One Reason Why Illustrators must Charge What they Charge-Product Fail!

It seems to me  I am the only illustrator who FAILS so easily at product development. Part of my struggle is my passionate desire to work in more than one medium. I feel there's two kinds of illustrators in this world, those who do their one thing, painting on a flat surface, or digitally or both, and those who move effortlessly from clay, to cloth to paper and computer.

I don't fit in either of those categories.

But maybe other illustrators don't either. A lot of failed attempts go into my work, probably because I see my work not only on paper, but on cloth, clay and fiber and wood. I do not know if it's my ADD attention issue that creates what I feel is a slow learning curve, or whether all the other illustrators, especially those with vlogs also suffer the same kind of fails but the flops aren't shared for all to see. The picture above is what happened this morning.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

I'm working on pins and ornaments for my second Etsy shop to upload for the holiday season.  Not wanting to throw out  (not good for environment) or invest time in giving a block of Prosculpt that's been kicking around my studio for ten years, I opted to use it up. I carefully sliced out shapes to bake in my polymer clay-dedicated oven- ( I advise baking in oven you use for food), once baked I would paint and add backs. Well. the oven dial to turn on the oven had broke. Luckily engineer husband fixed it. But I lost valuable time to work on this project and it was shelved a week to this morning. Today,, I followed the packet instruction, walked away for a few minutes and there you have it, smoke filled the kichen and all my pins were ruined.

Why does the universe do this to me? Why can't I experience a smoother process that other illustrators seem to enjoy?  Or am I assuming I'm the only one who flunks royally? Even if I"m not alone in this department, my frustration illuminates how much time is invested in what an artist needs to create the end product. Nothing happens over night for any of us, we went to school, or if self-taught–invested a lot of time and money developing our work to a professional level, and this level is organic, we're always learning, always improving, just like Doctors need to keep up on meds, engineers must be trained to use new equipment. Our sketchbooks are our training ground.

So this is why illustrators and artists can't sell their art for a price that doesn't cover the invested time or cost of medium. The price you pay ensures we too are sustainly employed.

Thank you for hearing me. If you'd like to visit some of my favorite Illustrator vlogs please click the links below, these three women give an open-eyed view of all that goes on in the life of a working illustrator, I highly recommend these informative and entertainingYoutube channels.

Frannerd:
https://www.youtube.com/user/frannerd13

Katnipp:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Katnipp

Holly Exeley
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQRpKldwdkyBW3qgCVZNrMA