We think the world needs more artists, more creatives and more folks unwilling to spend their days as a cog in a giant corporate machine. We don’t necessarily dislike cogs or machines but we think the world clearly needs more artists and creatives and so we wanted to try to figure out how more artists can make it work financially since this is one of the major obstacles blocking so many artists and creatives from pursuing their art full time. So, we asked folks who have been able to make a full time living through their creative work, how they did it.

AnnMarie Young

The day after I graduated college was the day I started working and living as a full time artist. I walked the stage in my cap and gown, then the very next day I was on a flight to Alaska to live out of a cabin and paint in the woods for a full summer. I told myself I wanted to give it my best shot with 100% effort before trying to find a “real job” to support myself. Lucky for me it has been over a year later I have been able to support myself as a full time artist. It began with the mindset shift that I was going to be an artist. I had to start telling people that was my job, which was harder than I thought it would be. Prior to this I would just say I was looking for a career in the arts, whether that be education, museums, galleries, etc. However the truth was I just wanted to be a painter. Once I started telling this to myself and to others, it became real. Read more>>

Max Riehn

I do make a full time living from my creative work. I own and operate a commercial photography studio in Fort Lauderdale. It was both a long and short process depending on how you look at it. It took about 15 years of doing jobs I knew I wasn’t passionate about until I found photography and videography in my early 30s. This included multiple attempts at starting other businesses with zero business degree or experience. Read more>>

Mark Siegel

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to make a living solely from my creative work. That being said, it has taken years of fine tuning areas of my artistry that has made it more broadly marketable in the entertainment industry. While I started as a touring musician who had the absolute privilege of seeing the world with several different artists, I knew that if I wanted to have a successful or more importantly “sustainable” business as a creative, I would need to be able to offer more than just one talent or “service”. Read more>>

Kayli Hessler-Gonzalez

I find my situation very unique. I am a cake designer full time, where I make wedding cakes, and other special occasion cakes, but I am also an actor. Both have found their way to keep me afloat, so I am very lucky to say that I get to do what I love for work full-time. I know I don’t make millions, and I probably never will, but that’s absolutely okay with me knowing that I am filling my life with things that give me joy and fulfillment. Read more>>

Daniel Castro

I have been able to earn a full time living from my creative work, thankfully. There’s not a shortage of people who love good food here in Austin. I started out as a line cook at Uchiko here in Austin. I worked my way up as a sushi chef, and it was the perfect segue to becoming a personal chef and even I didn’t know it at the time. I was going to leave around March of 2020, but SXSW got cancelled because of COVID and we knew that it was getting real. Thankfully, the company was busy enough to give me a job and it allowed me to meal prep in people’s homes as well, to build a portfolio, per se. Read more>>

Arisa Kusumi Sullivan

I began my career as a performer. Making a full-time living as a performer in the US is very difficult, especially for anyone just starting out. I was fortunate to obtain my first job as an opera singer in Germany, which is a unique haven for performers, because arts organizations receive subsidies from the government and can therefore offer a living wage with benefits to the full-time performers they hire. Read more>>

Bryce McNally

As a tattoo artist it is common for people to romanticize the life style. the first thing they think is “I bet they make a killing” and while this can sometimes be true its not always the case. Any artist starting out no matter who you are or what you are doing you’re going to struggle. when I started it was no different, for the first year of my career I almost lost my car and living arrangements. I quickly learned how to survive on almost nothing, but such is the life of an artist. Over the next few years things slowly got better as my artwork improved and became an established artist. Read more>>

Elle Taylor

As an entertainer self promotion is key the more you are visible within your community and hold your craft the easier it is to find jobs over the years I have worked around the world performing for audiences it is through my dedication and persistence that I have been able to continue doing this for 18 years and see no signs of stopping Read more>>

Melodie Campbell

Yes I have. And it wasn’t hard but it wasn’t easy either. Learning how to run a business is very important but sometimes you have to learn from experience. I didn’t know certain rules and guidelines so I made some costly mistakes. Learned some hard lessons but I still managed to keep myself successful at not needing to go back to the “9-5 job” Read more>>

