Who is a self-supporting artist or designer?

A self-supporting artist or designer is an Artistic Personal Voice or designer who is able to support or maintain himself or herself without the help of others. They are able to stand up and hold firm without having to rely on other artists or people.

It takes talent to support yourself as an artist or designer. You may have seen many talented artists out there who will never support themselves in their arts. So what distinguishes talented artists who are self-supporting from those who have talent but can hardly support themselves?

The six characteristics of self-supporting artists

Talent and skills aren’t the only things shared by successful self-supporting artists or designers. Here are their other common characteristics:

1. Persistence

Self-supporting artists are persistent in improving or perfecting their skills. They embrace different mediums for learning new skills, including art tutorials and art videos. They are also persistent in finishing their individual pieces of art, building an exceptional body of work, building their art careers by enrolling in the best art programs, and doing everything they can to sustain their art careers.

2. Patience

Calm endurance is a key quality of self-supporting artists and designers. The stereotypical self-supporting artist is passionate, either enthralled or disgusted with their work.

3. Passion

Self-supporting artists and designers are always passionate about what they do. Passion motivates them to create artwork that brings out their personal voices and drives them to keep making art even when there seems to be no other reason for doing so. The self-supporting artist’s or designer’s passion is the fuel that powers their persistence and patience. It runs the "car" of their art career.

4. Sense of adventure

Artists and designers who support themselves see their artistic endeavors as adventures. Since they never know what awaits them through their adventurous career, they prepare themselves through empowering platforms such as library video education, art video lessons, and networking with their peers.

This adventurous spirit enables them to explore new subject areas and themes or to handle similar subjects and themes in different ways. That is why, even when their planned paintings, art, or drawings take unexpected turns and end up outside their creative comfort zones, they make the best use of that diversion.

5. Discipline

Self-supporting artists and designers are very disciplined. It is the discipline that properly harnesses their persistence, patience, and passion to serve them best. Discipline aids the virtue of passion because when passion runs wild, an artist or designer may jump from one project to the next without completing anything in the previous project.

Disciplining passion with persistence and patience helps a self-supporting artist or designer finish his or her artwork to a level that can be promoted and sold. Clearly, therefore, a self-supporting artist’s or designer’s life is not boring. However, it requires many characteristic traits often possessed by business people to make them successful.

6. Politeness

Being a self-supporting artist is all about being polite, doing what you learn from platforms you enroll in, such as encaustic workshops, and doing it as quickly as possible without causing anyone else any work.

Things to note when seeking to be a self-supporting artist or designer

Becoming a self-supporting artist or designer is the ultimate desire of any artist or designer. When you’re working toward being one, you should know that there will be a lot of waiting around.

For example, some of the projects you’ll be asked to work on might require you to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), or you might have to forgo a lot of your comfort zones. The most important thing is that you should know your worth and jealously protect it.

Need help becoming a self-supporting artist or designer?

If you need help with becoming a self-supporting artist or designer, enroll in the encaustic workshops organized by Art and Success. You can get more information about these workshops by providing your details on this page, and someone will reach out to you with details about the workshops.