Sign up to disable those pesky ads. Lexy, your work is stunning. As someone whom can barely scrawl a stick man onto an A4 piece of paper, my praise won't count for much, but you have me amazed nonetheless. I'd love to discuss something semi-business-related with you; would you perhaps have any time on your hands for a custom project in the not-so-distant future?
Thank you! Sounds interesting...! Sure thing, I have plenty of free time at the moment... please do let me know what's on your mind.
Thanks Just thought I'd show you guys the current state of my work area. This is semi-'tidy' because even though I've got two separate Alice in Wonderland projects under the antistatic cover and stuff piled just everywhere else there's still about a square foot of space to work with, haha. It gets cleaned up often though. Tonight I need to use the lightbox for half an hour or so, so it'll all be cleared off and cleaned. This room did have a large two door wardrobe in it, now it's a large 2 door repository for spray paints, inks, and varnishes. XD The stuff on the right is a massive pile in bags of hairs, mohairs, faux furs and vintage stuff collected to make hair and fur on the sculpts... the stuff on the left is boxes filled with craft wire for armatures, polymer clay, cottons and threads, and a LOT of Citadel and acrylic paints. All the beads, stones, cloth, accessories, feathers, jewellery and all that stuff for using on artworks is too much for in here so it has to go in a different room taking up three cupboards to itself.
AAAAAWWWWW! Sooooo Cute! He's soo adorable Lexy. Make me want to hug the little guy. Is that a moogle by the way Lexy?
Thanks :3 He is a moogle, yeah... his name is Artemicion, he recurs in several of the FF games, but I liked his design in FFIX, so I used that one for this sculpt. I want to make Stiltskin next, he's another recurring moogle character, the one with knapsack and the camo hat. XD
Cool. I never played the final Fantasy games but I have played Kingdom Hearts and they have the very cute MOOOGGGLLLEEESSSSSSS! Oops. Sorry. Got carried away there. But I would love to see the other one when you're done Lexy.
Simply beautiful Lexy. Wow. I'm just blown away by your beautiful art work. Wish that I could do something like that. Keep up the beautiful work Lexy.
Thanks! I haven't really been using polymer clay for long, it's a steep learning curve! I don't always get things right straight off on the first go, but I am getting quicker at it.
Final Fantasy fans are gonna love what I've got in store next... I just realized my caterpillar made it to the front page of favorites on DA.. log in this morning to find nearly 1000 notifications on my account O.O
Although I, of course, excel at artistry (as you all know by now) I think you could be rather promising in future... oh I'm so funny. But seriously, I love your artwork - the Moogle is awesome and that caterpillar stuff is incredible. Do you sell all your artwork or is a lot of it for pleasure? EDIT: bookmarked your ebay store. Wish I had the funds for your gorgeous caterpillar but I'm sadly skint right now otherwise I'd be bidding like a crazy woman
Thanks. I'm not a huge fan of Ghost Rider myself though. Thanks Angel I sell pretty much 99% of everything that I make... I've been living in North Cornwall for about three years now, during that time I have been searching constantly for a full-time job. And there's been barely a handful of jobs in the area that I'm qualified for in all that time and I've applied for all of them and failed to get any of them. If you happen to be a Sous Chef, a qualified dentist or a qualified accountant, there must be jobs coming out of your ears down here... but if you are anything else, might as well forget it. Lots of people and hardly any work. I have to stick to my local area as well because my boyfriend who did manage to land a modest admin job uses our only car. If I ever let slip to any potential employer that I don't have my own car or use public transport, they drop me like a hot rock. I practically begged this one employer to give me a trial run at work on the buses or maybe even get dropped off by my boyfriend every morning, but once they knew I didn't have my very own car, they didn't wanna know. And they were so keen on me before they heard I used the bus. It's like a rampant prejudice round here, I swear! Public transport-using scum, lol. So ever since we moved down this way, I've been doing two of the only things I can do to make any cash, one was as a freelance artist doing book covers and webgraphics for clients online, and the other was making sculptures to sell. It doesn't make a lot of regular and reliable money, but it's better than nothing. I've pretty much lost hope of there being any jobs around here that I will manage to get, so I've put all my time and effort and training into trying to become a better artist and eventually one day I might be able to make a decent living out of it. That's the hope anyway. In a way some of the pleasure aspect has gone out of it because we've been under a lot of financial pressure just to get by. But I still enjoy doing it a lot. I guess that it's bound to happen when you take a hobby or fun activity and turn it into your job. But I'm hoping to find ways to make it pay a little better. It's all trial-and-error I guess. At this point my main goal is to be self-sufficient on it, which is still a massive mountain to climb ever since the credit crunch hit everyone's spendies. I remember back in 2008 I was making a reliable £500 a month out of my artwork doing only a few hours in between my full-time university studies. Now I struggle to make even a quarter of that in a month doing just about anything and everything I possibly can. ...That said it's always tempting to try to sell your work for next to nothing just to make a sale, especially if your sales have been poor for a while. I learned the hard way on that one. So I try to make things well and to sell them for a price that reflects the time and effort and materials that go into making it. At least the NMW for the hours and materials put in, even though people tell me I should be charging skilled wage prices for it. I'd love to do that but I'd probably sell nothing if I didn't compromise a little on it. Although my bf doesn't seem keen on the idea (but then he's never tried to run his own art business, or any business) of taking monthly installments from clients, which I'm happy to do because of the financial climate right now, which I appreciate sucks for a lot of folks, not just me.
It's got to be one of the more difficult career choices, working for yourself. But at the same time, being able to do something you enjoy for a living is enviable - I wish I could! I guess some money coming in, even if it is in installments, is indeed better than nothing at all but hopefully things will pick up for you. Where do most of your customers come from? Is there any particular part of the world that seems to buy your stuff more than any other? Perhaps that's the economical area to push for, if it's possible? I'll be keeping an eye on your Etsy and Ebay pages though - some of the sculptures in particular really appeal to me and once I have any money whatsoever I shall hopefully be able to join in the bidding. Really loved those snails, by the way - they're just so cute!