2020 Year in Review

Hellooo Patrons and friends, and Happy New Year! 2020 is freshly behind us and...

Nope, it's March! I have a tradition of writing an overview of my past year of my career every January here on the Patreon. But this year I was moving across the country for basically all of January, and then I had two Big Boy deadlines overwhelming me for February, and anyway here we are. 

I thought about skipping writing this because 2020 was... 2020, and was obviously bad in a lot of ways. But I think there's still real value in reflecting on a year like last year. Hopefully you find this reflection useful in noticing patterns of growth and dormancy throughout a year, how much I generally get done in a month or year, as well as hearing one artist's career timeline thus far.

Very quick recap on the history of Ragonia:

• 2018 - Left my restaurant job. Made an LLC and opened a business bank account. Bought my iPad and learned digital. Started this Patreon. Grew my audience on Instagram. Had my first small art shows, small markets, and convention table. Painted a lot of custom portraits for people. Worked part time in my kitchen, part time as a barista to pay the bills. 
• 2019 - Left my barista job to give full-time Ragonia another go. Moved my studio to the living room for more space. Did my first few big client projects. Tabled at all kinds of markets, craft fairs, and conventions, to varying monetary success. Worked my first whole year doing this thing full-time.

So I entered 2020 totally jazzed to refocus my business and art, to get more client work, and to table at conventions around the country. And I was right: 2020 was great, no complaints, no problems, no stress, baby. 20/20 would Year again.

Sarcasm moment over. You know how it went. 

But I'd love to take some time to look over what happened with my business in 2020:

• January is often about catching up and renewing: Reported 2019 revenue to Seattle and Washington, Quarterly Excise tax reports, updated portfolio, renewed licenses and my LLC. Boring, but that's January!
• Opened my shop back up.
• Designed and illustrated a logo for a local business: Martha's Garden.
• Illustrated two more beer glasses for Peddler's Keep the Pint Night.
• Was emailed by an editor at a publishing company and started discussing possibly illustrating a book.

(Read more about January + February) 

• Illustrated a sample spread for the publishing company.
• Tried a new way of selling custom portraits: 5 minute doodle portraits. They were well-received and pretty fun, so I've kept it in mind for if I ever needed quick income.
• Started streaming on Twitch and became a Twitch Affiliate. I never established a regular schedule but it was fun to try a new social media platform for a while!
• Opened a PO Box so I wasn't sending my home address to every customer. xD

(Read more about January + February) 

• Coronavirus spread was detected in Seattle, my partner lost his job, and we entered lockdown along with most of the world. All conventions were postponed and then canceled. I closed down my shop. I lost a solid two weeks to pure anxiety and panic scrolling on the news. No one knew how long any of this was going to last.
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons came to soothe all of our hearts at least a little.
• In the midst of the stress, I got the book job and signed the contract.

(Read more about March) 

• Started to settle into the new circumstances by working out with videos, doing yoga, taking walks every day, and video chatting with friends frequently.
• Made a sign design for Martha's Garden, to go with their logo.
• Did a livestream talk on Developing your Art Style for my friends at Portland Indie Game Squad.
• Did an interview with tissue paper company Noissue for their blog.
• Read through the book manuscript and made a list of elements to illustrate.

(Read more about April 2020) 

• Was hired to illustrate GeekGirlCon's 2020 merch. Developed the sketches.
• George Floyd was murdered by a police officer and America erupted with Black Lives Matter protests for weeks. My productivity evaporated into another solid two weeks stress and angry scrolling on the news, trying to find any way to help or prop up the people who were doing the real, good, solid work to bring down systemic inequality in America.

(Read more about May) 

• Finished the GeekGirlCon merch designs as vectors in Affinity Designer.
• Photographed and edited product photos for dozens of products I'd been putting off listing.
• Developed a color palette and drew all the Roughs of the portraits for my book job.
• Kept learning and trying to help the BLM movement in any tiny way.

(Read more about June) 

• Reopened my Etsy shop after 3 months, mailing only once a week. The reopening was wonderful, and it felt like I had my job again after all that time. I didn't really need to shut down my shop for that long, but I was feeling absolutely emotionally overwhelmed with everything until this point.
• Finished all of the book Roughs. I set and followed a very strict schedule for myself, and it felt incredibly good to do real, focused work after months of unproductivity. 

(Read more about July) 

• My parents generously offered the opportunity for my partner and I to move into their home with them in Virginia for a few months, and after a lot of deliberation we decided to take them up on it. August was spent closing my shop again, selling and giving away a lot of our furniture, putting the rest in a storage unity, and then of course...
• Driving across the country, from Washington to Virginia, with Pumpkin, all our clothes, the essentials of Ragonia supplies and merch, and enough food to last the trip.

(Read more about August + September) 

• While we quarantined from my parents to make sure we hadn't caught the virus on the drive over, we worked on setting up the basement for the couple of months we'd be living and working there: setting up wifi, buying groceries and desks to work on, figuring out how to mail orders from my parent's rural home, etc.
• With some of the money I was saving by living with my parents I was able to finally buy and build a PC (after 3 years of using an iPad and borrowing my partner's PC!)
• Ordered art materials, restocks of prints, $1k worth of packaging supplies... all to get ready for the holiday season.

