Sumatran tiger I drew in late 2018, for my first First Friday Art Walk in Richmond, Virginia. 18" X 24", I sold it last spring. I love this one, I need to draw more animals at some point. #sharpiescribblestyle
by Steve Emig, #sharpiescribblestyle
My mom and I didn't get along when I was a kid, and 40-some years later, the living environment still had a Chernobyl level of toxicity. I was pretty miserable, and needed to find some way to make some kind of money. I did the guy things around the apartment, and drove her to doctor's appointments and on six hour shopping expeditions regularly. But the only thing that made me any money was doing an occasional Sharpie scribble style drawing of a kid's name, usually for a mom at our church, or sometimes drawing a cartoon character for a friend of of friend's kid. Here's one of those you'll recognize.
Cowabunga dude!
Now, like a lot of moms out there, my mom has issues. We're talking more issues than the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble. She also has a wall of denial when it comes to admitting those. I'm not talking about a brick wall, more like a ten foot thick wall of steel reinforced concrete, covered by a foot of chromoly steel, covered by Teflon. Nothing penetrates that wall. Yes, that's a horrible thing to say about my mom. But it's true. And yes, I have plenty of my own issues. The main difference is that I spent 25+ years of my adult life working through most of my issues. My mom never saw the point in that.
The other thing to note is that my mom got progressively worse at handling money as she aged. She spent her Social Security check, more than enough to live comfortably on, within three days of getting it, each month. When she needed money the other 27 or 28 days, she came up with really bad ideas to come up with some. Those ideas usually started with selling some overpriced kitchen machine she bought on QVC 2 or 3 months earlier. The ideas quickly went downhill from there. It was ridiculous.
If I made any money in any way, my mom would nag me until I confessed the exact amount. The next day some "crisis" would come up that desperately needed that exact amount of money. If I had $23, a crisis popped up that needed exactly $23. If my mom knew I had $1.76, a crisis popped up, usually involving chocolate, that needed exactly $1.76. As if living in Kernersville, North Carolina, as a long time Californian actions sports guy, wasn't bad enough, living in those conditions made it ultra-miserable. But my mom's a good cook, so I tolerated it. It was a classic case of justifying staying in a toxic situation that already had put me on depression meds. I had to find a way to make my own money, and get out of that situation.
The first Bruce Lee drawing I did, my Sharpie scribble style take on a Bruce Lee stencil. Drawing this changed the course of my life.
One night, in November 2015, I decided to focus on trying to make money with my Sharpie art. I put a few of my earlier drawings in that last post, and as you can tell, they were alright, maybe, but a long way from great. I knew I needed to step up my art game. Step 1 was simply to ask myself, "What would I want to put on my wall?" I sat down at my mom's computer, it was faster than my $65 refurbished HP laptop, which was still running Windows XP. For 2 1/2 hours, I looked at all kinds of art online. I started with some classics, like Monet, Renoir, Degas, daVinci, Michelangelo (the artist, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle), and others. Great painters, but they don't do much for me. I looked at some 20th century people, like Picasso, M.C. Escher, Georgia O'Keefe, Frida Kahlo, and such. Pretty cool, buy not what I wanted on my wall.
I spent most of the time that night looking at graffiti and street art, because that's the stuff that gets me psyched. I checked out Banksy, Shephard Fairey, the early New York graff writers, big wall bombs, urban murals, and much more. Being a BMX/skateboard guy, I also looked Bob Haro's BMX drawings, sticker and T-shirt designs, at skateboard graphics, like Marc McKee's epic World Industries deck art. I also looked up my former FREESTYLIN' magazine boss, Andy Jenkins, I love his old Wrench Pilot comics. Finally, I found a simple stencil of Bruce Lee. He was my first hero as a 5-year-old kid in Ohio, shortly before his untimely death. Yeah, I wanted to draw my version of that Bruce Lee stencil, and put that on my wall, so I did. That's it above.
Cam Newton's infamous Superman pose, done in my Sharpie scribble style. One of my first paid drawings, from early 2016.
That's how it started, drawing a Bruce Lee drawing, in my style, for my own wall. Since that night night in late 2015. I've drawn over 100 original drawings, most of them were 18" X 24", and took 30 to 45 hours each, to draw. I've sold over 80 of those originals, and over 120 smaller copies of drawings in the four years since. Most of the other 20 drawings were given away, a few were lost in my travels. My Sharpie scribble style artwork is now hanging on walls in 10 or more U.S. states, several countries in Europe and Scandinavia, Australia, Taiwan, and even Russia. In the last six months, while homeless, my art has sold on 5 of the 7 continents. That's crazy. I wondered if I could even sell one drawing, when I first started back then. I'm currently looking for buyers in Africa and Antarctica, so if you know any, email me. I need to get art on those other two continents.
