The 2020 Artist

Happy blog day friends! Thank you so much for being here! I hope you are enjoying the content of this blog thus far, and I hope I am able to continue to bring you writing worthy of reading. 

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the many hats today’s artist is required to wear to achieve success. Maintaining relativity in today’s evolving, hyper-lapse, content overloaded, and “influencer” culture of social media, is an art in and of itself. I’ve personally found myself attempting to take the initiative to learn and understand the skills necessary to elevate my art business. Seeing that quarantine had forced me to reevaluate my time, and how I was spending it; I had to honestly ask myself if I felt it was worth it to continue to call myself an artist. As a creator, I’ve weathered a lot of ups and downs, and still haven’t quite found the place I thrive, while still pursuing growth and learning in my own ways. Either way, I decided I wasn’t going to giving up. 

What does today’s artist look like to me? A highly skilled, well put together, tech savvy, and publicly confident individual, who exhibits precision focus and an immaculate ability to create masterpieces at the speed of light. Okay, I’m exaggerating and over generalizing, but the world of content creators is immensely intimidating. There is an abundance of brilliant artists out there, whom are very active in the public eye. These folks have balanced the art of juggling marketing, content creation, social media, and maintain consistency in creating artwork. Not to mention preparing for the occasional shows and/or festival events one is encouraged to take part in to further your reach. A fine multitude of skills required far beyond painting, and none of which I possessed. A fair part of me had been resistant to learning and prioritizing these skills, mostly because I’m stubborn but also, I wanted to believe that if I spent all my time honing my craft, in time the art would speak for itself, and I wouldn’t need to be some amazing saleslady sideshow. Admittedly, another portion of the reasoning was laziness, but the rest of me really didn’t want to be smooshed into some mold. I naturally turn away from “what everyone else is doing”, I suppose it’s a rebellious spirit I’ve always had. Until I realized, this was a battle I could afford to surrender, and still triumph. There will always be the opportunity to add my own twist to things, once proficiency was established. There was so much work ahead of me that I couldn’t yet see. 

I’ve gotta say how incredibly thankful I am for the internet. The resources available to give me ideas and a bit of infrastructure are endless. I’ve read blogs, watched videos, and browsed for more opportunities to enhance what I knew, and learn new things I didn’t. 

I started out by working on a website that my wife gifted me about 6 years ago. Artbymikilen.com was an endeavor I only half embarked on, too, too many times. It frustrated me more than anything, because I had unfortunately become so rusty when it came to working on a computer… which at 31, is seriously embarrassing. The time I would put in, never really produced a result to match the effort, and the site received little to no traffic. I had to commit to learning how to build my site, and produce a layout that was inviting and user friendly (that’s what all the blogs said anyway). So, I scrapped it, the whole thing. Gone! For the next few weeks I would rebuild and research until I felt satisfied with the overall design. There are large chunks of my life missing but when it finally came together, it was intensely gratifying. I’m no master coder or html ninja, but I no longer spend endless hours trying to figure out how to do the most basic of things. I intend to practice and learn more as time goes on… maybe I will learn to code 🙂 ….eventually.

In the process of redesigning my website, I discovered Google analytics, and this seemed important to me. It hadn’t occurred to me that I should monitor the flow of traffic, or how people interacted with the site, but I wanted to attempt to understand the logistics. Honestly, there’s so much about this feature that I’m still learning, and probably will be learning for a good while. I keep hope that this dabbling with technology will help me become a bit more comfortable and knowledgeable about what I’m actually doing. Currently, the site seems to be doing alright, I mean, it gets more views than I thought it did, AND this blog has really helped drive up the weekly numbers as well. Which was completely on purpose *wink* (I’m managing to kill quite a few birds with this one stone) I’m also in the process of building an online store, but since it’s in the early phases, I’ll wait to address that more when the time is right. 

Social. Media. Two insanely loaded words. I will come right out and say, I have an addiction problem with social media. Too many of the people in my “pseudo nuclear” world live too far away and so easily I find myself lost in a scroll loop, it’s horribly distracting, and lately so inflammatory and divisive. I’ve started to evaluate how I utilize Social Media, and am making a conscious effort to be more mindful of what I give my attention to. Even more important, I’m reteaching myself how to make use of this tool, and make it a beneficial part of my art reach. Old habits are hard to break, but I’m committed. I found Adobe Spark a while back, and didn’t really use it for much, nor did I make much effort to learn. I’ve found that this app is amazingly useful! There is an endless library of free stock photos, clip art icons, fonts, and effects to customize the short animations. A pro version is available, and I intend to invest in the future, but in the meantime, the free version gets the job done quite nicely (unless a watermark would drive you crazy). Now I create using this app a few times a week, and I’m so satisfied with the look it gives my profile. Using it to increase my online presence has been helpful, adding/creating more content to get the algorithms back on my side. In making this effort, I realize how I admire artists who are on top of these kinds of things; fliers, videos, time lapse, editing etc etc etc. Building and keeping a client/follower base is hard work all by itself, and I hope I find the groove to increase my numbers. 

With all that I feel I have put on my plate, I’m not even close to finished detailing what I’ve been looking into and implementing in my daily intake. I’ll only briefly touch on these things. At this moment, they’re a bit on my back burner, but I have made sure to leave the heat on 🙂 The additional learning processes I’m working with consist of video/photo editing, product photos, print proofing, digital graphic design, and producing a logo. All more tech stuff , yay! I will say that the apps I’ve been using have made the process painless; PhotoShop (mobile), ArtFlow Studio (digi art), Rush (video editing), among a few others. I’m still testing out more apps to see which have the features I’m looking for. Honestly, I might be reaching further than I can stretch right now, but I’m determined to add more versatility to my craft. I believe fully that in doing so, I will have the freedom to move in any direction I choose to creatively. That, to me, is the ultimate goal. To be successful and resourceful enough to make the art that I want to make, and to sell that art, even if it’s not limited to paint on a canvas <3

I’ll report back with updates as I continue to step into this new realm, and I’ll share the journey of my progress. This feels like a good place to sum up my rambles 😀 I appreciate your time and interest, and if you have any advice or program suggestions, I’m completely interested and open to information!  Send me an email at [email protected]. 

Have a great weekend!

<3Miki Len 

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