(Read more about August + September) 

• Things start to pick up again! I get a job illustrating a piece to a promote a New Belgium community event, the Render Me This Halloween art contest (basically a DTIYS with prizes.)
• Made a quick Drawtober prompt list called "Happy, Please", of 15 simple prompts about things that make you happy. I only ended up doing 4 drawings for my own prompt list, but it felt really nice to be gentle with myself this year.
• I re-illustrated all of my Rainbow Produce prints to be more in line with my current skills, and ordered print of them for the holidays. With these pieces I started experimenting with new layering and texture techniques.
• I also reformatted/illustrated 6 new greeting cards and ordered a lot for the holidays. They didn't arrive until late December, unfortunately.
• I got my second highest paying job yet, (after the book advance), illustrating printable holiday activities for HP, with a very tight turnaround. (I signed the contract and the next day turned in 2 out of 7 of the activities.) I was very proud of how these projects came out artistically, felt like a big movement forward for my art.

(Read more about October) 

• Finished all of the HP holiday activities. This was truly one of my favorite projects so far.
• Did my yearly holiday portrait commission openings, this time trying to slightly raising my price and simplifying the technique. Still haven't gotten the price to time spent balance quite right yet, but it was definitely a step closer. I especially loved how the pet portraits came out this year! I got about 23 orders for portraits.
• Designed the Produce Party sweatshirt in collaboration with Kotn Supply, with feedback from my Instagram followers on the subject matter and material. 
• Black Friday! Mailed about as many packages that weekend as in 2019: about 150. Not big growth, but still a satisfying and helpful holiday season.

(Read more about November + December) 

• Photographed and promoted the Produce Party sweatshirt, and got ~40 orders in a few days! People were so excited and nice. This tells me I can invest more in apparel in the future.
• Enjoyed the holidays with my family and partner. Started making plans and preparing to move back to Seattle in January.

(Read more about November + December) 

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2 0 2 1  I N T E N T I O N S

This year for Ragonia, I will...

• Refocus to make sure I am making art that I like, and working towards my goals, and let go whatever doesn't support that.
• Search for what I want to say with my art. Strengthen that.
• Learn more about and experiment with design, pattern, color, and composition.
• Learn from the art careers of others, instead of comparing and being hard on myself.
• Focus more on art than on social media.
• Prioritize and work toward the clients that I want.
• Make new merch that I'm excited about. (Apparel? Mugs? Socks?? Blankets???)
• Invest time in passive income streams.

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

Unlike so many others, I kept my life and my health in 2020, I kept my career and was able to work safely from home and still pay my rent and buy groceries. We quarantined hard at home for most of the year, but were able to see friends and family over the internet and then my family in person when I moved back to Virginia. As far as 2020 goes, truly I should have no complaints at all. But on the emotional and art front, I had a hard time.

You might be able to tell that I had a comparatively very unproductive year, with lots of very empty months. I lost many weeks to stress, anxiety, and moving. I didn't have markets or conventions this year and my shop was closed almost as much as it was open. One of the things that got me through this year actually making more revenue than the year was that in the years up to 2020 I had started setting up more sustainable forms of income sources: big client jobs, an online shop, and the continued support from you, my Patrons. 

It's kind of scary looking back, to see that in some ways my career really could have completely tanked. But I think this has to be the goal for freelance artists: Stability, not endless productivity. Since we unfortunately don't have workplace protections, employer provided healthcare, paid vacation or sick days... we have to plan for these things ourselves. So much of the system is set up to encourage us to struggle and just hang on week to week, asking for as little pay possible, but we have to fight against it if we can. When times are good we have to build a strong foundation for our careers, so that our careers can keep supporting us even when we're a ball of anxiety for weeks. Or sick. Or injured. Or moving. Or starting a family or traveling or buying a house or any of the things that can happen in a normal life. We have to build an art career that supports us through life, not the other way around.

To be more specific, artists have to ask for more for ourselves. We can't make busting our ass continuously and forever a business strategy. We're humans, not work/art robots. We have to keep looking for ways to trade up, from low pay/high effort to lower effort/higher pay. Continue to push to do less work, not more. I did less work than I did in 2019, but still made a little more, and I think that has to be the goal of artists. It's not lazy, it's not entitled, it's a necessity to have a stable, sustainable career in art. 

If you had a hard year in 2020, even if things were technically overall okay for you and your family, I'm there with you. It happens. You're not a failure if art or ANYTHING seemed impossible in 2020. When we're feeling better again, we can get back to building our strong foundations, so our art careers can work for us.

It takes time to build that strong foundation, and I think mine is slowly starting to be built. If it helps, here's a breakdown of all the places I made my income in 2020. The biggest share was client work, so I broke my client sources down as well. I keep close track of this to see if I'm putting my efforts into the places that are having real returns, or if there are places with promise that I need to invest more time into. Notice that Patreon was a big source of my income. Thank you thank you thank you for being a piece of my solid foundation.

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That's enough thoughts about the weird, awful, fine, and complicated 2020. I think it's good to not shy away from reminiscing on the hard years too, to see what we ended up learning and how we can take those lessons into the future. 

I hope there was something helpful for you in my reflections, and I'd love to hear yours if you're up for it:

• What's one thing you're proud of that you did in 2020?
• Did you learn anything about yourself?
• Do you have any intentions for 2021?

I'm looking forward to hearing your insights. If anything, be gentle with yourself. Sometimes the biggest achievement is to make it through. Not necessarily a better, stronger person, just through.

And I'm proud of you for that.

Thank you for being here. It's easier together.