I started in November 2015 with a bunch of Sharpies, a dollar store pad of sketch paper, my crappy, slow laptop, and a little card table in my bedroom, to work on. I literally didn't have a dime to my name. Not even a penny, actually, because of the mom situation. I had no reputation as a visual artist at all. Hell, I didn't think of myself as a visual artist for about two more years.
So how did I manage to sell 80 major pieces of art, starting with nothing, while homeless most of the time, in four years? Here are the steps I took to make that happen.
- In 2008, after some really tough times, I was unemployed and living with my parents in Kernersville. The taxi industry went downhill until I could no longer make money, and I was homeless for a year in SoCal, before I took up my family's offer, to go live with them a while. As fate would have it, I went to North Carolina in November 2008, right when the economy was collapsing, and jobs were nearly impossible to find.
Once there, I started blogging about my times in the 1980's BMX freestyle world. I had no intention of ever becoming a working artist at that point. I was depressed, had time on my hands, and started writing little stories about things that happened as a rider, and an industry guy, in that world. Within a few weeks, I began to re-connect with a lot of old school BMX friends, and met new ones online. I became a part of the Old School BMX freestyle community online. At the time, I was such a Luddite, I didn't even know there was an old school BMX community online.
-I blogged consistently, mostly because I liked doing it, and partly because I was bored and had lots of time. I had no one with similar interests to talk to in NC, so it was also good connecting with old friends online. I also had a computer (my parents' desktop) with the internet, for the first time in my life. Because no one else in the world was really blogging about Old School BMX stuff, I wound up with the two top Old School BMX blogs in the world. I became #1 in my niche, worldwide, without trying to. I was just writing about things that were interesting to me. I gained a steady following, with my main blog getting 3,000 or so page views a month. That's not stellar in the blogosphere, but it my little niche, it was really good.
-One day in 2009, someone, I can't remember who, emailed me and said, "You know, people actually make money with blogs, right?" I didn't know that. I was in my own little world, my only social life in NC was online, and I didn't know anything about the larger blogging world. I did know, from working doing zines, and working at magazines and a newsletter, that I'm a writer at heart. But I had no idea how to be a writer in the 2009, 21st century, internet enabled world.
-So I started learning, self-educating. That's how the vast majority of practical, real world, viable learning takes place in today's world. Over the 10+ years since, I watched thousands of YouTube videos, how-to's, TED Talks, and keynote speeches by guys like Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Gary Vaynerchuk, and many others. I signed up for email lists to get free ebooks about internet marketing. I couldn't afford to buy the brand new ebooks, but many internet marketers would give away their old ones for free, to get you on their mailing list. I read a bunch of those. I began to learn about the larger blogging world, building/serving online communities, search engine optimization (SEO), why tags matter, and all the basic ins and outs of blogging, and later various forms of social media.
-Years later, when I sat down to look at all the art on the computer in November 2015, as I mentioned above, I asked myself one simple question, "What drawing would I want to put up on my own wall?" It turned out to be that simple Bruce Lee drawing above.
Kurt Cobain drawing, which was used as an online flyer, which I did for my first little art show at Earshot Music, a great, old school record/music shop in Winston-Salem, NC,in November 2017. This drawing sold a hour after being put up on the wall, the night before the show. I stepped up my game with this drawing, and it led to selling dozens of musician drawings, nearly all commissions, since.
-I made a commitment, that night in November 2015, to focus on making money with my Sharpie art, no matter what. Full commitment. This is probably the most important step on this list. While art seems like a lame way to try to make a living when you're already broke, I had no other option that seemed to give me more hope. It wasn't that I said, "Hey, I want to be a famous artist," it was simply the only thing I did then that made me a little bit of money now and then. So I doubled down on that.
-I put a photo of that Bruce Lee drawing on my Facebook page, where I interacted with a bunch of my blog followers from my BMX blogs. I asked if anyone would like me to draw them something. In internet marketing terms, I had already become a well known, and reasonably respected member of an online community, and I offered my service to that community. This is the game in the 21st century. Create a community, or become a known member of one that already exists, and serve that community.
-I offered to draw pictures CHEAP. Another key. When you're just starting, make it worth someone taking a shot on you. I originally did 12" X 18 drawings for $20 I think. Maybe $25. Those drawings took me 12 to 15 hours to do then. So I was drawing for $1-$2 an hour. That sounds horrible, I know. But...1) I was unemployed, couldn't get hired for any job in my area (for whatever reasons), so I would be sitting around watching TV, and getting nagged by my mom, if I was not drawing. 2) I was getting paid something to draw pictures. That's an improvement.
Me with a Jimi Hendrix drawing I did for a couple who wound up buying 9 drawings from me. In the photo, I'm in the Gallery at 625, part of Winston-Salem's cool Trade Street art scene.
