to attend, so I did!
After seeing the community centre I thought it was even smaller than I was expecting!
So yes, most of my assumptions were right. It was a terribly tiny event. I guess there where less than 15 tables, mostly people who run their creative practice next to a full time job. There were a few talks and a presentation of a yearly publication of fantastical short stories. But sometimes I got the feeling I had entered a club in which these people had been creating and sharing their work for years, which I came to check out like an intruder.
Nevertheless, it was heartwarming to see and hear how passionate everyone was about their work and the fantasy genre in general. All the people I spoke loved to tell me about their projects, unconditionally: they didn’t try at all to sell me anything.
In addition, I have to admit it was amazingly organised for being such a small event. Communication beforehand was clear and on point, and even written in a whimsical, remarkable style which lends itself well for a fantasy convention. The program was followed by the minute and there was even the option to order lunch from a nearby sandwich shop, which was delivered on location.
On the way home I couldn’t shake the thought that this event has a lot more potential. I feel the fantasy genre is more popular than ever, especially D&D. With a little more marketing, this event could easily grow twice or even three times as big as it is now.
But it is easy talking for me, I’ve never tried to organise anything like this. The small-press publisher behind the event has been publishing fantasy antologies and magazines for decades, if they wanted to go big they most certainly have tried. The publishing world (and convention world even so) is difficult, why bother trying to make a living from it if you don’t have to?
For me, who is trying to make a living from all my creative endeavours, this is food for thought. The idea of having a full time day job to be able to create personal work only is not something I have seriously considered; it feels like giving up on a dream I’ve been fighting for every day. Even though financial worries may cease to exist, time to create will be limited to before and after nine-to-five. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
To close this off: is this a meaningful event to network as a fantasy illustrator? If you’re looking for paid opportunities, not really, but you will meet wholesome fans of the genre.
The first one-day convention I tabled at! I picked TomoFair Rotterdam as my sister @empoh expressed her wish to try to table at conventions too, so I looked for a small, affordable convention nearby. The sports hall it was organised was only 30 minutes from my home, perfect for a test of our joint venture!
Left is Emma’s work, right is mine.
The Good
We had a good space, on the corner near the entrace. Having a which enabled us to hang some prints on the side of our stand, which worked out nicely! I saw people walking by and pointing at the prints multiple times.
Like at many conventions, some products did very well and others didn’t sell at all. The Pokémon Snap print did quite well, just like Grovyle and the Hollow Knight stickers. My sister sold a lot of her Rayquaza prints and Snom stickers. I’m happily surprised I sold my Harpy Bonfire print twice, which has never happened before!
Using the Tikkie app for customers who didn’t have cash on hand was a genius tip of my boyfriend, if I didn’t have it installed we would have missed out on half of our sales. I’m still undecided whenever I should get a card reader: do the transaction costs hold up to more sales?
The Bad
I have reasons to believe one of my Zinemadness zines was stolen from our stand. I counted all my stock before the convention and after, and one is missing despite I’m sure I didn’t sell one. It hasn’t happened to me before but I have heard stories of colleagues that this does happen at conventions sometimes. It is hard to prevent too, unfortunately: at times there are a lot of people before your stand and even with the two of us it is impossible to keep our eyes on all the things on the table. Still it is a shame people do such things.
All in all, I think we did good, although I hoped on a little better turnover. I sold a many stickers, but they’re only €3, so I didn’t make a lot of profit to be honest. And TomoFair itself is also not very cheap with stands starting at €119. But I might be inpatient again, expecting to have figured out this already! I think what I need is just more stuff to sell.
Conclusion
My sister and I both really enjoyed tabling together like this! I didn’t bring my largest prints, if I did the space might be too small for me, but this way it worked out nicely. There’s another TomoFair Rotterdam in december, we might do this again like this.
Next up: The Big Draw Nijmegen! A larger event with a different focus (all things drawing), so I’m excited to see how that will go. I’ll make sure to have some more prints for sale.
