To art, or not to art?

[CP_Trump]

Hello! I'm a college student and I'm looking for some input on my current struggles in discerning whether or not to go into the art industry.

To give you some background on who I am, I'm a 20 year old college student, going to be a Junior (3rd year student) in the fall. My life for the first two years of college were extremely foreign, the college workload, moving from home to home (to home), new peer environments, new job, changes in family dynamics, led me to stress so much that by the end of my first year in college I stopped making artwork completely. By spring break of my second year of college I began thinking more about going back to art, but by this time I had already applied for the liberal arts college at multiple universities to study history (a passion of mine as well) after spending a semester thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. Since spring break, I have talked with artist friends of mine to understand their struggles in making their decision, and now I want to get more perspectives.

I invite you to tell me your story about how you made the decision to be an artist.

For those of you who like being given a question: what struggles did you face, and how did you respond to your struggles to becoming an artist?

My hope is that with your combined answers I will be able to see something I haven't seen before.



Your time and input is much appreciated!



Thank you,

CPT


PS - I have posted this in the Into section of CA, but I'm re-posting here due to the higher amount of traffic and responses of experienced artists, and because I'm not sure my question is appropriate for the Intro section...

[Star Eater]

Hi and Welcome

Read these words of wisdom from Jason Manley, I think you might find them interesting.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=144069

PS: Don't make duplicate threads in more than one place on the forum. Rather PM
a moderator if you would like it moved. I'll get rid of that other one.

[CP_Trump]

Thank you, Star Eater. That link has a lot of invaluable information.

And thanks for deleting my other thread.

[Dusty]

Well, only you can decide what you want out of your future.
But I struggled a LOT and that was with having 100% of my spare time put into becoming an artist. I have many passions in life (cooking, movies, etc), but I knew that if I wanted to get paid to be an artist, having divided time was not really an option.

I'm not saying that someone CAN'T get a job by dividing their time, but you already said yourself that you have chosen another passion for your major and your art suffered because of it.

That's life, man.
If you want to be an artist...then be an artist. If you want to be a history teacher, then be a history teacher. But focusing on one of them to be the best at it should be your priority.

So in my case...I didn't struggle with balancing anything other than time for art and money (maybe sleep, but that's gonna happen to anyone). There were no outside struggles, because I didn't care about anything other than art. Didn't care about friends or girls or being polite and going to someone's party because of this or that. My answer was pretty much always

"No, I'm sorry...I have to work".

Now, I have time for all that other stuff. But back then, it was art. Only art. All the time.

[CP_Trump]

Thank you Dusty for your post. I scanned your links to your work and your labor has certainly paid off!

I admire your devotion to art 100% of the time and I understand why such devotion is so vital to becoming an artist. I used spend my days working on art the I saw the progress I had made, but life happened and I convinced myself that to go to a community college. I've always wanted to be a well-rounded person and an artist, so this seemed like a logical step to make at the time. I don't regret my decision to go to community college at all. However, my focus on school work and art and experiencing life's events put me through a ton of pressure to keep up with everything and led me to drop art altogether...

I'm not certain why I chose to drop art. Did I divide my time between learning and art? Yes. Did I place learning above art? I'm not sure, but I do know of many influences that could also have led me to make my decision. I've learned that looking for the exact reason only wastes time and will get me nowhere (I've spent enough time looking already). However, reflecting on my past certainly hasn't gotten me nowhere - it has brought me to this point.

I think I can see myself a little better now.



Thanks again, Dusty.


CP