JR3Dfully Resting in Piece

Recently I've had some thoughts about my experience as an artist It's almost been 5 years since I started drawing and making comics and more recently, my career has become very sustainable from my own work. Things don't last forever and I'm sure there will be times in my career where I have to work on projects that aren't my own to earn my living but I'm very happy I've been able to find some level of success from my own stories and characters this early in my career. With that being said, I've also had some very bad experiences and I've had to turn down a lot of job opportunities in order for me to reach this point Any work I've done so far has been with the intention of reaching a point in my career where I can sustain myself from my own thoughts and ideas without having to become a content creator or sell merchandise. I wanted to solely focus on the art itself. During my career I have been reached out to by tons of writers, publishers and clients who want me to illustrate a comic for them and while some of them have been nice, for the most part it's been very bad. The bad ones all had one thing in common, it's this terrible negotiation strategy where they say something along the lines of "this is the best deal you will get" or "you will not make it on your own". I hate hearing this. Aside from it just being completely disrespectful, it made me think about why they might say that in the first place. I came to the conclusion that most publishers and writers that want to work with artists don't see your vision or belive in you at all. It's not in their best interest to try to see your future as an artist who works alone or only creates things they are passionate about, so they don't. I hate that, I love making art and regardless of how good somebody is at expressing themselves with their art or how far they are into their career, it is up to them to believe in themselves, because nobody else will. Especially people who want to hire you for their project. It doesn't mean you shouldn't accept work or you should believe those businessmen are out to get you. It's more about valuing yourself as an artist not based on what you have done, but what you know you can do, I think that's very important when deciding whether you're going to work for someone or not Obviously, people need work, and everyone isn't so fortunate that they can ignore job opportunities all the time but I hope when artists accept long term jobs that force them to delay their own personal work, it's from a place of necessity and is being used as a stepping stone to reach their destination. Sometimes I worry that then condecending tone that some people in this industry use to reel people in makes them believe that they should take the job otherwise they won't be able to make a living The number one most important thing for us artists to hold onto is passion so I hope every artist who decides to make this career makes sure to never lose sight of their actual purpose.