With all the commotion around Instagram’s new features, I have been thinking whenever I feel happy being on the platform and if my time spend there is worthwhile.
Using social media is part of my marketing strategy as a business, how commercial that may sound – it is something to review every now and then. In a recent newsletter Rengin Tümer wrote how she analyzes her social media strategy every year and leaves platforms that don’t perform well. After all, being on social media takes a lot of time and that time cannot be spend on other things.
So let’s do a thourough analysis of my social media strategy and platforms I’m on! Let’s start with why I’m even spending time there: my goal is to gather a community of people interested in my (personal) work and be visible for freelance opportunities. It’s a twofold goal, which creates a problem: these two different target audiences may not be interested in the same content I share. Posting about tabling at a comic convention is interesting to fans of my work, but clients not so much. So for each platform, it is important to keep in mind which target audience is present and what content or information is most interesting to them.
This table shows all the social media platforms I’m on, in order of active-ness. I use Instagram the most and LinkedIn the least. There are some patterns visible: the platforms I’m the longest on seem to have gathered more followers, which is understandable. But it also shows that engagement and followers do not always collerate, and some platforms are much better in showing my work to prospecting clients than others.
Let’s have a more in-depth look at each platform.
Instagram
I check Instagram three to five times daily. Though looking at the table, it seems that freelance-wise, it is a waste of time to be on there. Though I have the second most followers on that platform, it never has led to a paid opportunity. All I got were scammy DMs telling me I was selected for a sponsor deal to promote jewelry or makeup, but I had to “react fast as there were only 3 places left!!!!”. Yeah, sure.
Thing is, I don’t know how much of the following I have on Instagram is part of the community I’m trying to build. So it might not generate leads, in business speak, but does it foster Etsy sales for example? Google Analytics and Etsy’s analytics also don’t seem to strenghten that hypothetis, unfortunately. And engagement wise, I get on average about 25 likes per post, which is less than the recommended 10% of your following count. And it keeps dwindling down.
So all in all, I could say I should either 1) improve my strategy for that platform, meaning I would have to post a lot more, and probably videos too. I don’t want that as videos are super time consuming to create, which leaves 2) leave the platform and focus my efforts somewhere else.
A lot of friends of mine use Instagram and no other platforms I use regularly, so I’m stuck on there if I want to see their updates. But I should think about putting my focus elsewhere.
Twitter
Looking at the table, the follower count I gathered on Twitter in less than two years isn’t half bad, it took me way longer on Instagram to reach the same number. Follower count is not everything of course, I don’t have much engagement on my tweets (yet); still I had more conversations about tweets than I had on Instagram – there seems to be more community there.
Apart from that, people have found my work via Twitter, which is one of my reasons to be on social media in the first place. And additionally, I have found numerous opportunities through it’s search and in my feed through people I follow. That’s all making quite a strong case to start using Twitter more.
Pinterest
So far I’ve only used Pinterest to promoting my Etsy products. Many Etsy marketing Youtubers suggest its by far the best platform to promote your products on. Pinterest is very lifestyle focused, 80% of its user base is female and fashion, home design and crafts are top interests. I’m not sure how far I’ll get with my fantasy illustration and game art, but for Etsy I see traffic coming in through Pinterest, and I’m sure that I sold at least one product through Pinterest.
I think it would be worthwhile to try Pinterest for general interest in my work, not just products. Why? Because Pinterest is first and foremost a search engine. That means that content has a much longer lifespan than less search-centric platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. I rarely get likes on posts older than a month on Instagram, but on Pinterest my best performing pin is more than a year old. That means that in the long run, it’s less about being constantly active and more about creating a lot of content so you have more opportunities to be found. To paraphrase Kelsey Rodriguez: where Instagram is a grind to keep appearing in your follower’s feeds, every pin (like every Youtube video) adds to your collection of findable content.
And as Pinterest lets you link towards your own website or other platforms, I think it could work quite nicely in addition to other platforms.
