October recap
What the spooky month had in store for me
Hey everyone,
and Happy Halloween! 🎃 October is almost history, and I’d like to do a quick recap of the month before we go all dark & cozy for November.
Lines book status update
Yesterday, I was able to export the very final print file for the Lines book. Now it’s out of my hands until I get the delivery of 470 books total. Shipping them all by hand will be another task, but I’m actually looking forward to some hands on work.
If you’re late for the Kickstarter, but would still like to preorder the book, you can do so on Indiegogo.
It’s been tough to squeeze this book into my already packed schedule, but also an incredibly rewarding process. Rewarding in terms of how much I enjoyed doing this, not so much the financial side. I’ll do a fully transparent financial recap on Patreon after all bills are paid.
I’d like to promise to myself that I will try to work on another book project in 2024 as well. Let’s see if I can keep it 😊
Freelance projects
End of year coming closer also usually means: more freelance offers! And this year makes no difference. I’m currently trying to curate and organize projects I want to schedule for November and December. It’s a luxury problem to have, and I’m grateful to have it for several years in a row now.
Here’s some of the projects I worked on recently:
2 weeks ago I shared a work-in-progress of this illustration I made for Cyrano Communication Agency, here’s the finished piece now! It’s been printed into their magazine already.
For Universal Music, I’m working on an album cover (which will be part of a bigger scene). It’s for their Lofi collective Lola - here’s an early scribble of the project, and of course I’ll share more about this further down the process!
The rest is just really good, old meetings, writing quotes, negotiating timelines and budgets right now.
Freelancing vs. Building your brand
To round off this newsletter, I’d like to ramble for a moment about focus as a freelance artist. There’s been so many opportunities coming up in the last weeks, both for freelance work as well as for building my own brand through social media and selling products.
I always tell beginner artists who ask about building their brand and business: diversify income streams! However, it can be so hard to
curate opportunities
keep the focus + not burn out if you want too much at once
(plus dealing with the FOMO if you pass on something..)
Even after many years of working in this industry, I find all these points challenging. Working on the Lines book, where I forced myself to really keep my schedule clear for the core work, (re-)opened my eyes on how important focus and structure are.
So one of October’s learnings is: Diversify to build your brand and niche, but instead of building the roof of the house first, build it pillar by pillar. 🏛
Have a great November ahead, and if you’re maybe in Amsterdam for MET & Breakpoint, I wish you lots of fun! I actually was about to come over, but Covid cancelled that plan for me 😥
See you soon, cheers!
Stefan
Such great advice at the end and loved the honesty about freelancer's life.