Lion

Thank you...it was very masklike. I was afraid of doing art just for myself & not my mask business, so I approached it as if it was a study for a mask I might make.

Do you feel guilty if you draw something that you can't relate to your business?

"Do you feel guilty if you draw something that you can't relate to your business?"

lol...oh boy do I ever! I'm very driven & serious about my work, so I have a hard time justifying work that I do "for fun".

I'm better at balancing now, though. It's important to do things you like, in order to re-charge your creativity. That's why I love making/looking at fan art...it's just so much fun.

I've done my art as a business before, but I have no talent for marketing and took a considerable loss instead... Instead, I love doing contests and find that they keep me creative and reinventing my concepts and techniques.

Comments, contests & the like are a TON of fun. I get that kind of positive input from forums like this (this is my first...never had a DevArt account but always thought about it), or like my LiveJournal. It's just great to be able to communicate with other artists & get feedback.

Making a career out of your art, though...that's a challenge. Your success is only 50% due to your talent. The other 50% has to be business acumen & self-promotion skills, plus the ability to be stubborn and single-minded.

Your work is so wonderful, and SO few people can do what you do. Really, turning to a career in art just makes sense, once you come up with a business plan for yourself.

I haven't really seen any mask artwork on dA, so you'd definitely bring something new and different to the mix.

I actually plan to write for a living. As much as I like painting and drawing, I really like telling a story and developing characters even more. I'm so very much "creation" oriented and it doesn't really matter which medium it's in.

It's nice to meet someone else who also seems to be the same way.