I got a day job, it’s the best fucking thing in the world. Not that the work itself makes my soul glow or anything, it’s actually kind of dull, but the people that work there are awesome and there’s no scary pressure.

I’m probably the oldest person there who isn’t a supervisor though, which kind of has an air of defeat to it, but it made me realise a lot of things.

I never dreamt of making money from doing art, it just started happening, which was amazing, I’ve worked with some awesome brands, and still do, but the work isn’t the same as it used to be an nor are the budgets. When money gets tight and all you do is draw for a living, you fall into a trap of taking on shit jobs or doing things you don’t want because you need to eat, and the thing that was once fun to you gets turned into the most boring shit ever, luckily this hasn’t happened to me for a ages.

I’ve survived on illustration for a while, but I’ve always ever thought of myself as an artist who uses the medium of illustration, not an illustrator. My style is really niche, which doesn’t make me compatible for a lot of projects, which is why I’ve swayed away from joining an illustration agency or anything like that for as long as I have. I don’t want to be ‘compatible’, I don’t give a fuck, I could probably draw you a horse, but I don’t want to draw you a fucking horse, and I don’t want to have to draw you a horse because I’m hungry or have bills to pay.

Nor do I want to make giclee prints and t-shirts, which is a bit of a hypocritical statement considering that that’s all my webstore consists of, but I’m trying to making physical art objects, not just reproductions for money.

I went to ad school because I thought I could put my ‘creativity’ to good use, I thought being able to use creativity within the realm of advertising meant you were some higher art being. I learnt a lot from school, but in the end my heart wasn’t in it, I felt like a failure after that because I had put all my eggs in one basket hoping that advertising was the next step for me. Originally I put it down to self sabotage, it wasn’t though, I didn’t like advertising for the same reasons I didn’t like drawing things I didn’t like, I couldn’t make myself give a shit about things I didn’t give a shit about, it was that simple.

It sounds like my ego is ruining my life, which is probably true, which is why I do things outside of my comfort zone occasionally, but the bullshit notion about comfort zones is that sometimes you just actually don’t like certain situations.

It’s not that I hate making money, it’s just that I hate compromising for the sake of money, I’m beginning to realise now that I want to keep the art side of things, the part that keeps me sane, as far away from money as possible right now, which is why I love my fucking day job so much, because I can get paid there, come to the studio at night, work on new art and not have to worry about ‘Is this going to make any money?’ etc. It’s actually one of the most liberating things ever.