How to deal with a part time job as a freelancer.

A while ago I decided to try to write a piece, maybe a small book, about how to deal with a part time job as a freelancer. But maybe I'm just not the type for writing a book. I finished the start of it though and it's a big piece of text, if you're reading this blog casually then you might want to save the article or bookmark it).

Also: feel free to comment or if you have any ideas on how to proceed or any suggestions... anything is welcome!

How to deal with a part time job as a freelancer:

Find your online medium

Here is something I learned and wanted to share:

Promotion by social media is a good thing.

Just don't do everything, every social internet platform.

It's ok if you're not (that) active on all of them. 

Just take those ones you like and the ones that you think will work for you.

Sounds simple, but it's actually more effective than using all of them and think that will work.

Trying is not bad at all, but just try to learn from it (and move on if it's not working for you).

A list with useful links for illustrators

Some weeks ago I thought it would be good to make a list of all the stuff I thought were useful in my illustration career, not only for myself (I can easily lose track of these things) but also for others to easily find a lot of tips and information at one place.
You can find the list here: http://illubis.blogspot.nl/

If anyone has any other tips, like books or websites or anything, let me know please! I'm open to any other contribution or contributors. I hope this way we can help other (starting) illustrators as well.

P.S. I just started the list so not everything I ever read is already on it...

Comparing...there's more to life!

A week ago I was back in Groningen for a farewell party of one of my former classmates. It was great to see so many faces again and good time to catch up with everyone, since most did go their own way after art college. Me being away for a year, not talking to everyone left me a bit blind in where I stood...and it also made me crave to know about what is 'good' and 'success' and what not. The thing is, you decide that yourself.

Critique and advice (in online art communities)

About a month ago I decided I wanted to go back to the conceptart.org forums, because I thought this would be useful for me, to learn and get critique about my work (since I decided again that I thought concept- and game art was something interesting for me). I thought that forum was a motivational and useful place.

But it wasn't.

Inspiring speech by Neil Gaiman

I came across this amazing and fantastic speech by Neil Gaiman for starting artists or graduated art students.
You really should see it, it's very inspiring, motivating and true! Watch it here.
Hope you have a great week :)!

Where do you come from?

What a weird title, but I think it's an important question I wanted to talk about in the next Tips 'n Topics post. If you're interested in hearing about passion, drive and confidence:

The art of motivation

Find it hard to keep yourself motivated as a (starting) illustrator/artist? Feel like you're the only one?
The following things might help!

Tips 'n Topics

Inspired by the online precense of some illustrators, I wanted to start to blog about 'being an illustrator' and how that works. This is because, first, it's something I do want to talk about because, well, I'm an illustrator and I find it interesting to think about. Also because I don't know many people I can talk about it with and I'd love to do that more often. Second because I want to share things I find interesting and useful as a young illustrator that just started.

I thought of  starting a new blog, but I know how hard it is to get that audience, which I already do have here on my normal blog (though it's not a big number..). I thought I could maybe start a blog-in-a-blog on a new page, but apparently a new page here on Blogger just means only one posts instead of a new page with a new blog.

So instead I'm going to post these 'Tips 'n Topics' posts under a label, which will hopefully show up as a link on the top of the sidebar. I hope that I can share things and help others with this!