Art licensing What is it ? My Artistic journey – PART1
Those of you who have been following my blog might have read about me talking about Art licensing and what it is ? Well here is a little explanation for the newbies . I consider myself as a newbie as well . But i would like to share the little knowledge that i have with fellow artists.
Art licensing in short is selling your Art to be turned into products . Like greeting cards you can get in a shop , dinnerware you can use , curtains and furniture and what not , all the everyday usage stuff.
This is my story of how i started working towards licensing art. Its a girl’s journey with no one who could provide guidance what so ever.
I have spent 12 years working as a graphic designer , doing logo design , graphic design , web design , blog design and small print projects . Since i was just doing all of this out of my own interest I really never thought of a Goal that i might want to reach or get to. I was doing custom characters for good companies like Prothemer (Now themebutler) , Cheat-a-chick and more. And slowly my work was evolving but i was out of path that connected to my self.
Read about myself as a graphics designer here
After i got married and like MOST and many of the families we came across financial difficulties i knew working on graphics is not a hobby anymore ! . After i had 2 kids and more responsibilities and challenges of their better education came ahead i got more serious about how to turn this hobby into a profession. We started working together as One8edegree Studios (Click the link to read more about us as one8edegree)
Till now i was not going after any projects , just blogging , guest posting and sharing freebies , managing this blog (in good old days i was earning revenue through sponsorship on this blog) and just for fun creating new sites playing around with wordpress platform i found it all getting a bit toooooo boring.
So i started selling my illustrations as Clip Arts (a term i never liked when it came to selling my illustrations ) , creating party invitations and helping my DH in running his Wall Decal business. These pet projects were keeping us busy but not really turning in good money.
I had to find a way where i can still be an ARTIST and a stay at home Mom , and earn some cash out of professionally.
I came across some lovely blogging artists who were updating their blog stream with surface design products and their own designed physical items.
Well that sounds interesting ! i thought and started searching for what they are doing .
Reading blogs to their starting archive , reading their journey although some of the artist were being generous about sharing their products but it seems that they were NOT blogging before they actually got their hands on a product designed by themselves.
And while doing graphic designing i fell across digital stamp artists and crafters community , i loved what these ladies were doing creating hand made cards! .
Oh i know how to draw , they are looking for digital drawings in outlines (Digital Stamps) i can do that! , i thought and spent next year creating drawings and drooled over the lovely creations these crafters made using my drawings.
Although i loved watching beautiful creations that these crafter did using my illustrations , it wasn’t paying me much! Lets face it .. it is a fact that we all need money! With kids growing it was getting harder to make ends meet day by day. We both tried with jobs on and off and after the Political and geographical hardships our country was going through there were no well paid jobs.
And when i weighed the pay offered to the time spent with my kids , i knew the answer ” I want to be around my kids!” i will feed them within means , i will send them to a slightly less fees but i want to be around them!. Which brought me back again to working from home.
So i continued searching…….
Join me next week to read about my journey , i will be sharing my next attempts in field of graphic design turning into art lincesing .
And how i am still struggling as an artist. .. joining my newsletter is a good idea to get to know when i post second episode to my story!
see you around
Asmaa’
