Thanks, everyone.

So yeah, I’ll be primarily taking payment through bank transfer. It’s pretty straightforward: I send you a Stripe invoice, which has a secure area for you to connect your bank to pay. The payment process itself after payment is quite slow (about 5 days or more) compared to all the other methods, but that keeps the fees low.

For the record, payments through PayPal are currently 3.49% + 49¢, and card payments through Stripe are 2.9% + 30¢ (but then there’s an additional 0.4% from the gross amount if using Stripe invoices). So, they’re nearly the same amount. I’d like to apologize for drumming up so much noise in the past about how low I thought Stripe’s fees were in comparison. That 0.4% invoice fee isn’t apparent until you pay out.

Doing a US bank transfer via Stripe is only a 0.8% processing fee + the 0.4% invoice fee. That comes down to just 1.2% for fees, which is nice to see compared to the other methods. International bank transfers get extremely complicated for both sides, so I’m just sticking to card payments for that. Commissioners outside the US are pretty rare for me, so it’s not a big deal.

But now onto the heart of the matter.

xXx

I have to throw in most of the towel here. Commissions aren’t feasible for me. The time I spend on those prevents me from making personal art, and it kind of makes me forget that art is my passion and outlet of expression. When I do have the time for personal art, I feel guilty because doing so is not making money like art normally does for me, and so my effort on them gets pretty clipped. Patreon was supposed to help mitigate this, but because I don’t have time to create original content, I am unable to put anything unique and original out, and so there’s not much of an incentive for people to support it.

Furthermore, I just don’t get enough commissions to be able to live off of, and I can’t increase my prices due to lack of popularity due to what was said above. Then I have my own personal discomfort with the idea of me being a popular artist in the first place. Too many random people’s invasive eyes on you. Blegh

X

I actually do want a job in real life, outside of the online art world. I have wanted one for a very long time. I want to be in a physical area, walking around and manipulating objects within a space, and helping people directly. I’ve never been given the chance to do this, I have never seen a payroll and do not know what a W-2 form does. Thankfully, I live in a new area now—away from the previous bad political climate I used to live in (which I concluded was one of the main reasons that prevented me from acquiring work)—and into a place around people I look a bit more like, so I think I have somewhat of a chance now. Just need the time and energy to get some volunteer work into those resumes, and see if that changes anything.

Art is a luxury. Art commissions are not a basic need for the commissioner. They’re something people can hold off on buying if they can’t afford it yet or if they simply don’t feel like getting something from a particular artist. And honestly, there are plenty of artists who make angular art better than I ever could (because they actually understand perspective and anatomy and color theory and shading), and now there are computer programs that can generate things freely and instantaneously, so I can’t see myself particularly needed in this regard.

X

I’ll still be around online—still doing commissions even, but just for those who want to jump through some weird hoops. Huge thanks to all who have commissioned me at any point. Genuinely. You affected my life so very positively and prevented me from having $0 in the bank. I just need to angle my sights a bit and do something else if I’m to have a chance at surviving.

(It’s important to note that I’m not severely struggling right now. I’m using government funds to attend school, my parents support my sights on education so they pay my rent, I’m feeding myself through food pantry donations, and I have locked away all the bits of money made from commissions into an emergency fund to break into if all hell breaks loose. I’m relatively okay at the moment. But if I don’t do anything, I will be relying on my parents forever, and I don’t even have a good relationship with them, so that’s really weird and very complicated. I didn’t honestly want to further my education in the first place, but it was the only valid excuse to get me out of their home. I don’t know how else to put this, but I’ve got Asian parents, so. Heh)

xXx

Man. I wish I could show you the 5 completely different blog posts that I tried writing up to make some kind of explanation post. This was the shortest one I could do. Hopefully it shed some kind of light onto how my life has been going and where it needs to go. Or at least was a bit entertaining to read.

Well, that’s where this post ends. I hope you enjoy whatever personal artwork I get to make from here on out, and maybe I’ll finally get to open free requests and art trades again someday.