Kelley Wills

As of this year I have been able to earn a full time living from my creative work. It was a long winding road to get here but I think that has been a big part of developing a more unique style. The journey really started in college, around 2012 I made my first show poster for a friends band. I drew the whole design in hand with colored pencil. As more poster opportunities came up I slowly started to use photoshop. I would draw the design in pencil, trace over it with a micron pen then scan the design into photoshop and add color, it was quite the process. Read more>>

Clémentine Desseaux

Very good question. It’s important to understand that living off your creative work is a process, and it’s a hard choice because it puts you in an unstable, unsure, and always evolving state. I started modeling as a hobby (a couple times a year for pocket money) when I was in university at around 19 or 20 years old back in France where there wasn’t really a market for my size. I never thought about it as a full time career at that point. A few years later, I moved to the US and my little hobby turned into something that could potentially be more. Read more>>

Cooper Nigut

I’ve been very fortunate to earn a full-time living from my creative work. I knew my whole life I’d likely end up in a creative role. All my life I’d been doodling, creating, writing, and more, always dabbling in passion projects. Fortunately I took on a social media marketing internship for my first foray into the professional world, which allowed me to write fun copy and come up with cool, visually appealing content for my clients’ social media platforms. This kind of naturally evolved into doing more high-produced creative and content strategy for larger companies in more of a project-management and strategy role. Eventually I decided to pivot and take on more hard creative work and production myself. Read more>>

Wade Thompson

For the past few years I have been fortunate to be working full time as a creative. It has been a very long process to get to this point in my life to be honest. I have attempted to go full time as an artist about 3 or 4 times. Every time I would recommit to doing it and would inevitably end up having to get some kind of job to pay the bills. All the same, each attempt I learned a lot about how to conduct and run myself as a business and each time I would recommit those attempts would go a bit further and earn me a little more than the last time. Read more>>

MJ0.6

First and foremost making a living off anything you doing is an accomplishment that not very many people get to receive so I am very grateful for this but knowing what I know now I would tell my younger self to have confidence. Earlier in my career I felt I needed someone to make me successful whether it was a manager, a producer, or even a camera when in reality all I ever need was my own creativity. Covid saved me in a sense seeing as I was stuck at home for days on end I had all the time in the world to explore my own creativity, didn’t have money for the studio no problem I became my own producer through trial and error because there’s always a way if want to succeed. Read more>>

Sarah Nelson

I do earn a living from my creative work, but it has been a wobbly journey! I knew I wanted to be a full time artist, but as I was graduating from university with a pile of debt it honestly never seemed possible. I started as a flight attendant, and then became a barista, which better allowed for time outside of work to create and build a presence as an artist within my community! As a barista, I met so many people! Many were business owners or other creatives, who later became clients or displayed my work in their spaces. These connections eventually gave me enough momentum to quit and launch into full time creative work with a print shop! I will never forget what my partner said, “You can always go back. If you do, you are exactly where you are now, which isn’t bad.” Read more>>

Diana Zapata

I am currently earning a full-time living from my creative work. It was slow progress to get to where I am and I certainly feel like there is still a long road ahead, but I remember dreaming of the days that I’d be able to live the life I currently live and it makes it all worth it. The process from day one, I’d say involved a lot of patience and dedication. Being open to exploring different paths within my field to get to a point where I’d feel comfortable living out of my craft. I started photography part-time, only taking in a few clients every year, and I think that finding the right people along the way helped me build a network that would eventually support me. Read more>>

Christos Perry

Yes I have been able to earn a full time living from my creative work! Its tough some days but its definitely doable. I started out like any other young creative fresh out of art school. I had to get a regular job to pay the bills and get by. Each day after work I would start my second job which was freelance. If I had known what I know now I would’ve been a lot more open to collaborating with others earlier on in my career as opposed to working on projects by myself. Read more>>

Beat Thief Inc

Luckily enough for me, I have had the opportunity to turn my crafts into a full-time living. I make most of my income from creative consultations on retainer, poster and album designs, logo and branding concepts for some of the most unique companies in their industry. I also play music gigs on the weekends and special events/festivals which help provide more income and network my skills. I started out of the trunk of my car, literally door to door, in a city where I was a nobody. Read more>>

