From Hobby to Profession: The Inspiring Journey of a Successful Artist

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome to the Curious Ulsterman podcast, the podcast designed to equip you with the tools and wisdom you need for as an adult. I am your host, johnny aka the Curious Ulsterman, and today I sit down with Aaron Long from Painted Dragon Studios and we discuss how to become a full-time artist. We discuss Aaron's creative journey and his transition from full-time job to owning his own business and opening up his own shop. But, without further delay, here is today's chat on how to become an artist. Welcome to the show, aaron. Glad to be here. Yeah, man, I've been looking forward to this one, because it's not often I buy art, but I do have one of your pieces I've been following you on Instagram now for some time and about, I want to say, two or three months ago, I bought your piece. I think it's the Lord of the Rings one. It's like the little silhouette going into, I believe, the heading for the Mines of Moria and me being a big Lord of the Rings fan, I was like, didn't even hesitate. I was like, yes, having it, and also like, just impressive. By the way, I love the fact that when I opened it up, you'd already drawn it's almost like a Skyrim Dragon. It must have only took you five minutes to do, but that just made all the difference. I was like, 100%, this is top quality. Here we have you on today to discuss how to become a professional artist and the journey you took to get there. So I know you have quite a large following on Instagram and Twitch and all that kind of thing, and I personally thoroughly enjoy watching a blank canvas coming to life with whatever your creativity inspires you to do. But for the people who don't know you, can you just give a quick background on yourself and where did it all start for you? What was that spark that got you to pick up the PN brush for the first time?

Speaker 2: 2:14

So that's actually a really funny story. So if you see most of my stuff today, it's a lot of fan art. It's all of my favorite movies, video games, tv shows, that kind of thing. The funny part about that is all growing up through childhood I didn't really consider myself that much of an artist. I grew up in a family of artists and my sister was the one who was really good at drawing all growing up, and so me and my older sister would draw together and she was always the one that would be like, you know, we take the same reference picture and we'd sit next to each other and we draw it in our own styles and hers would always look, you know, so much better. But we just be like oh, it's fun because we're comparing our styles. And so I've been drawing forever. But in my senior year of high school I was about 17 or 18. I was sitting in art class in high school and I kind of considered it like the nap class, where I could just lay my head down on my desk or play a game on my phone. And one particular day I was playing a game on my phone. I was playing Flappy Bird. It was really popular at the time Everyone in school was playing Flappy Bird for this like month straight, I'm sure we all remember it. And my teacher, our teacher, walks over and goes you know, this is art class, you should be drawing something, you should be painting something. And I go I don't want to paint anything, that's, I don't like painting, I don't like drawing that much, it's just whatever. And she's like well, I want you to draw something and like I don't want to draw anything, I want to play my game. And I went to a very like, very small, relaxed school where they, you know, nobody really got in trouble, that much for talking back. So I was kind of being a butt, but you know I was, I was just being obnoxious. And she goes you need to, you need to draw something or paint something. I'm going to take your phone away and you'll get it back at the end of class. I'm like oh fine, and so I took a screenshot of Flappy Bird and I took some colored pencils and I drew a screenshot of Flappy Bird. So I drew this like really detailed colored pencil drawing with, you know, little green pipes and the little yellow bird jumping through. And after that I was like that was actually kind of fun. I like I actually enjoyed that. It wasn't just like a random celebrity portrait or a nice, you know cabin by a lake, you know like we see all these classic paintings and what people usually make paintings of, and I was like fan, art is kind of fun, though, and so from there I went and I found my mom's old set of acrylic paints that she had deep in the basement or in the garage or somewhere, and I painted a picture of Mordor from Lord of the Rings, and that was one of my first like actual paintings, and, if you give me like 10 seconds actually had it over here, all right. So this was one of my very first paintings that I ever did. I think this was my third painting, but yeah the last incredible of Mordor with the lightning and the tower of our door and do, and so that was kind of my like intro to painting was was that picture right there and I've held onto it for you know, the last oh, that was 2013. So what? Nine years and?

Speaker 1: 6:03

fair play. Yeah, yeah, the YouTube audience got a nice treat there. So if you're just listening, tune into the YouTube and see that amazing painting, you know I'm biased. I love all things Lord of the Rings, so that to me was that's always class to see, but it's so interesting. I think that me and yourself have somewhat of a similar experience with our. I am not an artist by any means of the imagination. I am naturally quite creative. You know the podcasting and the content creation. I was quite good at drawing when I was younger. However, when I went to high school and was, you know, put in our class, it was very you will draw this or you will draw that, and very much like yourself, I just wasn't interested. You know, I'm a maritime engineer by trade and I loved drawing ships, you know, especially Titanic, and I remember they I don't want to say the day I stopped, ever, they stopped drawing or but I want to say quashed my creativity quite for quite a long time was I was in art class and I got told you have to draw this apple with a pencil and I thought I'll give it a good go and I spent four hours on it at home, so in my own time, and I brought it in and the teacher berated me saying, what do you spend 15 minutes on that? And I was like, all right, nah, that's it. Yeah, she was a horrendous teacher. So from a drawing perspective, I can totally relate the, you know, I think, where every single person is a creative in some way. But it has to be fostered and much in the same way, you have such an amazing talent for painting. It wasn't properly fostered until you find your little click, your little you know what sparked that little bit of passion in you, which was fan art, which, by the community that's, you know, revolved around you now and appreciates your art. It's obvious, then, that that's that's where your talents truly lay, and a lot of, I think, that inspires a lot of people like for me. I would love to sit down and paint someday and I think if I was going to go with like the whole Bob Ross kind of thing which, by the way, I can say I appreciate your t-shirt I noticed that actually before we started recording very good, very good t-shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll definitely take up a Bob Ross painting at some point when I'm a bit more how would you put it settled? Because I do travel a fair bit. But you know, this all had to, you know, start somewhere and I think a lot of people are quite intimidated by painting. Like you know, the best they think they can paint is maybe throwing some paint at a wall or, you know badly, doing something like putting something on the canvas. But you know, you say you're from a family of artists, but would you say the talent was innate or did you just have to practice like everybody else, like did it just come naturally to you, or?

