Hello! I hope you're having a great time out there, whatever you're up to. I'll be copy-pasting this to my other accounts here on FA to get the whole audience up to speed.

I moved house a couple of months ago, again, and have been trying to get everything sorted out. I'm currently living in a house share but I'm looking to move to my own place in a couple of years because where I'm living at the moment is going to be going on the market in about two years, so I'm still not allowed to be settled and secure. Getting really tired of the constant moving. Anyway, living situation isn't terrible, a little cramped perhaps for what I'd like to do, but I can manage, and the housemate is a decent sort and easy to share space with so I'm grateful for that.

The surprise has been the art community here which honestly I wasn't expecting for the area at all. I was all geared up to get a 'regular job' just so I had a stable and regular income but it might not come to that yet (I'm still looking anyway, as much as I love my art job it can be very stressful financially). The art community here is thriving and I've had the opportunity to speak to real world professional artists, curators, promoters, etc. and it's really opened my eyes to where I've been going wrong unknowingly with my little business. Most of what I'm doing is right, I've got the right attitude, the right professional approach, and I'm ticking a lot of the boxes people tend to get wrong. I'm held back a bit by having no professional training and I can't see myself pursuing that path either at this point unless I end up with a big old cash/time windfall. Where I've been going wrong most of all is pricing.

Pricing is a funny old thing. We live in a society absolutely saturated with images so the value of art is very often overlooked. The furry community chronically undercharges for work and those artists that do charge industry standard are often criticised very heavily for being elitist and shutting out regular furs. Thing is, those artists are right to charge what they do and now I know why. For my entire career I've been grossly undercharging for my work, I remember when I first started I was charging £5 for full colour commissions... that was such a long time ago. Fact is, art costs time and materials and labour to create and all of that needs to be paid for. It doesn't matter if people think you're being elitist or that they're entitled to what you're producing, as a skilled craftsperson you deserve proper compensation.

That was really the surprising thing to learn. Of all the places I thought I might be going wrong the one thing that was unanimously highlighted was that my pricing structure was insufficient to live on. Honestly, I do know that. Even on a fully booked month I struggle to make enough to live on, literally working every hour I can my hourly rate simply wasn't high enough to cover my costs. It was a problem right in front of me that I had a total blindspot about, probably because money has never been a motivator for me. I don't care for the accumulation of personal wealth and never have, and that's a problem when you need to have some of that mindset to successfully run a business of any scale.

Commissions are open at the time of writing. Have a look through the gallery and whatnot and drop me a line if you fancy something. Go over to  whitecoltproductions for Art Stream notifications which are usually every Friday.