Once upon a time, an artist would carry a sketchpad with them to scribble ideas into. They’d practice their work, and maybe sell a sketch or two down the road. I carry two or three myself, and they’re quite useful. However, as the world has changed, so has the very concept of the sketch.
Today, we call these "everydays," the most well-known of which being the collection Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Mike “Beeple” Winkleman. You likely heard about the Beeple sale at Christie’s for close to $70 million. While the sale definitely marks a unique moment in history, Winkleman's process isn’t limited to any one artist. In fact, it’s become a common practice, particularly with 3D animators. The premise is simple, on a daily basis, you sit down, create your art and post it to your social media of choice. Once a day. Everyday.
The benefit to the everyday is threefold. First, working every single day will help you to develop your discipline. More than just making you better at your art, it makes you better at making the art. What once was a difficult task is, instead, an automatic response. This is the same as an athlete working out and developing muscle memory. In the quaintest of terms, this is practice, making perfect. I can’t state it enough, the conscious choice to spend time developing your work is extremely impactful on your overall work ethic. More than just that, the more you work, the more work you make, and the faster you make it.
Secondly, by posting your work publicly, you begin to remove the stigma many artists and designers feel during their early years. It’s not uncommon to have a shyness about your work, to worry it isn’t good enough or interesting enough. Self doubt is everywhere, and it stops way too many artists in their early development. However, constantly exposing your work to the public dulls that feeling and makes you more confident as a creator. Without a doubt, some of the work you make will be awful. I mean dreadfully terrible. That is not only okay, it’s expected and necessary. You will never know how much you’ve improved if you don’t create bad works. More than any of that, however, is that you’ll be forced to accept that you’ve made things you don’t consider to be good, and allowed others to see it. You’ll learn that it isn’t so bad to have people not like the work you create.
Lastly, and most importantly, using the everyday approach, you will build an audience. You expose your work to large amounts of viewers and gain followers. These followers may share your work with others, who share it with others, and on it goes. How you utilize this audience is up to you, many people sell prints, shirts, NFTs, etc. Personally, I use it to attract animation work and provide my clients with a link to my everyday work (the same way you would a portfolio). This way, clients not only see varied types of work, but also see that your work, your personal style of art, is able to attract an audience, which is what a client wants at the end of the day.
Now your everydays don’t have to stop at just their creation and posting. For any work I’m personally proud of, I tend to spend a few dollars on advertising it across social. You can usually target your audience to different locations and interests, which can help narrow the scope, depending on your desired outcome. For me, it’s usually just to grow my audience, which will bring in clients naturally. I prefer this because a self selected client is always going to be more committed to you and the work than one that you have to go after yourself.
Everydays are just generally a great way to hone your skills, try new things, and become more confident as an artist. And they have the added benefit of growing your audience and helping to attract customers and clients to your personal work.
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Note From Tongal: This blog is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here!