DeviantArt
DeviantArt I have mostly abandoned since 2018, but it was the first place on the internet I posted my art. A lot of the people I followed moved to other platforms and the community has changed since then. Now I’m not active at all and new posts get little engagement as a result.
Older work keeps getting found, though, as I have been contacted twice by people wanting to get this old Zelda piece I made in 2015 tattooed and that person was willing to pay for a licence fee. So I feel checking it every now and then doesn’t hurt.
Tumblr
I joined Tumblr when it was the first platform competing with DeviantArt, and many users started to move to Tumblr. I never gave it as much time and energy as DeviantArt, which is probably why it underperforms in terms of account age and follower count.
All the recent engagement comes from older posts, or Etsy review thank-yous
I also feel like I have never gotten the hang of Tumblr. New art posts never get much engagement, but posts about Etsy reviews always do. Is my following more interested in that? Or does a post with a link always better in terms of likes? Whatever the case, I was approached for an unpaid opportunity recently, and older posts sometimes get attention out of nowhere, which makes me wonder if it is more search-centric than I initially thought. There are also visitors on Etsy coming through Tumblr, but they are so little that I wonder if it actually is worth the effort. It won’t hurt to post new work on there, though I’m not expecting too much of it.
Artstation
I rarely post work on ArtStation. To be honest, I don’t like the site very much. It is the celebrated art platform for the entertainment industry, and while they organise great contests and sponsor events and things, the site itself is still treated as a portfolio. I just don’t see how I can be active on there without posting non-portfolio work, which defeats the purpose of the website, doesn’t it? When people ask me if I have an ArtStation, I tell them “yes, but please follow me elsewhere too because I post three times a year there!”.
That said; I have a personal portfolio website, so I don’t have to keep ArtStation ‘clean’ of less-than-perfect work and studies (which everyone seems to post on there anyway). And yes, because it is the celebrated industry platform there will be relevant eyes on my work. I suppose it would be better to post more work on there.
LinkedIn
One could discuss whenever this is a ‘social’ platform or whenever it belongs to the list, but as I have started to post on there since beginning of this year, I have to review it too. I check in every week or so and only post about project releases with my art or other ‘professional achievements’, so wouldn’t call myself active on the platform.
Freelance-wise, it has been the most fruitful: people have reached out to me three times, one of which I had met earlier during a network lunch (so she hasn’t found me through LinkedIn but I’m not sure if she had found my email without it). And it did lead to a paid opportunity! One opportunity I respectfully declined as I wasn’t the right person for it, and the other is still in limbo. All in all valuable leads so far, which is to be expected of a ‘professional’ platform.
As for ‘followers’, these are all people you actively connect with, which makes them much more valuable than followers on other social platforms. LinkedIn is quite search-centric too in design, so I will definitely keep posting about these ‘professional achievements’ and add projects I’m proud of so I keep appearing in search results!
The Verdict
Looking at my two goals; building a community around my work and being visible for freelance opportunities, it is clear that some platforms work for one goal but not for another. It is safe to say that clients find me through Twitter, Artstation and LinkedIn. Especially the latter two are valuable for being visible for opportunities.
When it comes to building a following, Instagram could work, but not for me. I’m putting my hopes up for Twitter and Pinterest, while occasionally posting on Tumblr and DeviantArt too. Overall, I’d like to focus on search-centric platforms more.
TL;DR:
Checking daily, posting multiple times a week: Twitter
Post any new work but not checking daily: Instagram, DeviantArt, Tumblr
Post new work when relevant: Artstation, LinkedIn
I want to end this article with a disclaimer that your mileage may vary. What works and doesn’t work for me is not the one-and-only way to use social media. I know plenty of illustrators getting a lot of opportunities through Instagram, for example. If you like creating videos, go for it. Still I hope my experience and attempts to measure succes in my social media strategy helps you weed down through the things that only cost time and focus on things that actually bring you something!
When I’m on a deadline and have to use most of my working time to meet it, my mind always comes up with the most wonderful ideas and things to do. I guess that’s a natural thing; your brain is probably urged to look for quick wins instead of the hard task at hand. After finishing a rough deadline just at the end of January, I had time for these creative urges again!