Speaker 2: 8:59

That's a really good question that I I wish more people asked, because, as you know, I like to live stream my paintings. I get people in there all the time saying, oh, you're so naturally talented, I'll never be as good as you, and my response to that is always um, I had to work for this, for this skill that I currently have, and we all sucked at drawing or painting when we first started. Every one of us, even the most professional artists out there that can paint, you know photo realistic oil paintings or draw you know a photo realistic celebrity portrait or something like that. That's is just mind blowing to us now that I can't even imagine painting or drawing something that could. Even that person started drawing stick figures. You know, like we all, we all had to start somewhere and I think the only natural advantage I got growing up was having an encouraging family, which a lot of people, you know, can't say the same, and that's unfortunate that a lot of people don't have that. But, like I think, I really think that's my only natural advantage that I have, and besides that, everything that I've learned, I've had to work really hard to learn that. I've had to put in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice to to get like, to be able to paint something like this, like this was a couple of weeks ago and I did this one in you know, like 20 hours. If I would have tried to paint something like that when I first started painting, it would have taken me 120 hours and it wouldn't look half as good as that. And so I always tell people like, oh, I'll never be as good as you, that like. Or they say I'm so bad at drawing and I hope to someday be as good as you are. I'm so bad at drawing, I'll never be as good as you. I always say you're bad at drawing. Right now you have to put in the hours of practice and you will get as good as me. If you put the amount of time and practice that I've put into honing my skills and you can get better than me. You can find your own style, you can find what you're good at, you can find what you really want to get good at and if you put in the time and the effort, anyone can do it. I firmly believe that and some people might learn faster. Some people might have, you know, learning skills, and I don't know if I particularly have learning skills. I think I just have patience and determination because I really wanted to get good and I I found something that I really enjoyed, and so I spent the time, you know, watching YouTube videos for hours and hours every day, following tutorials online, and that's that's really. All I did was I, I just put the effort in and I got to the point where I am today, that most people probably don't even think of themselves getting to because they don't put the same amount of effort into the, into their thing, and so I think for anyone that's gotten really good at something, most of us can say, yes, we've put time and effort into getting that good, and I feel like most of us would say that it's it's natural, and you mean, some people are quite offended by that, by people saying that they're naturally talented, and I'm not going to get offended, but I will say that I've definitely put in the time and the practice to get where I am 100%, and that was such an amazing answer and there is so much that I want to unpack there that I hope I'm going to remember all the stuff I want to ask you.

Speaker 1: 12:49

But it's interesting I was having this chat with another artist actually yesterday, a friend of mine. He's a tattoo artist and he grinded for years to get good at his style and he now runs his own tattoo business. And we were talking about this yesterday how people say, oh, you're a natural. And I totally see where you're coming from there. That people say, oh well, you're a natural, you didn't have to work, you didn't have to make the mistakes, you didn't have to pay your dues to get where you are. So I can totally understand that. A couple of people have remarked to me oh, your podcast is amazing, you're very good at this. It's like well, 55, 56 episodes in. I hope it would be. I have produced some cringe worthy episodes, not because of guests but because of my own interview style has evolved and it doesn't feel so formal and it's just some bad habits with my technique that I've managed to stamp out. So I can totally relate to that. And I love as well that you touched on the fact of patience and persistence, because those are skills now, especially in the age of tech talk and Amazon Prime. Everybody wants everything now. They want to be that overnight success and this was a quote as well that I was chatting with the tattoo artist yesterday. A big shout out to Clint McInnis and it was a quote from the famous soccer player, lionel Messi. He says, oh, it only took me 20 years to become an overnight success. And people see these things they want to be, whether that's a professional painter, a podcaster, a footballer, whatever and think, well, oh, it's easy for them, they got it easy. It's like, well, they have an easy night because they grinded for years and they made every mistake in the playbook to get to where they are now. So, yeah, I think what you said there was really powerful, because another thing we were talking about yesterday with my friend Clint was that a lot of times we don't give ourselves the permission to fail. We want to tackle a new hobby or a new skill and we instantly want to have some sort of credibility with it or want to be at least a decent skill level at it. And if we don't produce something akin to the Mona Lisa our first time, that's it. Chuck the easel away, chuck the paints away. It's not happening. So, in that regard, then you would say that what you did to build up your skills was just time and persistence, but it was painting things that you enjoyed. Is that correct why you're here? Yeah, and then the resources available to you. As you say, you had a very supportive family, which is fantastic to hear. There was YouTube First. Out of curiosity, did you ever have apart from your sister, perhaps, maybe a mentor or a coach or someone who perhaps maybe you have your own style, but they guided you a little bit along the way or encouraged you?

