The other day, an art friend shared her anxiety over not posting enough. She felt like her followers expected content consistently, and that she was failing them by taking time off.

Although I reassured her that her followers wouldn’t mind (even if they did, so what? She was doing it for her health, not out of laziness), it got me thinking about the relationship between creator and supporter.

Whether our supporters pay a monthly membership fee or simply click ‘Follow’, there always seems to be a sense of obligation to please them. After all, what would we be without them?

But if you’re not careful, that feeling can quickly go sour and affect your work.

Are you sabotaging yourself? 4 self-doubt traps NSFW artists and freelancers face Click To Tweet

And it’s not just your relationship with existing supporters, but future ones too. You might be setting up Patreon rewards and commission tiers intending to keep them happy, only to find yourself suffering later on. From burnout, guilt, and regret, to name a few.

The difficult part is that these things aren’t easy to spot. It’s hard to call them mistakes; if anything, they’re like traps. So, here are some I’ve noticed, and my thoughts on how to avoid them as you go about your NSFW art and freelance journey.

Content Guilt

Guilt: A feeling of shame or regret as a result of a bad action. (Note, bad)

As you grow bigger, you might find yourself feeling like you owe your audience more. Better rewards, faster replies, consistent uploads.

Don’t get me wrong, consistency is important to growing your audience, but when you upload just to upload, then your work quality and mental health will suffer.

Similar to my friend, I felt content guilt as I was building my Twitter. It seemed like everyday was going so well, that I needed to keep up the momentum and upload whatever crap I could. Even art I wasn’t happy with.

It took a while, but I slowly transitioned from impulsive uploads to scheduled uploads. Rather than posting to feel short-term pleasure, I put more emphasis on fewer-but-better works. That’s probably what my followers want to see, anyway.

Drawing to please others

The age old question: “Should I draw fanart?”

Buried in there is the assumption that fanart leads to more followers. That more people will be happy with your art because of the familiar character.

But buried even deeper is the statement: “I don’t really want to do it”.

Otherwise, why ask?

Though artists do use fanart to connect and tap into larger audiences (I always retweet fanart of my OCs, for example), your motivation can take a hit if that’s all you do.

It also leads to the bigger problem: You create the expectation that you’ll do more fanart. I know more than a few artists who dread losing their followers, and so stick to drawing what they think their audience expects to see.

A healthier solution is balancing art that gains follows, with the content you enjoy doing. Some (but not all) followers will become long-time supporters if they enjoy what you do.

It also helps to ask yourself, do you really need more followers to achieve your goals? Or do you need to focus on the few who really support you?

Fear of change

There’s a saying: “Don’t fix what’s not broken”.

The thing is, sometimes it’s hard to tell when something’s broken.

The more successful you become as an NSFW artist and freelancer, the more hesitant you can be to make changes to your process. Almost every decision will have risk. Charging more could mean less work. Changing Patreon rewards could mean losing supporters. Drawing more original content could mean losing followers.

But what about the things you could gain? Charging twice as much means half the work. Changing Patreon rewards means more time to create quality content. Drawing more original content means a happier you.

I faced the fear of change a few months ago, when I was overwhelmed by doing monthly Patreon rewards. Although I wanted to shrug it off and say a month was a lot of time, I had to overcome my ego and admit it wasn’t.

I was afraid my Patrons would complain, or withdraw their support. But in the end, my priority was to make good art for them. I couldn’t do that if I kept the monthly schedule.

So, I told them about my plans to make the reward bi-monthly, while letting them redeem better rewards. That way, we were both happy.

The more you make uncomfortable decisions, the more you’ll realize most people don’t really mind what you do. Be encouraged by this!

What decisions have you been putting off? Feel free to comment below, or join the NSFW Artists Guild to talk with other artists about it.

Unfair comparison

I’ll go on record and say that a healthy amount of comparison is important. How can we grow without having a standard to hold ourselves to?

But the issue begins when we start to compare ourselves unfairly.

• Wondering why we aren’t as good as our inspirations, when we’ve only been drawing for a year compared to their 10 years
• Becoming jealous over someone else’s successful post, when they themselves don’t even know why it blew up
• Believing we’ve failed for getting less attention than another artist who started the same time

The list goes on and on, and I’m sure you have a handful of comparison problems you’re trying to overcome.

Is unfair comparison an issue you face as an artist? Click To Tweet

I can’t say there’s a one size fits all solution, but here’s how I try to tackle unfair comparisons:

1. Start by asking if you’d make the comparison to a friend. For example, would you call your friend a failure if their art tweet gets less likes than expected?
2. Practice compassion, and allow yourself to see ‘failures’ as opportunities to learn. Instead of beating yourself up for a bad drawing, try again to correct your mistakes.
3. Finally, set internal goals, rather than depend on external validation. This helps because comparisons can be an infinite loop. For example, instead of comparing my follower count to other successful artists, I focus on how I can impact people through my art and writing.

Recently I’ve been reading more about vulnerability and emotions. While I don’t advocate shoving away your feelings, I think there’s a difference between allowing yourself to be emotional and letting emotions get in the way of what you want. It’s something to consider 👀

It took me a while to step away from a self-doubting mindset, but once I was able to it was very refreshing. My favorite example is knowing that I can always try again when an artwork isn’t going right. Rather than feel worthless, I take a break then come back refreshed and ready to do better.

Closing

Did any of the 4 self-doubt traps resonate with you? Do you find yourself stuck in any of them?

Knowing and acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it. Let me know by commenting what you’ll be doing to overcome them, or if something else is holding you back.

Cheers, Beats.