I really felt like painting and study the fundamentals again. Maybe it’s because I struggled a bit with large assignment I had to wrap up last month – I think the immediate reason is twofold!
Firstly, I watch a Dutch tv show called Project Rembrandt, an artist competition for amateur painters. During the competition the participants have to complete technical excersises, such as life drawing and still life painting. Seeing other artists paint and practise really inspire me to do the same!
Two still life paintings I made this month, one digitally in Procreate and the other in acrylics
Though the show claims to be a contest for amateur painters, among the participants are a graphic designer, architect, game art student and illustrator. Appearently going to an art academy and having had painting lessons does not exclude one from the contest. I think that’s not entirely fair to the participants who had no creative training whatsoever. On the other hand, the people with creative professions didn’t get judged considerably higher or better; While our illustrator and game art student made it to the finals, so did our geologist. In the end it’s fun to watch, and that’s wat matters, isn’t it?
A trip to the Van Gogh museum
The second reason I really felt like painting lately is a visit to the Van Gogh Museum with my sister last week. Van Gogh is the prime example , perhaps even the origin of the troubled poor artist trope, but seeing his work does the same thing as the tv show: it makes me want to paint. You can feel his enthousiams and work ethic through his paintings, and that’s just really infectious!
But what his story also shows, perhaps, is that you can become an artist without formal training, and later in life too, if you persist. Van Gogh was 27 and had tried various studies and courses before he decided to become an artist. And even though he briefly studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels, he is mostly self-taught. I’m sure he would have loved the wealth of information and study material we have now at our fingertips with the internet.
The art tests of last month didn’t result in jobs, unfortunately, but I think it was good practise nevertheless. In any case, new work to add to my portfolio!
C#
As my official C# course has ended, I’ve continued my studies with the book Fundamentals of Computer Programming with C#. Where the course went over the fundamentals pretty quickly so you could start building something fast, this book goes really in-depth. And it contains excersises after each chapter, so I can really use it to improve my programming skills! Most of the excersises focus on math problems, brings back flashbacks from my math classes in high school! So far I’ve created programs that calculate prime numbers, numbers from the Fibonnacci series and find a sum or product in a given array of n numbers, things like that. Not sure if it helps making games, but it makes sense to me to start with the fundamentals.
Tabletop RPG & board game ventures
This month I also reached out to board game publishers and tabletop roleplay game publishers. I realised I loved doing full illustrations as much as I like doing concept art or game assets, so why not try to get more illustration jobs?
Within a few mails I got a reply from a board game publisher, whenever I might wanted to illustrate upcoming board games published in 2022 and what my rates where. I was suprised I got a foot between the door so quickly, but after I send them my rates they replied they didn’t pay more than 80 euros per character illustration. That would come down to about 10 euros per hour – quite far from what I usually ask for such work, of course.
Someone else got back to me asking if I would be open to do an illustration for $200 (about €160, before taxes). I hestitated at first, but decided to go for it, you have to start somewhere, right? Unfortunately the person changed his mind and wanted me to do four black-and-white illustrations for $50 each instead – each of these illustrations containing one or multiple characters and a background – in no way doable for me without getting below minimum wage.
I was quite shocked by this, to be honest. Are these rates normal? And how do people making a living if this is what you get paid for such an amount of work? After asking around and doing some more research, it dawned upon me that these are actually quite standard rates, though there is a lot of variation between companies. Illustrators working in this field all supplement their income with taking on work from other sources or have a partner that can fill in the gaps, I suppose.
So yeah, in my experience, video games pay way better!
Swim On Zine
Sneak peak of the wobbegong shark I painted for Swim On!
Let’s end this post with a visual component: here’s a little preview of the shark illustration I did for the Swim On zine! This collaborative charity art zine paying tribute to all kinds of sharks, containing 100 illustrations by 76 artists. All proceeds made from the zine will be donated to WildAid (formerly sharksavers.org).
