A Creators Website and Coherence
Originally Published on my Patreon Page…
April 4, 2025
I’m hard at work…learning, researching, making choices and decisions…
I knew creating a website would not be simple. And I thought it was too early in my journey to have one. But being bumped out of Society6 because my artwork did not fit the platforms’ direction sent me into a deep soul dive (since the beginning of February).
It is not that I was heart broken or upset. I had very few illustrations published, I was on the platform for less than a year and my illustrations were more suitable for art prints rather than products. But it was unexpected. Yet, today I can call it a blessing in disguise.
I wonder if my work profession in business has something to do with the fact that unexpected or not so good news affect me but do not stop me from moving forward. I have that negative mental chatter, but I also have tools that I've used over and over to get me past them. One tool is writing. So I wrote and I re-focused, I looked at this rejection as feedback. I also took a look at very successful artists on the platform, and saw confirmation that my illustrations are not in alignment with the platform. But was I ready to drastically change to fit in? I will let this question hang for now.
The deep dive had me see more important questions that I needed to address first. What was I expecting and was I doing what was necessary to achieve those expectations? I immediately saw that somewhere along this journey I got lost. I was relying on the many voices of social media rather than my internal radar or rather than studying the business to apply a focused strategy to showcase and sell my art. My first and most wasteful error had been changing my personal Instagram to a business profile to showcase my art. I knew better, but I still did it. And did I get my artwork displayed to the right audience (buyers)? No. Did I at least get to be part of the art community? The answer is also no. All I got was spammed by artists. I’m not against social media, I enjoy the tool. But as an creative business owner, the first drastic step I took was to delete my illustrations from the accounts which I changed back to private. I deleted all artists accounts that I was following and promised to remain social by only following my family and closest friends.
I would like to add that as a user of the app tool, I wish the algorithm would improve to one day soon truly learn my interests. I don’t know if this happens to you but I have to constantly reset my likes so that it stops showing me the same one post that interested me 5 minutes ago magnified by 100 similar posts. I read that social media was changing to be more aligned with our interests. But I find that social media has still to catch up on understanding human interests, plural. So if I followed one great stylist, it doesn’t mean that I want to see or even follow 100 other stylists from my new feed. If I like one piece of artwork, it doesn’t mean I want to only see the same piece made by 100 other artists from my feed.
While playing around and trying out different brand names for my new business profile, Instagram banned my new account, just based on the username, I did not even have a chance to add posts. The lesson? My profile can be taken down at any moment and for no specific reason at all. Back on the deep dive! Did I want to continue building a brand?
My moment of clarity took some acceptance. It’s taken two months for me to accept that I’m the artist. I’m the creative. I write. I research. I explore ideas. I connect ideas. Ideas come through me and into the world as a drawing, an illustration, a written post, a written article. I took the step of choosing to sign my name to my work (rather than continue as my alias) back in February, but with hesitancy because I was still feeling like an impostor. I excused myself by saying that legally, my work was copyrighted the moment I created it. I also recall saying to my brother “why did my parents have to give me such a long name?” The truth behind my internal excuse and my external words was that I was unwilling to own my name. And if I was not owning my name, how could I own my artwork or writing work?
But thankfully, I arrived. So far I’ve spent two full months taking new steps: creating my new social media business profiles, updating my Patreon and Redbubble profiles, researching website hosting platforms, making decisions of what I wanted to showcase on my website. And finally the first click came when I purchased my domain name. And then more clicks happened while working and re-working each one of my website pages. Two months in learning one main lesson: being coherent within and outside. And in honor of my multi-facetted self, my website is beginning to reflect my souls purpose. My website is not yet ready. And I’m so impatient.
I have also learned that I have so much more to study, to learn. But I also I re-commit to creating from my heart, allowing my soul to show me the way.
PS - I also managed to complete 2 new illustrations. I will share notes from my Studio Notebook on a post for the Bloom Tier.