STORY TIME – How I Became an Artist | Liron’s Art & Creativity Show

Today I want to share with you how I became an artist, as well as my history in the art world from childhood, and finally – what works financially for my art business.

Let’s get to it!

My Childhood & Art

I’ve been drawing and sketching ever since I can remember myself. My very first memory is of sitting at my grandparents’ porch and copying an illustration from a Dr. Seuss book.

I’ve been doodling on the side all through elementary, middle and high-school, and have once sold a sketch of a pokemon 😂 (for 5 shekels, the equivalent of about 1.2 USD back then.

I do want to mention that painting and working in color is something I got to much later in life.

More on that in a moment…

Young Adulthood & Art

During my military service I quit art almost completely. I spent so much time working and barely had any life.

However, in my 6 months of service I started figuring out what I want to try to do in life. And that’s when I got back to art.

I started a blog with drawing lessons, and later published my books, started my YouTube channel, Instagram, courses and so on.

From Existing Platforms to MY OWN Platforms

I got started selling stuff mostly on Amazon and Udemy.

Amazon is where I independently published and sold my books, and Udemy was where I created my courses.

But where I really started seeing some success was when building my own platform.

This is when I started to build my own website, marketing and sales funnel and courses.

This meant no one was taking a serious cut from my earnings, and I have to do the marketing.

Art Business Revenue Streams & What Works Today

With time, additional avenues started popping up.

Among them is selling my paintings (through the local art fair, galleries and directly). Another one is selling the foreign language rights of my books to various publishing houses. And others are Patreon / donations, YouTube ads revenue and more.

Here’s what works for me today…

The numbers are fairly inaccurate, but do give some kind of a picture as to what the main income sources of my art business are.

  • About a third-half of my income comes from my various how-to-draw books.
  • Another third comes from the courses
  • The rest is divides fairly equally between the other sources I described.

Conclusion

So this is where I’m at right now.

I have a long way to go still, when it comes to pretty much everything – Improving my artistic skills, business development, personal growth.

Perhaps in another decade I’ll create a similar post and we’ll see where I’m at 😉 

And if you want to reach out, you know where to find me…!

TikTok – @Liron.Yan

YouTube – Liron Yanconsky Art

LinkedIn – Liron Yanconsky

Pinterest – Liron Yanconsky

Instagram – @LironYanIL

Twitter – @LironYan

How I Make Money From My Art | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 31

In today’s episode we’ll talk about how I make MONEY from my art.

Today’s going to be a special one, as it’s the audio taken from one of my recent videos, that’s a part of my new series – Business Monday.

(if you want to watch the video, you can do so here: How I Make Money From My Art)

In it I talk about the connecting point between art and money. It’s aimed at people who want to make money from their art, as well as entrepreneurs who want to build an art business.

QUICK NOTE – NEED YOUR HELP

If you find interest in this series (Business Monday), I’d be thankful if you leave a comment. Let me know what you thought of this, and what other topics you want me to cover.

I want this to have valuable information FOR YOU (:

Now let’s talk about how I make money from my art. Also note how I’ve included some things that work in general. These are tangentially related, and don’t necessarily make money DIRECTLY.

WHAT WORKS & MAKES ME MONEY

Here are things that work for me and actually make me money.

Books – I am able to sell my books in different channels. I was also able to sell the Spanish language rights, making my book How to Sketch available in additional countries in Spanish!

Courses – This is something I’ve been devoting many hours to producing, marketing and selling. My courses are selling on both the Udemy platform and on my own website (DrawAnythingUSee.com).

YouTube – This is obviously my favourite platform (; I’m really enjoying producing content here, and it actually WORKS. I receive valuable feedback from you, that helps me know what you want to see more of.

Instagram – Another platform I’m really enjoying right now. It’s also the best way to connect with me, if you want to hit me up with a quick message. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into YouTube and Instagram for the past 2 years.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK & DOESN’T MAKE MONEY FOR ME

Reddit – As a social media platform, it used to help me a lot in the past, but not so much.

Licensing my art – I tried websites like Society6 and RedBubble, but that didn’t really work as well.

Smashwords – A digital book distributer. I have some of my books distributed through it. As I mentioned in the video, I think 2 months on Amazon made me more money than two years on Smashwords and it’s 8+ different distribution channels. Haha.

Selling my art directly – This is something I haven’t really focused on much so far. I let it come naturally to me. Which brings me to my next point…

MAKING MONEY TAKES TIME, EFFORT AND PATIENCE

When I really audit myself and try to find correlations between my success… It is glaringly obvious that the things that really worked out for me are the things I spent A LOT OF EFFORT, WORK AND HOURS ON.

At the end of the day, success takes a lot of time.

The things I succeeded in so far are really things I thoroughly researched and worked on. It’s things I had a natural inclination to put more work into, but on the same token – it could have ended but being different things.

The message is that PERSISTENCE IS KEY. You have to keep pushing through until what you are doing works – or learn when to stop and move onto something else.

A SMALL CAVEAT

I think it’s important to audit yourself and your work. If you’ve been doing something for 10 years and you don’t get results, maybe it’s time to move on.

Or, if you enjoy it regardless, do it while recognizing it won’t make money, and not relying on it financially.

I hope you enjoyed today’s different format. Now let’s move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Thierry Duval, a Parisian watercolor artist.

I originally came across his work through Instagram.

He paints beautiful scenes from France (mainly Paris, I believe). His work is realistic – photo-realistic. He has a very strong sense of light in it as well.

I’m fascinated by his techniques. He works in a very measured and calculated manner to achieve his realistic results. He uses masking fluid, and glazed quite a bit.

I highly recommend you check out his Instagram, where you can see some of his work processes and final artwork: Thierry Duval on Instagram

Also, be sure to check out this webpage, showing many of his beautiful works: Thierry Duval Artworks

And Here’s where you can find me (:

You can support me on Patreon

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

And this is it. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I’ll talk to you again real soon!

– Liron