-I drew the one or two pictures people ordered, and I put photos of them on my blog, and on Facebook, the main social media platform I used then. I showed my readers/friends I was doing art. If I didn't have a paid drawing to do, I drew something else I wanted to draw, and put photos of that drawing up on my blog and Facebook, and asked for more orders. They began to trickle in.
-In early 2016, I did a Go Fund Me campaign to raise $1,000. I didn't have Paypal then, people were actually sending me checks by snail mail for drawings. I offered drawings to everyone on Go Fund Me. I wasn't really asking for donations, I was asking to draw picture for people for a slightly higher price, and telling them I was working on turning my Sharpie art into a business. My plan was to get $1,000 in a couple weeks, buy the basic supplies I needed, get a business bank account, and become a legit little art business. What actually happened is that the Go Fund Me campaign helped encouraged people to let me draw them something. It also worked as an order taking and payment website. Two people had me do several drawings for them, one old school BMX friend, and one new Facebook friend, also an Old School BMXer. The drawings I did then were 18" X 24" drawings, that took 20 to 25 hours, for $50 each.
In effect, Go Fund Me became my art business website for a while. I started getting consistent orders, and I got enough work so that I was drawing, every single day, for four months. I was also making a little money while doing it. It was far from a real living, but I became a "working artist" during those four months. One big problem with artists is that they think, "my piece took me 20 hours, it MUST be worth $250." Or whatever price. News flash, Your art is worth what someone will pay for it, right now. Period. Every product, especially art by an unknown artist, needs to be marketed to find an audience. I knew this, and I knew I was in it for the long haul. So I was more interested in actually selling art, even if I sold it cheap, then drawing something that looked cool, but sat in my bedroom for a year. One more thing...
Not one single person that bought a drawing from me, for $50 in 2016, has complained that I now charge $400 for the same size drawing. People like it when their artwork goes up in value, even if that had nothing to do with why they bought it.
-Because of the sketchy money situation with my mom, which I wrote about above, I could not re-invest the little bit of money I made, to give me any chance of actually getting ahead. Every dime I made was needed for some "emergency." So I left my mom's house, and moved into a patch of woods in nearby Winston-Salem. I simply had no other housing options, no friends with spare rooms to rent cheap, or couches to surf. That's a really extreme measure, and it sucked, but in my particular case, it was the only way I could get off on my own, and earn some money for myself. The job market was so terrible there, that there was no chance at all of me getting a good paying "real job." So I slept in a tent in the woods, scrounged money for food and bus fare, and kept drawing at libraries or McDonald's, all day, every day... for months. Three weeks after moving into the woods, I started a brand new blog, bringing my BMX stories, my Sharpie art, and my thoughts on the economy and the future (longtime geeky hobby of mine), into one blog.
-One day a couple of hippy guys were stoned and eating at McDonald's, while I drew one of my pictures at a nearby table. They told me I should show my drawings to the guys at a record shop across the street. I knew the shop existed, but hadn't been in there. "Your drawing is way better than the art on their walls right now," the one guy said. So I took their advice. I went to the shop, and showed my work to the manager. He said to come back the next day to see the owner, so I did. He liked my drawings, and called up the woman who handled art displays for the shop, they showed off work by local artists. They put two of my drawings up before long, which got a good response. That led to me doing a small show at Earshot music a couple months later, as soon as I could draw 8 big pieces. That little show led to six drawings selling quickly, for $120 each. It also led to many commissions, and I was suddenly drawing all day, nearly every day, one paid drawing right after another. I also got an artist's profile in the local newspaper.
Dr Maya Angelou lived the last 30 or 40 years of her life in Winston-Salem. So when I was asked to do a drawing for the front window of a gallery, for Black History month(even though I'm a white guy), she was the obvious choice. Dr. Angelou's only niece, and archivist, now has a print of this drawing in the Maya Angelou collection.
-In the winter of 2017-2018, I managed to finally make it down to the First Friday Art Walk in Winston-Salem's Trade Street art district. It's a great little creative scene, and I met a few people and showed them my drawings. One woman was really excited by my stuff, and I soon had drawings on the walls of her studio in the art scene, as well as at the record shop. She priced me stuff higher, and they didn't sell often, but I kept busy with commissions from the record shop and personal contacts, and occasionally online. While I built my name as an artist online, having works hanging locally in the studio and the music shop, got attention from local people. One guy became a collector of my works, buying four drawings. Another couple bought one, then went on to commission eight more. Return customers are big in selling art, I learned.
-Unfortunately, my blog posts about the economy and managed to piss off some of the good ol' boys in that area. The people who run North Carolina really don't believe in the whole freedom of speech idea, you know, that right that all Americans have because we simply exist. Hey, The South is still The South in many ways, so I got a lot of pressure put on me, and wound up leaving Winston-Salem and catching a bus as far as I could afford to, which happened to be Richmond, Virginia. Richmond has a ton of murals, and a larger, and more spread out, group of art scenes, than Winston-Salem. I had to really struggle to survive while in Richmond, still homeless, but I kept drawing daily, and sold most of my drawings on Facebook, though 3 or 4 wound up in Richmond galleries.
