(no subject)
Feb. 18th, 2025 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
what completely and utterly turned me off from patreon (and linking any hobby art to monentary-anything other than direct pre-orders for a single book/item that might not even pay for itself) was that you can't just pivot to drawing A New Thing you enjoy drawing. for the sake of You enjoying it.
i think at this point everyone's pretty aware of how faustian-bound creatives are to whoever's ultimately paying for the art which is why so much creative work these days looks like absolute shit pieces of slop because as soon as trends fart in one direction everyone's chasing for that smidge of advantage in order to court a larger (usually bottom-quality) audience (aka more monaaaaayyy)
but specifically there's also the other rope around your neck where let's say you were known for something you previously enjoyed drawing. and it just... died on you. or you got a new hyperfixation. whatever. you now want to draw something Different.
man anything monetary is going to dearly outright punish you for that. people have outright goldfish brains and are so entitled to their attitude of 'i wanna see specifically x forevahhhh' and forget artists are humans as well. (i also saw how kindle authors will drop pen names as soon as one pen name isn't earning X amount in a quarter let alone different pen names for specific niche genres Just To get that extra bit of audience numbers when it's like... hell no i don't give a shit about the Brand. fuck you. fuck that.)
there's so many other issues with patreon ofc but that really was the horse kick to the brain that made me claw out of that whole ecosystem like a rabid badger. i'd rather have a dayjob that obliviously, blindly (and consistently) paid for my random-ass interests than being enslaved with the thing i was supposedly into making.
(jaded manager rants after the work day, more at eleven)
i think at this point everyone's pretty aware of how faustian-bound creatives are to whoever's ultimately paying for the art which is why so much creative work these days looks like absolute shit pieces of slop because as soon as trends fart in one direction everyone's chasing for that smidge of advantage in order to court a larger (usually bottom-quality) audience (aka more monaaaaayyy)
but specifically there's also the other rope around your neck where let's say you were known for something you previously enjoyed drawing. and it just... died on you. or you got a new hyperfixation. whatever. you now want to draw something Different.
man anything monetary is going to dearly outright punish you for that. people have outright goldfish brains and are so entitled to their attitude of 'i wanna see specifically x forevahhhh' and forget artists are humans as well. (i also saw how kindle authors will drop pen names as soon as one pen name isn't earning X amount in a quarter let alone different pen names for specific niche genres Just To get that extra bit of audience numbers when it's like... hell no i don't give a shit about the Brand. fuck you. fuck that.)
there's so many other issues with patreon ofc but that really was the horse kick to the brain that made me claw out of that whole ecosystem like a rabid badger. i'd rather have a dayjob that obliviously, blindly (and consistently) paid for my random-ass interests than being enslaved with the thing i was supposedly into making.
(jaded manager rants after the work day, more at eleven)
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-19 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-20 12:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-20 06:07 am (UTC)(I say as if I don't have a substar, but I'm pretty upfront on "well this is whatever I want, so join or not lol"
also wtf ewwww @ the kindle authors thing. I mean, I only have two pennames but it's...just sfw vs nsfw. feel like that's normal lmao, especially in comics.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-24 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-20 07:38 pm (UTC)In my experience, social media places a lot of pressure on anyone calling themselves an "artist" to create visibly, quickly, in volume, at maximum quality. Some people manage to streamline their process so they can meet these impossible standards, but inevitably, there's a dramatic drop in originality from one piece to the next. Even if the piece shows technical skill, it's often clear there isn't passion in it.
I work slowly, and I rarely make a "polished" piece. The social media pressure to Be An Artist wiped out my desire to draw anything. It's hard to know sometimes if it will ever come back. (And I never even tried to profit off my art. It was just the pressure to beg for clout.)
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-21 03:32 am (UTC)i hope the seed comes back for you. time has a way of healing that.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-25 06:53 pm (UTC)and that was, y'know, a relatively small change, for a trad artist with pieces in a local gallery who didn't really use any social media outside of a mailing list. can't imagine how much more stressful she would've found it if stuff was tied to Direct Rapid Tailored Feedback That Is Patreon or whatever
(also her oil work was STUNNING once she got going & you could also tell from the tenor of her posts she was really enjoying the challenge/possibilities of changing to the new medium... shame she felt so anxious over it)
creative careers seem so tricky outside-looking-in hahaha; i would not cope will with that sort of thing!
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-25 08:39 pm (UTC)not that surprised since oils have a personality of their own XD i bet there's programming languages like that out there too.
and yeahhhh creative careers can be a hot mess of instability x) there's tried and true ways to mitigate that of course, though unfortunately years of experience is kinda needed to get a sense of the potholes.