Being an Independent Artist

I feel like a lot of us already know what it's like to be an independent artist, or at least have an idea of what it's going to be like. Most of us are just going to have to face the fact that we are not going to get a big shot job right after school, and speaking for myself, I'm okay with that. Of course I have dreams of doing big things, making a decent amount of money, hopefully working for Marvel in the future, but I'm definitely not expecting anything like that right away. I'm okay with being a freelancer for a while and doing a bunch of random jobs.

Right now I'm already an independent artist. I have a third party graphic design company. (That sounds funny, doesn't it?) I do a lot of graphic design and I consider it one of my strong points. I have a portfolio through Redbubble.com, where artists can post their work and people can buy it on T-shirts, pillows, phone cases, mugs, and other random items. Since it is third party, most of the money I would make goes toward manufacturing costs, so I only make about $4-$5 on a shirt sale to show an example. But I like doing it, and it's me having some sort of a presence in the art community.

Here's some examples:

 

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