Speaker 2: 16:02

Yeah, so I've never had like formal teaching or anything like that. But I mentioned YouTube. There's a YouTube channel out there called Kevin Oil Painting and I cannot recommend him enough. He's just a guy that's really good at what he does. He paints landscapes and he puts out video tutorials of him painting these landscapes and he's really engaging with his community. And I've reached out to him through email a couple of times and he's given me critiques and he's given me feedback on the tutorials or on the paintings that I've done from his tutorials. And so for my first probably like two or three years all I did was just watch his videos and copy him like brush stroke for brush stroke, and I would try to paint a picture that looked exactly like an exact copy of what he was painting in the video. And by doing that I learned all of his techniques. And then, as the years have progressed, I still do a Kevin Hill tutorial every now and then, just for fun, just for old time's sake, but like, I've taken his techniques and I've turned them into my own techniques and I've evolved them into what I do today. And so, like the way that he loads his brushes, the way he, you know, makes us his paint, the type of canvases he uses, all these little tips and tricks that I learned through, you know, several years of following him. I would say that, like he's the closest thing I had to a mentor, even though, like we've never met in person, we've never talked more than a couple of sentences through email. I've learned so much from that guy and I like, for anyone out there that wants to learn how to paint landscapes, I cannot recommend Kevin Hill enough. He goes by Kevin oil painting on YouTube and he is just a fantastic teacher. I've learned so much from him. But even from a very early, early stage of me learning from him, I started just like putting characters or items from different like movies and games that I like. So like a couple of landscapes have, like Skyrim, standing stones sitting in them. So what I would do is I would take a Kevin Hill painting, which he's very similar to Bob Ross. He just stands up by his easel, he talks through what he's doing, he does his paintings in a few hours, but he chops his videos up into smaller, smaller, more cohesive bits that you can follow a bit faster. So I'd follow these like these painting tutorials and then I'd put my own stuff in there to make it personal to me and make it more fun for me. So that's just going back to making whatever you're painting enjoyable, even if it's not something like you know I like. I like painting landscapes, but I love painting fan art and so I would. I would take this landscape and make it something you know, special to me, and that's that's really how I learned I was. That was my mentorship was was just watching YouTube tutorials and there's a couple artists a video tutorial out there that I also followed, but he was. He was my main one that I really learned a lot from.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Yeah, that's fantastic and I really like what you said there, that you know I would class you as an exceptionally talented artist because of the hard work you've put in. But even you are saying I still go back to the tutorial, I'm still learning, I'm still you know. You know they always say, oh, you become a master of your craft. But I think really you never quite stop learning, do you? There's always a new technique, or perhaps a new spur of creativity. So that's. That is something I really enjoyed hearing there, because a lot of people, I think, perhaps sometimes box themselves in creativity out creatively by saying, oh, I've got nothing more to learn or I've mastered this, but you know the fact that you yourself, a successful artist, are still going hey guys, I'm, I'm still learning here, and that's great, you know. And, on a side note, the Standing Stones, that's Skyrim, one Incredible. I think that was actually the first painting I ever seen from you, so I think it came up with my like suggested feed because obviously, skyrim, whatever and it was like oh, my subscribe, follow this. I want to see this, more of this, but I never sent them. Man, it's the pain things Skyrim. I I totally transparency. Haven't played it in years, but it still holds a soft spot in my heart. Just the amount of hours I've sunk into that game and the rain is obviously special to the sky. Skyrim as well, very good. So for a lot of people who are potentially wanting to pick up the paintbrush for the first time, you know what, in your opinion, is like a good starting kit. Like you don't, I'm assuming you don't need to blow out your wallet or your bank account on something expensive. What's a? What's a good starting kit for an aspiring artist or painter, just to master the basics?

Speaker 2: 21:11

So depends on really what you're going for. If you are interested in painting landscapes, I definitely recommend oil paints. Just because they flow a bit better. The consistency of the paint is a little different. You can get these really cool. Sorry for the audio only people but this painting right here has a very blended sky. It's very smooth. It looks all foggy and misty. This is very difficult to achieve in acrylic paint. People can do it, but I personally like painting with oils for a sky or something soft that needs to look more blended, versus acrylic paint, which I wish I had If I'm doing a character portrait or something that needs a lot of really sharp details. I painted a picture of Master Chief a few weeks ago from Halo. Oh yes, yes, yes. He has all these really sharp edges and details that would have been really difficult for me to do in oils. I did that one with acrylic paint. The acrylic paint is more of like rubber, latex based when it dries. It dries very fast and it dries really heavy. You can just layer upon, layer different colors and textures of the paint on top of it, whereas oils can take several days to a week to dry if you layer on really thick. As for a kit, it depends on where you're listening or watching from. If you're in America, there's a really good craft store, hobby lobby that I get most of my paints from. They have these 50% off sales. I know there's a few other stores Michaels, joanns Just these hobby craft stores that you can go in there and watch their sales. If I were to buy all my paints full price, I'd be spending so much money on my art supplies. I get most of mine from Hobby Lobby personally because they have a 50% off sale almost consistently every two weeks where you can get all of a certain type of brand of paint for 50% off every time. Same with my canvases, my brushes, my paint thinner, all that stuff. I never spend full price on it. There's sets there. You can get a box set, a really nice box set. You can spend $30 on it and get a whole set of oil paints. Comes with brushes, a palette, a little easel and a nice 30 box to carry it all in. For $5, you can get a little set of oil paints that has all the colors you need. You can get a set of brushes for $3 during those sales. You just need to be clever about it and not just buy the first thing. You see. If you want to save some money on your first set of paints, there's plenty of sales out there that really make it easy to pick up a new hobby that could potentially become something even more than a hobby later, for just a few dollars. I wish I'd known that when I started because my first set of oil paints I think I spent like $60 on it I bought every tube of paint individually for $7 or $8 and I bought a whole set of paint. I bought a bunch of brushes and over the course of several months of buying my first supplies, I probably spent $200 in my first couple of months of just buying art supplies. I wish I'd known earlier that you don't have to break your budget to get supplies even just to start, because most of us aren't going to notice the difference of the quality of paint until you get really into it. I still today use only the cheapest of supplies, usually because I still don't notice the quality of final product. Because a lot of people say, oh, you need only the best quality paints, only the best quality brushes. My brushes usually don't cost me more than like $0.50 each because I get really cheap classroom set brushes that I can get a whole box of them for like $10 and those will last me months, whereas I could spend $10 on one brush. That if I end up ruining that brush because I forget to wash it afterwards or I let it dry, I let paint dry on it that brush is just ruined and that's an expensive brush down the drain, whereas I can just get these cheap brushes. They do the same thing for me the majority of the time and they work great for me and I can still produce quality work because it's, I think, my main point is. The quality of materials doesn't always equal quality of work and if you want to make quality work, it's more about the time and practice that you put into that than the materials themselves. I've even done a couple of tutorials online where I'll paint a whole picture and I'll try to paint something pretty high quality using only the absolute bare bones, minimum, cheapest supplies that I can possibly get, just to show that you don't need the $60 tube of paint, because you can spend $60 on one tube of paint. You don't need that $60 tube of paint to produce something quality. Now, if you're selling a $10,000 painting, yeah, I demand investing in some good paints, because that client's going to be really disappointed if you used a Walmart canvas versus a nice stressed canvas. But even, especially if you're learning, just get what you need to put color on the canvas, because color is what you really need to paint, and you can do that with acrylics, with oil oils, with watercolors. You can get colored pencils. Anything that can create color is what you need to begin with.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah, so there's no need to break the bank. So just be savvy about it, get the basics and get very good at mastering the basics, and then you can start concerning yourself with that individual $60 brush or that individual tube of paint. Yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:01

So as you come across new techniques you want to try that you can't do with the $1 Walmart brush, then go out and invest in a brush that's more suited for what you're wanting to do, and you'll accumulate tons of art supplies after a while, but at least to begin with, just get the basics and you'll learn what you really need, based off of something that a basic brush can't accomplish. You'll learn what you really need to get and you'll try different brushes. You'll try different techniques and you'll get there.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Yeah, yeah, and then, before you know it, you're running your own art studio. Yeah, so something you touched upon there about hobbies transferring into something more From your own perspective, how did you know that it was time to go from a hobby to a business? What was that moment? How did you know?

