My Freelance Journey: A Brief History

Zines. Dog portraits. Children's book illustrations. Art in coffee shops. Portraits at the Farmer's Market. More Zines. Those are just a few of the things I have tried ever since becoming a freelance artist in 2018. It has been quite a ride. Today I want to give you A Brief History of My Freelance Journey just to catch you up on where I am now. I hope to devote more detail and time to certain aspects of my journey later, but for now: just the broad strokes. 

Summer 2018: Sheldon and I moved from Wheaton to Texas to take care of my grandmother. As we were getting ready to leave Illinois I was offered a job working remotely as a graphic design contractor. The job paid better than any job I had ever had before and also gave me plenty of free time. Sheldon and I agreed that this was the right time to start working toward becoming a freelancer since we had more financial freedom than ever before. 

Autumn 2018: I started calling myself a freelance artist. I created business cards, a simple website and I started The Zine Club. I sent out 100 copies of my first zine (a self-published booklet of original art and writings) to everyone I knew and asked if they wanted to subscribe $10/month to continue receiving zines for a full year. I created a PayPal account to receive the monthly payments. I slowly began to accumulate subscribers. 

Winter 2018: We lost our main source of income, because my job doing graphic design was beginning to dry up  At the same time our car broke down. We needed money badly and I had a crazy idea. I showed up at our local farmer's market with some paints and a sign reading Two Dollar Two Minute Portraits. In minutes I had a long line of customers. When the morning was over I had cash in my pocket and a regular gig drawing people at the market. 

Spring 2019: After my success at the market I decided to use my Instagram account to bring in more portrait clients. I also started to get invitations to set up my portrait booth at other markets, at nursing home events and kid's birthday parties. Those gigs kept us afloat for about a month or two before Sheldon could find a full-time job. 

Summer 2019: My grandmother's health reached a crisis point. In between caring for her Sheldon and I continued to work my portrait booth, make zines and even take part in a few local art shows at coffee shops. I was also slowly growing my following on Instagram, which I still treat as an important part of building my freelance career.

At the end of the summer Sheldon and I moved back to Wheaton for a job at Wheaton College. We were so excited that Sheldon was hired to work in the art department, where we had both studied. Another family member took over caring for my grandmother, whose health had improved. We packed up our Texas life and drove to Illinois. 

Autumn 2019: I continued creating my zines and taking commissions for portraits via Instagram. I also picked up a couple of random gigs doing things like book binding and a children's book proposal (which later fell through). 

I decided not to restart my portrait booth, even though I probably could have found a market for it in Wheaton. I found the relational aspect of it increasingly stressful and my social anxiety was really starting to make life difficult. 

I decided to continue my zine club for another full year.

Winter 2020: I got a part-time job working at an art store. I loved working with art supplies and helping customers meet their art-making needs so much that it cancelled out my social anxiety much of the time. 

When I wasn't at the store I was working on zines. 

Spring 2020: COVID 19 hit and I lost my job at the art store. I also contracted a mild case of the disease, which made art-making incredibly hard since one of my main symptoms was fatigue. 

The isolation also brought on the worst bout of depression and anxiety that I have had for years. It was like all the stress of the past few years came crashing down. I stopped making art. I disappeared from social media. I got waaaaay behind on my zine club and I felt like I was drowning. 

I realized that I needed help. 

Summer 2020: After a long search and a couple of misfires I finally found a therapist and a doctor that felt like a good fit. I also recognized that I had some relationships in my life that were incredibly unhealthy and were contributing to my anxiety. I ended them. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

But ending those relationships and finding a therapist felt like new birth. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in years. My depression and anxiety had been steadily mounting for years and I finally felt ready to get help and address it directly instead of trying to power through or ignore it.

I slowly started to get back on Instagram. I reached out to The Zine Club to let them know what was going on. I began making art again in very small ways. 

Autumn 2020: Here we are! I am sitting at an outdoor cafe writing this post. I feel more hopeful than I have in years. I have slowly begun work on my next zine. Sheldon and I are figuring out life under COVID along with the rest of the world. We have weeks where our mental health feels really rocky and each day seems really hard. But we also have good days now, too. 

I haven't reached my goal of supporting myself fully through art, yet. I still want to achieve that someday, but I'm OK with being where I'm at in this moment. I have work to do. I have a small audience of people who care about me and care about my work and that feels like a great wealth. 

Here's one crazy thing that I didn't expect: Writing in this blog again is bringing me incredible joy. I had no idea how much I missed it. As I was looking back on my life as an artist I realized that this blog was the very first place I ever shared my art publicly. I started this blog before I even knew what I blog was, before I knew what being a real artist looked like and before I even knew that I wanted to be one. 

This blog showed me that I care about writing as well as drawing. 

This little internet space feels like home to me and coming back to it feels so right and so good. 

I didn't just miss blogging, the activity. I missed THIS BLOG. THIS corner of the internet. Not just any website. THIS ONE. I tried blogging on other internet spaces, but blogging anywhere but here didn't feel right. I needed to be HERE. Being here has felt like getting my voice back. It's hard to describe.

Alright. Enough for now. Thanks for being here for this lengthy update. It means a lot. 

🌹Lucy Rose