december review and some reflections on 2021
2022 jan 01 12:41
December was an interesting month. Art-wise, I took it easy for the first half of the month. I think everything from the past year finally hit me: I was finally fed up of the art hustle. And by "art hustle" I'm mostly referring to the fact that so many artists of the past few years have had to push their participation in capitalism a whole lot more: online shops, constant promotion on social media, feeling the need to compete with larger companies by holding regular sales and free shipping. Before my eyes, I watched small artists slowly trying to be more like amazon in order to survive. I felt the pressure, too. But halfway through the year we saw healthcare and factory workers strike to get better pay and treatment. People openly mocked and refused to accept low wages. We saw companies cry about worker shortages when all we really want is to be paid enough to be able to afford to live without taking on 3 jobs and a side hustle in order to buy groceries every week. We some striking workers win. Some are still pushing for better treatment. Sadly, I still see too many self-employed, small artists struggling to live and still struggling to compete.
That being said, I'm super relieved to close my shop for a while. I do have a pang of anxiety at the back of my mind about the loss of shop sales as part of my income, but I've chosen my mental health this time. I managed to get rid of the majority of inventory cleared. I obviously didn't really learn my lesson from 2014 that producing product for in-person markets don't always sell and I'll be stuck with inventory I can't move. I'm happy with the amount of stuff I was able to sell and I definitely feel so much lighter!
Restructuring my tiers earlier in the month also really helped my organization and planning for the monthly sub items. I now have a clear goal on how much I need to create a month, how many pieces I need to make/order and everything is consistent! I can't believe it took me 5 years to figure out! I will still have leftovers every month, but not as much as I did in the past. I would always make a ton of extra product in anticipation of listing stuff in the shop. This also added to the tons of overstock I had to deal with by the end of the year. I will no longer be doing that and I will just list any leftovers later on. I am still toying around with the idea of printing product on demand, but we'll see.
I'm hoping that I will have more extra time now that I don't have to constantly be doing website/shop maintenance. I am looking forward to just focusing on art for myself, you wonderful people and commission work! Hopefully I'll be less stressed out this year so I can focus my energy on coming up with fun ideas and actually executing them!
January's theme is Lunar Tigers! It's also going to be the theme for my pieces for this year's Red Envelope Show. I wasn't in the mood to work on anything traditionally last month so I just worked on digital versions for the stickers that I would be including as a little gift inside the envelopes as well as the postcards, notepads and stationery set for sub packs. I want to say this design is my favorite to date but I say that every month haha. So let's just say I'm really happy with how these pieces turned out. I did start sketching out other animals in this style and will def come back as a recurring thing I think!
I also redesigned my logo! I kinda looked back at my art over 2021 and it has changed a little bit since 2019 when I last updated my logo. I feel like this one suits the direction I'm going in now. I've updated some minor things with the new logo like the website, my address labels and some of my packaging things. I'm trying to make everything a little more cohesive this year. It is the year of being consistent. Which I really really suck at but I'm sure gonna try!
I guess that's about it! I have good feelings about this year, at least in terms of my art goals. Everything else is still a pretty huge garbage fire so I won't even get into that LOL. Here's hoping that 2022 is a little quieter, calmer and a little easier on us all 💜