Speaker 2: 29:06

It's a bit of a more drawn out story, so we've got a couple of minutes to spend on that one. Yeah, so I painted as a hobby for, I'd say, good seven or eight years, just honing my skills, painting for fun. I did start selling my paintings very early on, just to anyone who really wanted them is usually friends and family. At that point, for the first several years and during the time of following the YouTube tutorials, I started posting my Skyrim paintings in different Facebook groups and so I got this little client base of people that really liked my Skyrim painting. So I started an art page on Facebook and for the first several years it had a couple hundred to like 1500 followers by the time I went full time. But, like I had 1500 followers for the majority of that time and that was mostly just from the Facebook groups of people who were like big Skyrim nerds, and so the few paintings that I sold were usually commissions. Someone would send me a reference picture of their character or of a screenshot they took from in game, or they just describe what they wanted, and then I would usually make that happen and I sold my first painting for $60, I believe, and after I sold that painting for $60,. That particular client wasn't the most pleasant person and he made me realize I probably should have sold it for more because he didn't appreciate what he was getting and he ended up not wanting any more art for me because I didn't know how to run a business at that point. I didn't know about agreeing on a price beforehand. I figured, oh, we'll figure that out after the painting's done. That was a big mistake. By the way, I'll never paint something without agreeing on a price beforehand if you're doing commission work and also get deposit beforehand, because if something goes south later, then you still have that deposit and you still made money off of your work. But I sold my first painting for $60, and I realized I should have probably asked more for it based upon the amount of time I spent on that piece, which was 60 hours, and so after that I kind of stuck around $100 to $200 for most of my paintings, which that's a decent amount of money, but it's not livable. You can't really pay your rent off of $100 painting every three or four months. So I did that for many years just doing the occasional commission, and it was usually. I would just post a painting on Facebook and someone would message me and say, hey, I want you to paint this for me, I'll pay you X amount of money. And so that's what I did. For the longest time. I did a lot of soul searching, of deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I got married. My wife and I moved overseas for about six months. We worked in the orphanage in Guatemala for a while and over there I realized that my whole life pretty much, I haven't really had a lot of really known exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something and, for anyone who doesn't know, I go to church. I believe in God. I believe that that's what's important to me is to teach people about God and about the Bible, and that's my personal beliefs. And anyway, I went to Guatemala with the intent of being a missionary and with the intent of that being my main passion, my main thing to focus all of my attention to. And while I was down there I realized I'm kind of bad at this. I'm not a good public speaker, I'm not good at teaching things very well, but I am good at teaching art. And while I was down there, I met this little boy who enjoyed painting, and he was pretty good for a 13-year-old and by the time I left he was very good for a 14-year-old Like me and him just really connected and we would spend hours together just painting and we would follow Kevin Hill videos on YouTube and I would just sit there and I'd paint my thing and he would copy me and I'd give him little tips and pointers along the way and I was like, ok, maybe this is what I'm good at and maybe I need to to actually like think more about this, of why I'm doing what I'm doing and what I'm really good at and what I need to focus my times on and how to use this to still Do what I believe is important. And so the the orphanage over there we didn't. We end up, you know, moving over there full-time or anything that. That Didn't work out. But we came back to the States and I was like, well, I don't know what we're gonna do. I guess I'm just gonna go get a full-time job and I'm gonna I Don't know make money and support my wife and what she wants to do, because she also wants to do stuff like that and she wants to take care of children. And so I went, I got a full-time job, working 60 hours a week. I was making Plenty of money and I was like, okay, this is great money, but I kind of hate my life.

Speaker 1: 34:50

Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:51

I quit the job. I got another 60-hour job where I was making even more money. I was like, all right, this is awesome, I'm gonna support my wife and I'm gonna send her a paycheck and it is, and she'll get to do what she wants to do and this is great. That lasted a whole two months maybe, before I realized that I just don't like working full-time jobs. It's I don't like manual labor. I it's. It sucks for me, is it drains me, it makes me Just a very unpleasant person to be around. And so and that was like heavy manual labor I was driving a UPS truck Delivering packages like 300 packages a day. Sometimes it was awful.

Speaker 1: 35:33

Yeah, yeah, I could imagine that be quite a hard-born sometimes Especially during the holiday season.

