Drawing a Living from your Art Skills

Hi and welcome to my Drawing a Living blog.

Today I am going to discuss the in's and out's of drawing as a fulltime work pursuit. You can view my profile and visit my website to see that I am a professional illustrator and have been drawing and making a living from art since the age of 8. That's right got my first competition cheque for $15 at the tender age of 8 by coming second in the Health Week schools competition at St Thomas' Willoughby in 1969, the year man supposedly landed on the moon.

I say supposedly as I have grave doubts as to the fact after viewing many of NASA's videos on their own website that clearly from a professional 3D artist's point of view deem them as fake or orchestrated. Hey this sounds like the topic of another blog so we may just have to leave that thought right there. Maybe I will open up a little on that topic a bit later. It really is quite fascinating stuff. But for now I will leave Neil Armstrong and lunar crew alone.

Becoming an advertising illustrator in 1983 after completing a 2 year full time art school certificate course that desperately tried to help me avoid the up and down lifestyle of the "freelance artist" but no I wouldn't listen, and have since had to pay the price of not taking other more experienced peoples' advice.

So I hope to enlighten some of you as to what to expect when it comes to drawing for a living. There are many ways of making or drawing a living from your art talents and I hope to show you some of the better ones and ways that will help you not to make the mistakes I have made over the past 25 years.

As you can see from my website www.gtgart.com.au I have created a good number of professional illustrations for a long list of clients both national and international. Another of my recent pursuits is that of pet portraits, as oil paintings. I have recently launched this site, www.mypetpainted.com. You may like to visit this site to see the quality of my oil painting artworks.

I have a work in progress called www.learn-to-draw.org and I am working with Artist Graeme Biddle, world renown for his caricatures and art training which he has conducted in 27 different countries around the world. He has taught school children in private colleges in England and poor African children out in the open fields and just about everybody else in between.

We are developing a "How To Draw" course on caricatures to help people discover the great art of cartooning for money. It really is a great way to make extra money for those who know the secrets behind a well drawn caricature.

It's funny but I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has ever said to me, "I wish I could Draw!" I have always had the ability to draw and it is something that comes easy to me. So I don't know what it is like to not be able to draw. To me drawing is as easy as seeing. That is not to say I have made no progress as an artist since that first competition back in 1969 but the raw ability
is something that has always been at the top of my skillset.

Another funny thing that I have discovered is that yes anyone can learn to draw. Yes that is hard to believe for many people who would readily tell me that they "couldn't draw to save their lives!" Oh really?

Most people could draw to save their lives, but it would be at about the level of an 8 year old. There is that age again, hmmm? What is it about 8 years of age and art? More on this in my next post.