All my adult life I have wondered how people really made a living as visual artists. One of the earliest mentors from whom I gained belief and concrete insight that this might truly be possible for me was Maggie Stiefvator. I discovered Maggie on the WetCanvas forum I discussed in the Introduction to this Mentors and Guides series. I also learned much artistically by watching her develop from a successful acrylic painter of city scapes to a successful color pencil animal artist. Maggie was a fantastically adept and prolific color pencil artist who developed a tribe of collectors. Her Greywaren Art blog was posted from June 18 of 2006 until December 30, 2008 when she morphed into a fulltime novel author and started another blog. I do refer to her art blog often, not only to look at her inspiring art, but to read her motivating posts about being a successful visual artist. As an introduction to her, from her blog in 2007:
I'm a 25 year old with a degree in British history, turned down by the college art department, and I'm making my living from my art. I'm not the best artist in the world and I've seen other artists far better making far less. The only thing that makes me any different from anybody else is that I tried and believed I could do it.
I'm a full-time, professional artist making a 5 digit salary that I'm not going to reveal on the world wide web.
One of her blogposts which I find the most inspiring is entitled, "How to Juggle and Other Parlor Tricks" This blog post talks in a very straight forward and Maggie humor way about how to motivate, prioritize, set goals and focus on being an artist.
When someone tells me they don't have time to do something, I don't believe them - I believe they don't have the motivation yet to do whatever that something is. If you want something, you make time.
She gave much helpful advice on her artblog, Greywaren Art, about time management, goal setting, finding one's style, and marketing. Use these as search terms on her art blog to find fantastic advice on these subjects.
From Wet Canvas she was a colored pencil colleague of Katherine Tyrrell, the unbelievably prolific online author artist who writes, among many other art related things, the blog,"Making a Mark". Katherine writes about the current author Maggie on Squido.
Thank you so much, Maggie.
Angela, you're making me sniffy. Katherine Tyrrell emailed me this morning and said "there is something you need to see, Maggie . . . "
ReplyDeleteIt makes me incredibly happy to think that I inspired you. I feel so humbled reading this post. Thank you!!
That's so great. Hard work and diligence pay off big time in the end. =))
ReplyDeleteYou are more than welcome. Thank you so much for being so generous with your knowledge and experience. I am the one who is humbled.
ReplyDeleteThanks for looking and responding, Heidi. I certainly hope that is true for me :.)
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