Artistic Life Choices

            The day after ConBravo!, a friend of mine commissioned a chainmaille shirt – the catch being that he wanted the shirt for an event that was next weekend. Because of the time required, both for production and for the materials to arrive, this posed an interesting challenge. Luckily, I had a few advantages in this situation: I had enough materials on hand to start the shirt, I have Colleen working with me to make chainmaille, and we both are making chainmaille full time.

            This got me thinking about the difference between people who are artists as a hobby and artists who are making a living off their art (or trying to, at least). The challenge with making money through art is getting paid for your time. That’s the biggest problem with every form of art – there is a lot of time involved. It has to be a labour of love.

            The result is that many artists undercharge for their work, because not many people are willing to pay even $200 for a painting with eighty hours of work in it. Yes, there a few people who will, but even if that painting is sold, the artist is only getting paid $2.50 per hour, and no one can live off of that.

            So, most artists use their art as a hobby, some of them making money on the side, while working a full time job. This limits their time to produce art, but it also provides them with a secure income. They can charge less for their work if they want to, but they don’t have as much freedom when it comes to rush orders.

            On the other hand, there are full-time artists – few and far between. They (or we) need to make a living off of what they sell, so they have to charge for the time invested in their products. Unfortunately, this means that prices are higher, but it also means that they have a lot more time to hone their craft, which in turn means more speed during production. The costs get lowered a bit, but still stay fairly high for larger projects.

            Chainmaille shirts are very large projects. I first started making chainmaille as armour. When I look back at the first shirt I sold, I am appalled that I sold it for $160. The materials alone cost $100, which means I was making about $1-2 per hour. On the other hand, I was still learning my craft and I was a high school student on summer holidays with no job.

            When I started looking into making chainmaille for a living, branching out into jewellery was almost mandatory. It’s simply because there are more people who will spend $15 on a bracelet that cost $3 in materials and took an hour to make than who will buy a chainmaille shirt for $600 that costs $120 in materials and took 40 hours to make. Especially when you can get one that was made with slave labour for $150 on EBay.

            Nevertheless, armouring is what I truly love about my art, so when opportunity knocks, I’ll answer. Here, being a professional artist pays off. The armour was needed within a time limit. There probably aren't any people out there with full time jobs that could make a full chainmaille shirt in under two weeks. My wife and I managed it in five days (well, six, but two of them were more like half days).

            Technically the shirt still needs a little more work on it that will have to wait until after the event – unfortunately my supplier was busier than usual and the materials for finishing it won’t arrive on time (the worst part is there’s only a few more hours of work to put into it). However, the shirt was complete enough and fully functional in time for the event – and if the materials had shipped when they normally would have, it would've been complete with all the bells and whistles as well.

            I was silly enough to hand off the shirt prior to getting a picture of it in its neo-complete form, however here’s what it looked like with 15 hours of work in it. It now has 42 hours and is much, much longer.

            Now, I don’t want you to take out of this that full time artists are better than part-time artists. We’re just a bit crazier and usually a bit hungrier. All arts are labours of love and deserve respect, attention, and purchasing.

            My instinct says I should end this blog with something along the lines of “Support artists”, but since you’re here and reading this, I don’t really need to, do I? You’re here because you support my chainmaille, my writing, or both – at least, I assume you do, otherwise I've got no idea why you could possibly be here.

            So, instead I’ll finish with saying, thank you for supporting artists. Especially me ;)

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.