Speaker 2: 35:38

Yes, which is exactly what I was doing, that. And so I I just quit that job on the spot. I was like, sorry guys, I can't handle this job. This isn't for me. I Hope you guys find someone else to fill this position. And I dipped on out of there and so I had this. I was like, well, I hated the manual labor part, but I enjoyed the driving part. Driving is chill I just get to, you know, chill on the highway. So I was like, well, maybe I'll go be a truck driver and I'll drive like big semi trucks. And so I spent the next 30 days. I was like, all right, I'm gonna spend a month unemployed and I'm just gonna try to get this Commercial driver's license. And so I spent the next month, you know, working on getting this commercial driver's license. I had a job lined up through someone else that I knew that they said they would hire me as a rookie driver to go and drive so my trucks. It's like, all right, well, this, this will be better than that last job because at least here it's not so physically taxing. During that month, to make up the money I wasn't making Working, I decided to do some more art commissions because I couldn't work on the CDL stuff every day, I couldn't work on getting the driver's license every day. So I painted a lot during that one month and during that one month of posting, mostly in the Skyrim groups again, I made almost as much money as I did when I was driving for UPS and I was like Hold up, what, what am I even doing? Like, why, how did that just happen? How did I just make so much money just painting? And my Facebook page got up to like 2000 followers. At that point, I think I I made my Instagram page, I started posting on there a lot. I Got that up to, I think, a thousand followers. I Made a YouTube channel where I I uploaded like time-lapse videos of my paintings and I was like I really enjoy this. This is actually kind of fun like Doing, actually putting effort into, into what I actually know I enjoy. But I've never really, you know, pushed that hard. It was really just painting a hobby. You know, that was what I did for the longest time. And so during that one month we decided by the end of it like let's not, let's not get the CDL job, let's, let's actually, you know, call that, call that employer and say, hey, sorry for getting your your bills, turn in for hiring me on, I'm not actually gonna take the job. And so instead I went and I worked in a warehouse overnight for 20 to 30 hours a week, and so I would get up at 2 am, I'd work till 7 or 8 am and I and then I'd focus on getting my art business going During the daytime, which ended up being like from 2 in the afternoon to like 7 in the evening, because I was sleeping All the other time, because I was working overnight. And so I I spent the next three months just working that that overnight job and Again, just trying to make money through the job and make money through selling my art and getting my. That's when I started an Etsy shop. I started selling my paintings through Etsy my original paintings and then I started selling prints of my artwork through Etsy, and that's that's what's really Worked for me and that's what really started getting my sales up was selling those prints, because not everybody can afford a, you know, a couple hundred dollar original painting, but most people can afford a $20 to $35 print if they really want to own some my artwork. And so I got my Etsy shop running. I really focused on honing my skills more and and improving on my art. I started doing like daily practice of either painting a picture or drawing, just trying to hone my skills as well as I can. Within three months of working there, I realized I was still losing money by going to a part-time job. I Was, I was sleeping all day and I was like this this, sleeping till 2 in the afternoon. This is negative for my art business and so I decided all right, now is the time, now's the time to make that jump, and so I quit that overnight job and I currently am working a very, very part-time job that I Found, that I happen to get insurance through and so I work maybe eight to ten hours a week every morning, from like 4 am To 6 30 am In the morning, and that that job has allowed me to Take my art completely full-time at this point. Like I go home and I sleep for a couple hours in the morning, I get up at you know nine or ten in the morning and then I have all day to focus on my art, to Hang out with my wife, to hang out with my friends and family actually like enjoying my life for once, and and that's all. That's all due to just really like going deep into into Trying to turn my hobby into a business, and so I hope that can like be inspiring for some people. That like it doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen. It's not just like you decide one day I'm gonna quit my full-time job and go art. I worked my way in to Having my art be a full-time business and that was through putting a lot of hours extra into what I was doing, and it wasn't really until I quit my full-time job and went part-time that I was able to devote that time. But I had, at least as a skill at that point that I was decent at, and then I turned that skill into even more of a profession later by by putting that time that I wasn't working into into honing my skill. But I still worked into that. I made sure to Not be dumb about it, because a lot of people, when they try to start a business, they'll jump right into it, they'll they'll quit their 60 a week job and They'll go from making a full income to making to hopefully making all their income off of their business, and that's unfortunately Very rare that that actually succeeds.

Speaker 1: 42:06

So yeah, that's that. That's an incredible story and I like what you said and how transparent you are, that this was not a walk in the park, like, yes, you have reaped the benefits now, because you took a very logical and Strategic approach. Like, as you said, you didn't go from a 60 or fully paid job paying your rent, food bills, all that kind of thing to jump immediately in the art. You did it in a very logical, slow transition to your art business. What's your opinion on people who who have ambitions that they, they, all they want to do is art and it's gonna be. It's very hard to persuade them otherwise that they probably need to get a normal job before they become a full-time artist. And I'm not. I don't want to. You know what's the words I'm looking for here. I don't want to discredit them. I you know especially very talented artists. They're right there. All they want to do is exactly what you do, like you've inspired them. But, yes, I want to do what Aaron's done and I have my full-time business. I've no interest in working corporate America or anywhere else. But, like, from an artist's perspective, and a successful artist perspective, do you think that realistically, for 99% of people, you, the facts are, you're gonna have to get a normal job and, yeah, build your business on the side, or you know what's your opinion on that?

Speaker 2: 43:38

There's. I mean there's ways if you start early enough, before you're completely independent, like for my young friends who are maybe graduating high school or graduating college, who they aren't completely independent, they aren't paying all their own bills yet. Maybe they're young there may be living with their parents. In that case, while you, while you're still in that position, go as, go as hard as you can at making your art. You know as good as you can get it, get those social medias up, post your stuff everywhere, make your Etsy shop or whatever platform you decide to sell on. Get that going now, before you move out and you start. You know having to pay your own bills and you know get your full-time job and all that. Because if you, if you start working on these skills now, those skills don't really go away. Like you, you can pick them back up at any point and I Lost my train of thought. So Once, once you graduate high school or graduate college, you move out. You have to get your full-time job. You know that's pretty common for most people. You have to. You have to get your life going. But keep Going with your art, at least on the side. Don't let it go completely. I see so many people and it's it's really sad because they'll they'll be so into art, they'll be so into what they're doing, they'll be so in touch with what they're, you know, they're enjoying with their hobbies or whatever they're good at, and then they'll, they'll Begin their adult life and it'll completely go away. And it happens a lot. But I just want to encourage everybody that you know, once, if you're already an adult or if you're starting as an adult, like, don't let that go, latch onto it and you know, keep, keep practicing on the side, keep practicing when you have time. Most of us have, you know, an hour of the day where we, you know, sit and we scroll through tick tock or we watch YouTube videos or we watch TV. Most of us have, at some time, most of us don't work, you know, 80 hour work weeks. It's. It's very rare that we do, and All I'm trying to encourage you in is most of us have time that we can set apart, but that we usually are, you know. We say, oh, I'm too tired, or oh, I'd rather play video games or I'd rather watch TV or Whatever it is. And I fully understand that. I do that myself all the time. I'll just sit and I'll, you know, scroll through Facebook for an hour and be like crap. I could have, you know, drawn a whole picture in that time. Just hold on to those skills, even as you're an adult and if you have kids, and if you have a job and a Family and all this, like, there's usually some time during the day to keep going. And it only takes 20 seconds to make a Facebook post. It only takes a minute to make a tick tock. It only, it only takes a minute to post something on Instagram and that's, that's all it is to make to get those socials out there. That's all I do. I didn't, I didn't pay for marketing, I never went to business school. I I've built up my social medias to what they are just from posting and posting consistently and sharing my stuff everywhere I possibly can. I literally share my art everywhere that is Allowed to share art, and I think that's the only reason that I've built up the following I have my per context. I have about 25,000 followers on Facebook at this point. I have about Wow, six thousand five hundred followers on Instagram and I have ninety eight thousand followers on tick tock.

