Hello, creatives, fellow designers, and anyone reading this. I am an artist and illustrator and even as I write this I have a hard time accepting it as truth. So time for a bit of self reflection on what it means and has meant to me to be those things.
When I started my career my goal was a simple one to keep art and design at the forefront of my life and career. I was an artist who had, and still has if I’m being honest, a massive inferiority complex. How do you compete with so many talented people? In the end, it was the largest reason why I initially went into photography over other art forms it felt like the best way to be artistic and keep my foot in the art world. The problem with that was I wasn’t really booking photography jobs, I wasn’t marketing myself and over time my day job took over and as a result, I wasn’t able to fulfill my creative needs.
As I continued in my retail career I continued to feel like something was missing so after doing some research I landed on graphic design as a way to be more creative but hopefully more marketable or employable. After finishing a program in graphic design I started looking for jobs but was finding it hard to find remote work, which was my first choice with young children in the home. With the pandemic that began to shift however, and I have found it much easier to find remote friendly work. I have also found my freelance practice growing and I count myself blessed to have worked with some amazing clients.
Freelancing has also allowed me to divert my time to some passion projects that I have been meaning to start for a long time, like a blog. I have also opened some shops for my illustrations and photography which hopefully will grow with time.
Being creative and growing your career is hard. So let me leave you with this, search out artists and creatives and please support them in any way that you can. If you can buy their work or hire them please do, if that is not an option then follow their socials and like their work (because that is a huge help too). Also don’t just follow biggest and best (by that I mean those with the highest follower counts), find an artist with talent who doesn’t have a lot of followers and support them too!
As always thank you for taking the time to read 💚. Know that I appreciate you and wish you all the luck in the world in your creative endeavors.
Thank you so much for joining me on my journey.
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Carolyn Sehgal 