Just how easy/difficult is it to make a living off purely drawing/art?

no one has replied because no one does it

>>1020353
theres a reason why the phrase "starving artist" and "he became famous when he died" came to be.

Its as difficult as anything else. I worked as a freelancer doing conceptual work for a period of time and found it trying. The people you work for will undervalue your time because of the notion that you are an "artist" and shouldn't be paid for your time. However, the better you get and the better you network, the more $$$, as with anything else. See Dave Rapoza - he can crank out high-level pieces quickly and nets a comfortable living.

if you're a pretty girl with weeb drawing skills and a legion of patreon supporters, it's easy.

>>1020353
Pretty good if you draw the right fetishes.

>>1020353
do art as a hobby

unless you decide to draw r34 that people have to pay to see on patreon.

Go check out /cgl/ and see if there is an artist alley thread. Those people have a lot of resources and information (anime or comic con fan artists). What type of art do you do, OP? It's doable, but you have to make a place for yourself. >>1020367 is very true.

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Donations online are the easiest way to go. If you're good, draw characters people want to see and get exposure you can make tons.

Impossibly hard to make any real money with. By real money I mean anything that will allow you to live a respectable life where you don't work 9 hours per day 6 days a week with 10 days off per year.

You'll also find that you'll still enjoying art because your clients needs and vision will not overlap with what you enjoy drawing.

If you treat it as a business, there is some money to be made. But you might as well hop into any other, more profitable, field and treat THAT as a business.

Know this though: The people that make it are the ones that didn't follow conventional paths. Also forget about the freelance dream, that's such naive /ic/ bullshit. Get to a very high level of technical skill and start winning clients you know locally. If you live in the middle of nowhere you might want to do regular travelling to big cities nearby and arrange meetings with AD's and potential clients beforehand. Treat these like job interviews.

At the end of the day: the market/demand is gigantic. But the supply is 4 times the size of the demand, still. So you need to play your cards right. I found it not to be worthwhile. Rather invest my energy into making money and do art as a hobby. Maybe when I'm 50 I can slowly transition into fine art and have investments or passive income pay pay part of my pension.

Another thought: 90% of people out there being active on social media and proclaiming their success and awesome careers are faking it till they make it. That is the sad truth. Be very careful with the advice other artists give you. It's very likely to be self-promotional bullshit.

>>1020608
>You'll also find that you'll still enjoying art

still = stop

>>1020608
>10 days off per year
>America
>MUH FREEDUMBS

Grandpa was a good artist, he won a lot of art prizes, was in art-books etc. He died 3 years ago, we have inherited everything and we've been trying to sell some of his works because well.... they're a LOT and we could use some money.
Maybe we can blame the financial crisis but we've not been able to sell anything even if we've continued to do art shows and we've also won some other art prizes (trophies or sculptures made by other famous artists)...

So far it's as only been a waste of time and money (you need to transport your statues, your paints, you need to pay for books/brochures, you need to pay for a deposit to store things, and sometimes [often] you even need to pay to do art shows)

tl;dr: stay away from art OP.

>>1020353
Very difficult. Check out how many of the artists that are members of artists societies that actually live off of it. Very few, you'll find.

I know someone, though. All he does is takes photographs, projects them on a small canvas, and paints them. That's it. Paints one a day, and makes loads 'emoney selling his uninspired fill-in-the-blanks art.

Remember: people don't see the effort you put in, only the end result. If you can figure out a good shortcut for something that sells, just do that. Do your "art"-art as extras on the side.

>>1020608
concept artists pass through 100k easily, what are you talking about

>>1020702
I'll have to admit that my granpa sold a lot of landscapes when he was young-ish to make some good money, but then he stopped completely because he hated painting landscapes. Still ife also used to sell kinda well.

>tfw he liked to paint human beings
>tfw people only want landscapes, still life and faggot-tier contemporary art (LOOK I FILLED ALL THE CANVAS WITH SOLID BLACK, GIMME MILIONS$$$$$ or LOOK I SOLDERED A DRAGON DILDO TO A TOASTER, GIMME BILLIONS)

>>1020361
hopefully that "artist" is now homeless, i can HONESTLY say that my 5 year old self could do better than that horseshit

git gud and you can make an okay living. You need luck too, and the business savvy to network (like in any other industry.)

Most artists that I know who make huge money, beyond being one of those few top rate concept designers and weird outliers, don't rely solely on art to get by. They combine it with other skills to create a working product on their own, something that would normally take a team of developers to establish.

Can be anything from a freemium game to a physical product. The idea is to be a one or two-man team and reap all profit. You gotta work extra hard though.

They're also usually naturally entrepreneurial and pick up skills quickly. Damn creatives. Great to work with on fast, explosive projects but hell in a pipeline.

>>1020608
Not OP but isn't there decent money at toy/comic conventions? I looked into selling prints because selling toys was such a grind. It seemed like making, say, 100 good drawings in the first place was the real hurdle because printing was relatively cheap. What am I missing?

>>1020977
Is competition that bad? It seems like the art side of many shows I go to (as a guest or dealer) are growing as the toy/statue/media side shrinks.

>>1020353

Pretty fuckin difficult.

maybe parlay your skills into graphic design. Or make a funny webcomic.

I like SMBC

>>1020353
Depends what you mean by 'art'.

Hentai artists like Zone and Spazkid make a decent living doing requests for money, being Jews with their art (making people pay for accounts and stuff like that), and also through ad revenue. However, in the event that you're able to get a decently sized fanbase of some kind, you can make a lot of money off of donations.

It's one of those things where you'd probably have to do it as a side thing at first, until you're able to get big money on it.

How good is selling art on the side for extra money? My little sister is fairly talented and wants me to sell some of her pieces for her. Best place to sell?

>>1020638
Did you not realize the 10 days off per year was part of his non-ideal worklife example?

Making a living off any almost any kind of art is fucking hard (unless you've already got a lot of clout).
You need to produce stuff all the time. You need to be a salesman of sorts to get people to buy your art. If it's a situation where you'd be hired long term you need to go job hunting and be a salesman of both your art and yourself. If you want to progress you need to improve your art (and probably your salesmanship) which implies practice and finding time for that. You need to keep your body in condition, in this case your hands and wrists but also either not getting sick or not letting sickness get in the way. You need to keep enough motivation to do all that. You need to not get disconnected from reality or your own mind (i.e. stay sane) during all that which implies finding time to engage in other things and talk to people.

ill post again
it goes into different categories of art
graphics design - vector art, photo enhancement,image manipulation
web/overlay design - mixture of graphics design and some scripting skills
concept art - depends on how skillful you are, you could actually nail a job or freelance
comics - have to have experience with digital painting and good skills, it depends
traditional art - not sure but its highly unstable
modeling/animation/rigging - would still be hard to land a job if you are skilled,mostly comes down to networking
cad/solidworks - could actually land a job depending on your resume/degree. probably the safest bet out of all

I do painting on the side. I'll paint pet portraits on commission with oils on canvas.