Speaker 1: 47:36

Yeah that's yeah, I'll play to you.

Speaker 2: 47:39

Yeah, and like people say, oh well, you must have gotten lucky. You must have, you know, especially for tick tock. Yes, I did get lucky a little bit. I had one video go viral and get over a million views and that got me about 70,000 of my followers in the course of a week. So I did get lucky in that in that instance. But besides that, my Facebook followers I've. I've built up every single one of those Facebook followers Through just posting and showing off my art. I I didn't have a single post, you know, go crazy viral Instagram. I haven't had a. I haven't had one singular post go Insanely viral and get me all of my 6,500 followers. I've built that up over time and it it takes time and it takes consistency of posting and learning how the social media is work and all that. You can, you know, go into that and learn all that is as you go. I'm not an expert on it, but I found ways that make my posts do better and get seen more. And and yeah, another site that I've done really well on is reddit. I've posted my artwork in like the skyrim subreddit and I've had posts skip I think. I think I got like 65,000 of votes on a post on on reddit, wow. And so, like you, just got to find these platforms that enjoy your work and you got to find the groups of people that want to see your work and share it with them as much as possible and latch on to those groups and keep trying. If one group doesn't work, there's the the reddit slash pics, so it's just a general pictures subreddit. People post, kind of whatever they want there. I have some posts that get like 20 upvotes there and then I've had others get 50,000 upvotes there, and so you just got to keep trying. You got to keep posting. You got to be persistent with it, because if you just post once and you say, oh, my post got three likes, okay, that's probably gonna happen your first several posts until you get followers, and you just got to be consistent with it. You got to be happy with those. You know when, once you get 10 likes on your posts consistently, that's exciting because that's 10, that's 10 fans that you have that are coming back and liking your work. Once you get Start getting to like 50 likes on your post, that's exciting because that's 50 people. Imagine, like 50 people standing in front of you and you're holding your painting and 50 people going. I like that. You know that's insane.

Speaker 1: 50:11

That's a powerful perspective.

Speaker 2: 50:13

Yeah, yeah. And I've gotten to the point where when I post something on Facebook, it usually gets at least a thousand likes. And that's insane to me because I'm imagining myself Standing up on a stage, I'm seeing guys look at what I made and that's a thousand people that are going, you know, and I like that and Like it. Enough I can get, I can get, you know, 500 comments on a painting. Like that's 500 people that have walked up to me afterwards and said, hey, I really like that. I just want you know I appreciate you sharing your art with me. Like that's a good feeling.

Speaker 1: 50:49

I really, I really like that perspective, like it gives a. You know, social media can be a bit horrendous at times, but that's a really wholesome way of looking at it. I really enjoyed that you got to take that you forward, or take that forward yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:05

Mm-hmm. And so I just want to encourage you, like you got to just be persistent. You got it. You got to be, you know, resilient against hateful people online, because they're everywhere. You got it, you just got it. Oh yeah, you got to go at it, can't give up.

Speaker 1: 51:21

Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's interesting. I I thankfully, have got quite a few five-star reviews, but I was listening to a podcast, thank you very much. I was listening to a podcast and this dude is a mega successful podcaster and he said the you know, somebody asks him to come on to their podcast, you'll instantly look at the reviews. And he says if it hasn't got at least one Bad review, like a one or two star review, he doesn't take it as a credible podcast. I'm like I'm at the point. I am like I'm almost wishing for one bad review, just officially incredible, because it's like you're, you're not. If you're not getting, if you're not getting, you know, one bad review or you're not getting some pushback, then you're not really in your element, you're not really broadening the horizons, if you know what I mean. So, yeah, I really like what you say, that even though you're generating really wholesome content that in any sane person's mind you would go, how could you not like this? Like it's maybe not your property, but you can at least appreciate the talent and the time and the craftsmanship that's went into generating this nice picture and you're still gonna get some troll online's going oh, it's awful. What? Why?

Speaker 2: 52:33

would you say?

Speaker 1: 52:34

that but, I'm sorry, no no, no go on, so I interrupted you.

Speaker 2: 52:42

Well, one thing that I've done over the last couple years to kind of like Grab the tension is I'm sure you've seen it is I wear this like goofy costume. Well, I well. I love that, I love that and some people either love it or they absolutely hate it, and I wore it as like a joke one day. Just just trying to be funny, I just put the. It's a costume of Chewbacca and yeah it's a onesie and so I put this little hood up and it's got like a little face on the hood and it's got his little no sash from across the holes as bullets. It's. It's goofy and I thought it was hilarious because I got that was like one of my first reddit posts. They went really viral. Was all these people just going, wow, that's some cool art, but what are you wearing? And my first, my first several posts of that was it was like split 50 50 people either loved it or they absolutely hated it, and I got some terrible comments in in those people just being awful and just straight up bullying me. And you know, if you're doing something like that I don't recommend everybody try to be goofy with their but they're sharing. But like that was, what worked for me Was being really goofy with my posts and trying to just grab attention and I thought it was fun, I thought it was funny and so I've done that for like the last year of just like it kind of became iconic there for a while oh, there's the wookie guy, there's the wookie artist, it's. I think it was funny because it's attention grabbing and it's, you know, gets people to stop and comment on the post, which makes the post do better and yeah, so like yeah man. Half those comments were just like just calling me really mean names and saying horrible things about me. And I had people like DMing me just like paragraphs of hate messages, like actual hate messages, like what, why? But yeah, it's like if you do something that's in any way controversial which I don't know how wearing a onesie is controversial people some people either love it or they they hate it. But that it really helped my follower base because it got me people to follow me that appreciated my goofy side and it kept people that I don't want following me away. And so it it was really attention grabbing, got a lot of people going to my pages. But yeah, you got it. You got to be prepared for for haters and you know people will comment, say, oh, the art is Okay, but this could be better. I still have people commenting on my posts all the time that they're like, oh, I went to art school, I know all these like terms and I know all these like different things, and they'll sit there and critique my art and They'll like point out every little mistake that I made in this art. And I'm like you. You know, if I wanted critique I would have said please give me critique. Or if I wanted constructive criticism, I would have said please give me constructive criticism. And I just I only say that because I wish more people understood that even as fellow artists sometimes we like to do that. Please only give critique if it's asked for, because it can be very discouraging to the artist and for my artist friends out there. Just push through that, don't take it to heart. I know people are trying to be helpful, even if it kind of hurts sometimes and you make something you're really proud of and you you just want to show it off and say, guys, look what I made. And then someone goes okay, this is wrong with it, this is wrong with it, this is wrong with it and this is wrong with it. Don't take that, don't take that personally, like that's, that's just someone that's trying to make themselves sound smart or trying to be helpful. In most cases it doesn't seem very helpful in the moment but just push, push through that kind of like you know, internet haters or internet helpful critiquers that comes across as people being negative. You got to push through that negativity and just keep going. And once people realize that you're not going to stop especially for the haters that say mean things once people realize that you're not stopping and that you're still posting your stuff, even though they're, you know, commenting on it time after time, they will stop commenting on it. I get like I used to get like 50, 50 of haters versus people that actually enjoyed seeing me post my work. It's now like 95% positive and I firmly believe that's only because I've built up that, that reputation for myself of one being a good artist and for two, not responding to the haters and not not, you know, lashing back at them through the comments and just keeping posting anyway. And I think they've just stopped because they know I'm not going anywhere.

