Mischelle Moy: How did you make the leap to becoming a full time artist?

Gemma O’Brien – Artist, Designer, Illustrator – I did have a day job at first. When I first went out on my own I got another part-time job selling flowers at the markets because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to support myself solely through freelance work. Looking back now, the best thing I learnt through this period was that when you aren’t busy you have more freedom to experiment and create what you really want.

Amber Vittoria – Illustrator – My journey towards working for myself involved a lot of support, both emotionally and financially, from others. The ability to move home for a year after graduating college, to have my parents cover majority of my loans, and to have parents with patience as I figured out who I wanted to be as a creative, were crucial for me. I worked full-time as a designer and art director for 5-6 years while freelancing as an illustrator on nights and weekends, saved as much as I could, and built my freelance work up to a point where I could no longer do both without cutting into my time for sleep. With this all said, there is no wrong path to become a full-time artist; everyone’s backgrounds emotionally and financially are very different, and if you’re reading this and still a bit thrown on what to do, please feel free to email me, and I can try my best to listen and help.

Jet Martinez – Artist – For me, it hasn’t been one large leap, but rather a series of small hops. Little skips. I worked in food service for about 15 years from high school, through college and art school. To this day, I don’t want to know what anyone is eating or going to eat. Over it. Eventually I tried and succeeded in getting a job with a mural company. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a “mural company”, but when I found out about some in my area I worked as a studio painter with a couple companies for about 5 years. I worked on wallpapers, murals and faux finishing for casinos, high end homes and the like.

This time was really important for my personal development because it was a complete switch in what I was doing with my actual time. Even though I wasn’t exclusively working for myself, I was working full time as an artist. My days looked different. Rather than “working in studio in the morning, going to the bar/ restaurant to work, then working in studio at night, repeat”, my days look like “go to studio, paint, go to studio, paint, repeat”.



Being able to have a creative day job allowed me to stay in the flow. I spent most of my free time in studio or working on street pieces and small mural commissions. When I eventually transitioned to doing my work full time, I had a pretty good understanding of how to run a working studio and had developed good painting habits, like painting all the fuggin time. Understanding what the high end companies charge for projects also allowed me to value my own work in relation to, say, a company with 30 years experience.

Aaron De La Cruz – Artist – My day job was in the the education field. I was teaching and doing professional development with schools that had no permanent art classes. I had been doing this for ten years before I went full time with my own work. But five years into teaching I was balancing both doing my art and teaching and it got to the point where it made more sense for me (financially) for me to do my art full time. This was the same time I was becoming a father so that was stressful.

Alja Horvat – Illustrator – I started freelancing while I was still attending the university, so my parents were still kinda supporting me financially and that’s why it’s been so much easier for me. I was freelancing for one year and half, before I was able to support myself 100%.

Estee Preda – Illustrator – I come from a DIY filmmaking background so I didn’t start illustrating until I was in my late 20s. By then I had already figured out how to make it by with my work so trading mediums wasn’t too big of a challenge. What really helped me is that I decided to isolate myself in a cabin in the woods where my rent was really low and where I could focus on building this new endeavor.

Sarah Maxwell – Illustrator – It sort of happened quite quickly. After graduating I spent a lot of time trying to develop my work, and began to submit my portfolio to various online publications and websites. Not long after did I start seeing features of my work, and got a wave of emails asking for interviews. A lot of clients starting coming to me directly asking for commissions, due to this spotlight from media and a large Instagram following. I’ve been really fortunate because even from the beginning I’ve always had a large workflow coming in, so freelancing was easy for me to pick up.