Ragonia - The journey so far...

A fine and dandy greeting to you, patrons and followers. Thank you for gazing upon my internet musings yet again. I hope this bloggy post finds you well upon this day.

I'm writing up my 2024 Year in Review, and tried to start it out with a look back on the years thus far, with links back to previous year's Year in Review posts.

But it turns out I've been working as an illustrator and posting on Patreon now for seven years. And the overall recap ends up being about as long as the yearly review. :o

So it deserves its own post! Before the deeper review of 2024 in Ragonia, let's look back at my career journey since I began in 2018. The year titles link to my previous Year in Review posts from each year if you'd like to read more.

At the end of each section is that year's revenue sources broken into a pie chart, so you can see how each year differed. (Revenue is the total money paid to a business before taxes and expenses.)

Enjoy!

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✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2018 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

(The previous year I had opened my Etsy shop to sell sculpey produce earrings)

In the spring I left my line-cook restaurant job to become an illustrator, but worked part time as a barista to pay the bills.

Kicked off with a wild TON of confidence, energy, motivation, and new art.

Opened my Patreon, got my Business License, Business Bank account, and got all my tax shit set up.

Immediately my laptop/only computer died and I had to invest in my first iPad to replace it. But that meant I...

Started working digitally on Procreate for the first time, and with Posca markers traditionally.

Made most of my first bits of money in watercolor commissions for friends and family, and selling handmade fruit and vegetable earrings on Etsy to mostly former coworkers. Got prints and business cards made at the only place I could think of, the Fed Ex in my neighborhood.

Bought a $300 printer, printed and cut by hand my first stickers, and hand made little sculpey pins.

Tabled first at little neighborhood Art Walks, then at Geek Girl Con - and I absolutely loved selling my art in person.

Was great at posting on Instagram, and really "played the game" - Draw This in Your Styles, Inktober, art challenges, lots of story posts, timelapse videos... I did it all.

Worked out of a hand-me-down desk in the cold corner of my apartment kitchen.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2019 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Quit my second barista job. Stole my kitchen table to use in the living room as a studio desk.

First year full-time illustration, just barely scraped by, but steadily started to gain experience, and establish my colorful early art style and interests.

Was hired for a few cool client projects, including for Snapchat, a Fall Out Boy concert, and lots of portraits.

Sold at a ton of little local markets and made very little money from it.

I still sell prints of a lot of the art I made from this year's and 2018's Inktober.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2020 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

A boosted year for income, but a very hard year emotionally.

Got my best sales in my online store, and biggest client projects and collabs, but also lots of cancellations, shop closures, and overwhelm from social media.

I was extremely distressed by covid, George Floyd's murder and learning about police brutality and systemic racism, moving home across the country, personal issues, burn out from social media, and disconnected from my art.

Spent a lot of time writing "Arty Business" Articles for my Patreon, which got a lot of traffic, but I always felt conflicted writing about when I felt like I wasn't doing well.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2021 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

My income dropped, and my social media following and engagement peaked and began dropping.

We moved back across the country to Seattle and re-established in a covid-low-priced two bedroom.

I was feeling burnt out by the optimistic, colorful, cutesy happy art brand I felt I'd established.

Began to pivot my art to focus more on nerd themes.

I finished illustrating for my first book client. Took a workshop on reworking your Patreon.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2022 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Rebranded my Patreon to Art Town and began regular art live streams. The regularity of the streams and the support from the viewer crew helped pull me out of my art funk, and move toward making the spooky weird art I liked then/now.

My family struggled with severe illness and death, but also celebrated my engagement to my partner.

My income slowly began to recover with excellent client projects, and tabling at Emerald City Comic Con for the first time and returning to Geek Girl Con.

Made art for my first indie game through Portland Indie Game Squad: Pickle Perfect.

I got very interested in horror video games and movies, and began applying that to my art.

I was diagnosed with ADHD and began taking psych meds for it, which, along with CBT strategies, hugely improved my chronic anxiety.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆ 2023 ⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

(No review that year, I was:)

Tabling at C2E2, Lightbox Expo, VanCAF, ECCC, RCCC, SeaMeow Con, and Geek Girl Con.

Discovering there is a pretty big market for spooky, Halloween, monster, and horror art!

My first year without a single client project. That year 80% of my income came from conventions, 10% from online sales, and 10% from Patreon.

Planning and executing a DIY wedding that was great except that we both got very sick with covid two days before and it changed all our plans.

Frequently live-streaming making art and playing video games on Twitch.

This was the first year I stopped using a planner and writing monthly updates, I think because I got an undated planner (that doesn't motivate me to use it at all) and I spent more time maintaining a Discord and Twitch than writing updates on Patreon.

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🚨🚨 HARD NUMBERS ZONE 🚨🚨

If you don't want to see my exact numbers for comparison/politeness/judgement/whatever reason then skip to the picture of Pumpkin! I don't mind but I understand some people find it uncomfortable.

See you later!

In writing this I've put a lot of work into cleaning up my ever-growing sheets doc I use for tracking my revenue and calculating who I owe how much money to. I finally figured out how to add some features that'll make tracking and sorting my revenue throughout the year much easier.

(I also use Quickbooks for sorting all of my revenue and expenses, and just use sheets to visualize extra data myself. But I am now fantasizing about setting up my sheets doc so well that I can cancel my $30 a month QB subscription and do ALL my own bookkeeping....... can you imagine. )

🚨 END HARD MONEY ZONE 🚨

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(Retro 2018 Pumpkin pic in my first studio space/corner of the kitchen)

So what did I learn?

I went through all my old Etsy orders to actually sort them, because I never broke out which were Portraits and which were product orders. I was surprised to see what a large percentage of my early revenue was from custom portrait orders.

Through the Revenue source pie charts I feel like I can clearly see places I can and should diversify my income, to hopefully build some resiliency into my career. I think wholesaling to small art shops would be an excellent place to start. And returning to working in portraits could a great fall back in tough times.

I was feeling bad about how much art I felt like I made in 2018 and 2019, but doing this reflection gave me some patience for myself. The pandemic was fucking crazy, making art that feels authentic and interesting to myself is hard, and also turns out I had untreated ADHD. Art productivity can wax and wane over the course of my life, it's okay.

I also felt so thankful to look back over all the people who supported me in the beginning, even if I feel now like my art wasn't great then. Because I often don't feel like my art is great now. But it doesn't matter, it's not about being great. It reminds me of the importance of supporting each other, of giving opportunities to others, of our united collective strength. And it reminds me to be grateful for each and every one of you who supports me and my art today, now, this year.

This is what I want to grow in my future, this support for the people in my community. Not just monetarily, but with collaborations, projects, events, ideas, feedback, and more. I can't do everything for everybody, but I can do more.

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I'll have more thoughts on this in my full 2024 Year in Review.

I hope you found this interesting. Maybe it inspires you to do a reflection of how far you've come, or to find some grace for the things that may have slowed your journey.

We keep moving forward.