Speaker 1: 57:29

Yeah, exactly, and please do not go anywhere. I want to see this art for the long term. But what I love about you know how you responded to that was the fact that I think I did see a post age at months ago and you were in your wookie costume and you unveiled an absolutely outstanding painting and I remember even you just put this little cheeky comment as the captions of the hopeful was like so here's this painting. Oh, by the way, here's the wookie costume again for all you haters, and I was just like yes, love it, like I don't care, I like this onesie, I like the state it's here to stay and you're right. It didn't stand out for you from. You know everyone else on the internet. You know, when everybody's screaming for air time, there's just you not saying a word. But look at my look at my really nice painting and my wookie costume and it's like as you say. You know you've got your legions of fans now and quite a wholesome fan base, as I imagine, as well. It's as you say, you're going to get that one or two. You know 5% who are just like there to be negative. Some people's default is negative and it just comes with the territory. So some really solid advice. And you know exactly what you said about you know getting quote unquote lucky on TikTok, you know there's a famous quote, I heard that you know luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So you know, going back to what you said at the very start of the episode, where people are like, oh well, you're lucky, you're naturally talented, and it's like, well, I'd argue almost that it wasn't luck, I would say you've put in the work, you've done, you've paid your dues and then the opportunity presented itself and you seized it and, lo and behold, you've reaped the benefits. So I am a big fan of yet sometimes, you know, lady luck does. It does show kindness to certain folk, but at the same time you've got to be have the preparation beforehand to fully seize that opportunity, which you've clearly done. Yeah, and that's the only other book on that.

Speaker 2: 59:36

That's that specific painting that did go viral. I got 1.5 million views. It was a pretty good painting, it was probably one of my better ones, and I used a sound that was really viral at the time, because with TikTok you can kind of copy paste sounds that do well in the algorithm and try to like, boost your videos and you try to just utilize every sound you can, so like. The reason that I think I went viral at that time was because I was using a. I was just being very consistent and persistent with trying everything I could on TikTok and especially for you guys out there that are, you know, trying on TikTok or interest on trying on TikTok, the first thousand followers is a sludge. It takes so long to get your first thousand followers, but once you get that, your videos are going to do better and they're going to latch onto the algorithm faster. And I think that's probably like you're saying was I did the right thing at the right time. I did a really good painting and then I used a sound that was working really well at that time and so it was the sound mixed with the really good art, and I was wearing my Chewbacca onesie, of course, so I got people's attention and I think I really did just like be really persistent, because some people say, oh, you blew up overnight because you had one random fluke video, okay, so maybe or maybe it was just a good video that people really liked, and I do want to encourage you guys on that. But, like you know, just keep putting out your good work and it's not always going to get seen. I still post videos that get less than a hundred views sometimes, and then other videos I'll post and they'll get 150,000 views and so like. With stuff like that, you really just got to be persistent and you got to just keep posting as often as you can, trying everything you can, because if you don't try everything, that's a. That's a you know opportunity that you didn't take and you're not going to reap the benefits from that. So I think, just touching on that, that point real, real quick is just be persistent and keep trying and eventually you might have one that just really blows up, like mine did.

Speaker 1: 1:01:45

So yeah, 100%. And we're coming up to the end of the episode and just a couple of final thoughts I want to get from yourself. Is you know there's some total of your journey to become an artist? What do you think is the most important lesson or lessons that you can impart on inspiring artists or aspiring artists?