This "Tainted Love/Harley Quinn/Joker drawing is my personal favorite of the 100+ original drawings I've done from 2015-2020. I did it for the Earshot Music show, but it it didn't sell. I planned to keep it for myself, but wound up having to sell it cheap, in Richmond, to get a motel room, after a 7 day hospital stay, due mostly to being given a medicine I turned out to be really allergic to.
In April of 2019, an old friend from the BMX world paid my way back to California, and gave me a room to stay in. The plan was to help him promote, and drive traffic to, a new online business he had started. Ultimately, that turned into a job that really needed a full scale digital marketing firm to accomplish. I wasn't the right guy for that job, and we didn't have the budget needed for the quick and big results required. With no real income, I went back out to the streets, this time "back home," in the L.A./Orange County area. I lived in SoCal, mostly in and around Huntington Beach, for 21 years, most of my adult life. I still making some money drawing, but not enough to rent a room full time, and really get a business off the ground. Being homeless through most of this time period, I just wasn't able to raise money to actually start a business, stabilize my life, and get on to more and better work. I've done drawings mostly for other people, while doing an idea of mine when I could find the time. This drawing of Biggie was a photo I wanted to draw for quite a while, and finally did. It sold in a few days.
Biggie Smalls, The Notorious B.I.G., lookin' Brooklyn, in this famous shot that I drew. This is another of my personal favorites of all the drawings I've done.
Four years after I committed to do whatever it took to start making money with my Sharpie art, I'm still not actually making a living. On the other hand, I'm back in California, I have this huge body of work that I've done, nearly all online where anyone can check it out, and friend from years past has let me stay in a spare bedroom for a while, giving me a chance to take things to the next level. I haven't even begun promote my work in Southern California, I'm still unknown here, outside the old School BMX world. Along the way, I got really good at content creation, and pretty good at marketing online and on social media platforms.
Four years ago, I would never have imagined selling as many drawings as I actually have.
On one hand, you can write me off and say, "Hey, Steve's just some loser who draws other people's photos, and is too lazy to get a "real job." You can say that because these last four years have not been financially successful for me, and I've spent most of the time homeless. Keep in mind, I started without a dime, in a small town in rural North Carolina. It wasn't a hotbed of the art world.
Or, you can check out nearly all of my drawings in these 23 posts ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 the later ones are best) on my personal blog, and you can see why I am now known for being a Sharpie artist. You can search "Steve Emig Sharpie art" or my main hashtag, "#sharpiescribblestyle" on Google images. Or search the hashtag on Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter. Over four years, I slowly, but steadily, built a new reputation as a pretty good, and completely unique Sharpie artist. I didn't build that reputation by drawing 100 Sharpie pictures. I built that reputation through content creation, in blogs and using social media. AND... I actually sold over 80 original pieces, and over 100 copies of my work. Not a lot of artists can say that. I managed to make that happen, even in ridiculous conditions.
When it comes down to it, I sold 80 major pieces of art, most that took a week or more, each, to draw. I did that because I made a commitment to do it, and every day I did the work needed to survive that situation I was in, focus most of my time on creating something, and then promoted myself and my work in my blog, and on other platforms. I created content, day after day, to show what I could do, and I asked people if I could draw them something.
My situation is still super sketchy (no pun intended) financially. But now I have a huge body of work. It's online, and on social platforms, where people can easily see it and check it out. I've sold the majority of the pieces I've created, including most of the ones I originally did for myself. I'm a much better artist, technically, then I was four years ago. I'm in a much better physical location, for me, Southern California compared to Kernersville, North Carolina, than I was four years ago.
Four years ago, I started drawing pictures, without a dime to my name, living in an absolutely horrible situation, in a place I couldn't stand to live, and these 100+ drawings are what I have to show for four crazy years. I can live with that.
It's safe to say, nearly everyone reading this is in a better situation, with more resources, than I was in back in late 2015. My question to you is, what can you do in four years, if you focus on what's really important to you?
I'm looking for places to workshops to teach how I managed to sell 80 pieces of art, and how you can use my ideas to help you sell your artwork. If you're interested in a workshop, or know a good (and super cheap) place I could do a workshop, email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com , or hit me up on Facebook (Steve Emig).
I'm looking for places to workshops to teach how I managed to sell 80 pieces of art, and how you can use my ideas to help you sell your artwork. If you're interested in a workshop, or know a good (and super cheap) place I could do a workshop, email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com , or hit me up on Facebook (Steve Emig).
No comments:
Post a Comment