Chelsea Beckton

I have not been able to earn a full-time living off of my creative work. Something that I wish I would have focused on a lot earlier is learning the game behind social media. CDAAP’s biggest platform is Instagram, and I was able to grow it to where it is now due to studying how others grew their social media, as well as how the algorithm works and changes each year. Doing research about this earlier, and as thorough, could have probably pushed my content further, however I’m very appreciative of where I am and who supports the business. Read more>>

Rumwolf Rumwolf

“How do I earn a full time living as a creative?” This question was first pondered by an unknown artist about 27 seconds after money was invented. In the years since, many an overactive mind has tried to crack this existential nut. Some precious few have been wildly, famously successful. Many, many more have failed completely and totally. Most of us fall somewhere in between those extremes. For me making money as an artist has been been obsession of mine for almost 20 years. It’s probably the defining challenge of my adult life. Read more>>

Benjamin Meehan

As of January 2022, I am a full-time content creator. It took nearly 4.5 years of investment of my time and finances, among many other sacrifices. I knew what potential my content had, so I wanted to push through the discouraging times. With my niche, plenty of traveling, lots of out-of-pocket expenses, and sacrificing of my social life was and often still is necessary. For events catered to my content, I would regularly have to take time off of my 9-to-5 to attend and document. Read more>>

Frewuhn

Being a full-time artist is like taking a can of paint and spattering it on wall, it can be both a masterpiece and mess. My path has come with seasons of plenty and some dry ones, but I think I’m still designing what that living means. My practice in education whether as a teacher or student, has been crucial to my creative work. I have come to find the right balance of work that feels like play keeps the curiosity for more learning, and trusting that your process is yours keeps it steady. Read more>>

Beth Speer

The career of a Full-time artist is so romanticized in our culture that there are sayings we all know like “do what you love and the money will follow” or even, my favorite, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”. And, to that last one especially, I call BS. There is work involved in making a profitable business, always, and that work took me about 3 years of focused dedication and business building to be able to make art as a living supporting a family full time. I did that work outside my career as an art educator, on nights, weekends, and in pockets of time. Read more>>

Kristen McBride

I have been able to earn a full-time living by creating custom artisan designs for interior and exterior residential and commercial clientele for the past 2.5 years. Working with Epoxy as a medium for 15 years (as a hobby) has been a huge benefit in all of this. I never would have thought my Artwork would pursue into my career. You always hear the saying “Starving Artist” and it starts to stick with you in believing it will always just be a hobby. I am here to say that statement is false and to always follow your dreams in any field of work. Read more>>

Tenita Johnson

I thought I’d work in traditional journalism and retire from a high-end newsroom. With a Bachelor of Journalism, my plan was to be a reporter and/or copy editor for a newspaper, work my way up to editorial director and eventually start my own magazine. Well, we see the state of the newspaper and magazine industry today. It’s almost obsolete, to say the least. Instead, I found myself working for 10+ years as a contractor for several companies in their corporate communications department or performing internal communications roles for companies such as Volkswagen/Audi, Mercedes Benz Financial Services and DTE Energy. Read more>>

Imani Brown

The ability to earn a full time living from creative work is the hardest part of the creative entrepreneur journey. You have to stay faithful to the journey, you really have to be okay with knowing at moments things will be overwhelmingly hard and some moments you will be overwhelmed with the amount of success. There are so many highs and lows of being full time in this industry. From day one I just knew that I had to really hustle to make it happen and remain hungry for it at all times, and throughout that process I have really had to make sure that my mental was just as strong if not stronger than my determination to win, because it can get you down at times if you stop trusting the path you’re on. Read more>>

Christian Stanley

July of 2022 marked a year since I left my 9-5 job and dove into our mural business (C. Stanley Creative) full time. I often get asked by other artists how we made this happen, and it certainly did not occur overnight. In the Fall of 2018 I was selected for my first public art piece, which was an electrical box in Ivanhoe Village, Orlando, Fl. With that ounce of experience in public art, I was able to land a spot at the 2019 Sam Flax Wall Mural Project. In the years between then and now, the projects began to snowball as more people learned about us and my artwork. Read more>>