Speaker 2: 1:02:10

Yeah, I'd say my. My biggest piece of advice and I give this to everybody is just, you know, if you're, if you're, a painter and you want to get a painting, paint as often as you can. Paint at every opportunity you feel a tiny bit of inspiration. Latch onto that inspiration and use it. If you're, you know, a pencil artist, every second you get to draw and you feel any inspiration to draw, even if you don't feel any inspiration to draw, take that opportunity to draw. Like, keep a sketchbook with you, keep a keep a little pad with you. I keep a sketchbook in my pocket all the time, just in case I have an idea that I want to get out. Just take, take, latch onto that one thing you want to get good at and do it a lot, because the, the people that have only put, you know, 10, 15 hours into their practice are going to be miles and miles behind someone who's put 150 hours into their practice or someone like me who's put probably over a thousand hours into their practice over the last year or two. Like you, got to put that time in. If you don't put the time in, you're not going to improve, and that's like the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone is put those hours in, put every ounce of energy like and don't wear yourself out, don't burn yourself out. If you feel yourself burning out, just lower that time a little bit. But I had someone comment on one of my videos the other day saying they were they were trying daily drawing practice and that's that's a really good practice to do is to to practice daily. But they said they were getting discouraged and burnt out. So my advice was um, if you're, if you're in one of those like weeks or a month where you're just really struggling and you're getting burnt out, take five minutes every day and limit yourself to five minutes, cause if you set, if you go in the goal of practicing every day and you're spending an hour or two hours I did a daily, a daily challenge in October. I did Inktober it was extremely difficult to do two hours every day Limit yourself to five minutes. If you can just get up out of bed and sit down at your drawing table or in front of the easel and you can put five minutes in, it will become easier and easier to make that time longer, because the hardest thing about any sort of practice and any sort of putting time into getting better or something is just showing up. If you just show up, you will improve, because even just that five minutes of practice will get you better than you were the day before. And if daily isn't going well and you still can't do that five minutes daily, do it every other day. And if that's, if that's like your goal to do something consistent practicing to get better, do five minutes every other day. As you do that five minutes of every other day, it'll get easier and easier and you'll find yourself sitting there for 10 minutes the next time. You'll find yourself sitting there for an hour randomly, like it's. It will get easier and it'll it'll just make it much more manageable If you just just show up, just start, because starting something is the hardest part of anything is just getting the willpower to oh, I want to lay in bed for this extra hour today that I have on the weekend, and then you have, you know, a meeting later. Well, that was an hour you could have spent, you know, being productive or honing your skills, and so I think just that, just that five minutes. Just limit yourself to the five minutes to start with, and if you can make that five minutes happen. You can make you know what you want to happen later. Happen If that's an hour, if that's 30 minutes, whatever. Just just beginning is the hardest part. So I'd say that's my biggest piece of advice is to just just practice, and if you can get that practice and you will improve.

Speaker 1: 1:06:14

No, excuse me, a hundred percent, that's. It's the same, I think, with any creative endeavor, isn't it Just summoning the willpower to start? And then, once you've started, it's, it's so easy. And one thing I would recommend is I did an entire episode on the seven different types of rest. And, funny, you mentioned that creative rest is one of the. If you're naturally quite creative, you can get burnt out creatively. And you, you know, rest is such a generic term that you need to decide are you creatively burnt out or you you've been using too much digital. Have you, you know, physically exhausted? You know? I think it's very key to identify that rather than just saying generically, I'm tired, you know, and you can, you can rest adequately in that way, but I really like that. It's like even getting 1% better a day, five minutes a year, five minutes every other day or, you know, even weekly, it's better than doing absolutely nothing. And to wrap it all up, what's the question you've never been asked.

Speaker 2: 1:07:19

I tried, I tried so hard to think of one beforehand.

Speaker 1: 1:07:23

It's. Do you know what I was thinking about About a quarter of the way through this episode. I think you may have accidentally answered it in the you were saying nobody ever asks you about how much hard work you had to put in. Yeah, it's just, people just assumed you were naturally talented, if you can think of one or if you do think of one. But I find a question there perhaps is you know what is the most inspiring piece of art you think you've ever created? Like what was? What was that when you finally laid the brush down and you had to take a step back and just appreciate it for a moment?

Speaker 2: 1:08:04

So maybe my favorite piece that I've created Well, I always say it's the piece I just finished, most recently. You know, I always oh.

Speaker 1: 1:08:17

I like that.

Speaker 2: 1:08:19

It's just like my artwork is like a part of me. You know, like I put in all this effort, I put in all this time to make this piece and if I'm really proud of it, like it's because I've gotten to the point where like this is now my favorite piece and it's because I've worked up to the point of all my previous paintings are now like I had the skills that I've picked up and these techniques I've picked up from all my previous paintings and I've created this using all these skills. So I have a piece that I just finished two days ago sitting on my easel right now and it's posted on my Instagram and my Facebook and my oh yes. It's a character portrait of a character from Elden Ring and people on YouTube you can see this and people not on YouTube. You can find these at my socials. But this is a piece of Ronnie the Witch and I am so proud of it, I'm just so happy with how it turned out. I think she turned out beautiful and I love her giant hat and the moon and the stars behind her. Yeah, I think that's the easiest or most accurate answer. For me is just the piece I finished last, because I'm just so proud of it and it's I just love how it turned out.

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

Yeah, that's a really nice answer. I like that because it's always the next bit that You're not like. Oh well, I've never painted a piece that I like as much as that one. It's just generated an entirely new piece of art. It's a total original. It's never been done before. Many people have painted the same person or idea, but this is truly yours. It's a one of a kind, so I really like that answer. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, aaron, and I'm sure everybody else would love to stay in touch with yourself and your content. So where can people find you?

Speaker 2: 1:10:22

At Painted Dragon Studios is my handle for all my socials On Instagram. There's little underscores in between Painted Dragon Studios and on Twitter it is also underscores, I believe. But if you just Google Painted Dragon Studios, you'll come up with all of my socials. You can buy my work at Painted Dragon Shop. I sell all of my prints and originals on my Etsy shop. But, yeah, I can provide some links as well. All my socials are Painted Dragon Studios.

Speaker 1: 1:11:05

Happy days. Yeah, and I will use them links and put them in the show notes and people can go in and view your art and stay up to date with all your content as you produce it. But once again, Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 1:11:20

Thanks for inviting me. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 1:11:23

There you go, folks. That concludes today's episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of the content provided. If you did, then please do consider subscribing to the Curious Ulsterman podcast on your preferred streaming service and leaving us a five star reading and review. That really helps the podcast grow. Thank you very much. If you would like to follow the Curious Ulsterman on the various social media channels to view upcoming content, the Curious Ulsterman is on Facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok, youtube and Twitch all at the Curious Ulsterman. If you know someone who would benefit from this content, then please do share it with your friends and family on the various social media channels. You can also check out our website at wwwthecuriousulstermancom, where you can view our full catalogue of episodes across all the seasons. If you would like to get in touch with the Curious Ulsterman, then please do get in contact on the various social media channels mentioned, or there is a voice note option on our website. As always, folks, I'm open to suggestions to make this podcast a better experience for you, the listener, if you tuned in today for the first time, thank you very much and I hope you got value from the content I provide If you're one of our seasoned listeners. Thank you so much for the continuous support. I am eternally grateful. Till next time. I wish you all the best. Bye for now.