Maybe some of you know of Dave Bull: the Caucasian Canadian that took a shine to Japanese woodblock carving (Ukiyo-e printmaking). I have pondered his "business model".
Apparently the master Japanese carvers were loathe to take this gangly gaijin seriously when he began his obsession decades ago.
And yet, Dave set for himself some insane goal of carving 100 wood blocks for prints over the space of a decade.
Now as a dabbling artist myself, I simply can't imagine laying out my artistic landscape for the next couple of years, let alone the next decade. That shows a serious dedication and vision. And so he proceeded.
Well, after the first year and 10 prints or so, he got a handful of customers that began to buy up his prints. And to be sure, by replicating some of the designs of the great masters of history, he was learning a lot about Japanese woodblock carving.
I don't recall if he said how much he money he made the first year, but I believe calling him a starving artist would not have been a stretch. But nonetheless he continued.
The second year and another 10 prints and more patrons. It turns out that people that buy these sort of things, fine art prints, often collect them and will become repeat customers. No doubt there comes to be a stable of customers that are effectively subscribers and will henceforth buy everything he creates.
Going into the third and fourth years he can start to predict a lower threshold for what he will make as an artist in the coming years since he can more or less assume his regular customers will buy everything he prints in those years (and his work is no doubt getting better with each block he carves and learns from).
And of course the collector-type customers keep arriving as he and his work become better known — and so his business snowballs with more subscribers.
By the time Dave finished his decade-long goal he could comfortably call himself a professional wood block carver, no longer a novice but had now taken the vows so to speak.
Dave seems to have figured out the way to make a career out of art. I applaud him for that — brilliant. 10 fans became 100 became 1000 and then more.
Dave Bull says that, begrudgingly perhaps, some of the Japanese carvers began to at least then acknowledge him after his ten year carving odyssey.
He started a YouTube channel since then and it has really caught on — perhaps surprisingly as the field of artisans practicing traditional Japanese wood block carving has apparently been in decline. Dave has said that privately a few carvers have reached out to him to tell him that Dave is doing what they should have been doing all along.
I'm a long-ish time fan of Dave's. I've been following his work on and off for the past ~decade or so. I've bought a number of his prints and have visited his shop in Asakusa.
I've been thinking about this for some time now, but I think the key to a number of artists successes has been the ability to combine what you've laid out here. Long term dedication to the work & with expressing the passion for that work — through a popular medium.
Having watched Dave's streams on Twitch, it seems to me that he has been able to adapt to the medium as they've come along through his career. Originally he appeared on broadcasts on Canadian television, moving on to YouTube in more recent times, and now has been consistently streaming on Twitch for a couple of years.
In all his output, you can see so clearly how passionate he is about Japanese printmaking. It's incredibly infectious. Commenters on his stream take on and share that passion, especially in his show-and-tell sections where you wait to see him reveal, discuss, and get very excited about new prints he has purchased (usually off of Yahoo).
Having recently read Van Gogh's letters, I saw a similar thing. His popularity really stems from his sister in law, Johanna, making them available after his death. He exuded passion (to the extreme!) about art and was tenacious in expressing that to his Brother in letters. However, he also made a clear decision point in his life (At ~27/28 years old) that art was going to be his primary focus.
I think that dedication combined with sharing that passion with others is what really makes some artists stand out. Ideally, doing both while still alive so you don't have to depend on your brother the whole time!
I think that's what make's Dave special. He has certainly mastered this.
(I'm sure he would hate being compared to Van Gogh though, so I apologise to him for that)
Almost every great artist seems to invent the self-control to do this, whether it's writing 5 pages a day or waking up early to paint, in many cases as a response to the ennui and disintegration of an overabundance of unstructured freedom.
I'm not one of those guys because it's really difficult to reshape your life into that structure.. But all it really requires is willpower.
For me, concentration of that level only comes into play when I'm fascinated by a difficult problem... it can't be applied to mundane small incremental daily progress.
But maybe if I set my sleep and wake alarms differently...
I just finished the book 4000 Weeks, and it deals with some of the things that you mention here. Maybe you'd get something from it.
It is ostensibly a book about time management; it's in the subtitle. It seems actually to be a book that says: We can't get it all done. We're still good enough. Get clear on what's important and spend time on those things
I very much second this book. I'm not sure it teaches anything groundbreaking/new, but just seeing the words on a page was hugely valuable to me in the same sort of way that saying the things that rattle around in your head out loud to a therapist is. It really helped me gain some clarity on my own direction.
I think you are being overly unkind to yourself. It could be that the people who become great artist learn this, but it's also possible they just won the genetic lottery in terms of brain chemistry.
Beating yourself up by comparing yourself to people like that won't make you like them, but it will severely distort your self image and mental health.
I guess. But I feel like it's only such a small amount of self control I lack to get me there. Maybe it's good to beat yourself up a bit, to remind yourself to have a goal that's almost in reach.
> For me, concentration of that level only comes into play when I'm fascinated by a difficult problem... it can't be applied to mundane small incremental daily progress.
What if that difficult problem requires more than one day to solve? (E.g. most research problems?)
What's also interesting is that Dave himself can be called a true fan. That of Japanese traditional craftmanship. And actually the same applies to music - many great bands started as true fans of other bands. It's like making art and following art obsessively are interlinked.
This story reminds me of (how I imagine) the career of Connor Price looks like. Check him out on youtube. He makes so many tracks with so many people - and eventually things pick up. He could very well be the next Sheridan.
Apparently the master Japanese carvers were loathe to take this gangly gaijin seriously when he began his obsession decades ago.
And yet, Dave set for himself some insane goal of carving 100 wood blocks for prints over the space of a decade.
Now as a dabbling artist myself, I simply can't imagine laying out my artistic landscape for the next couple of years, let alone the next decade. That shows a serious dedication and vision. And so he proceeded.
Well, after the first year and 10 prints or so, he got a handful of customers that began to buy up his prints. And to be sure, by replicating some of the designs of the great masters of history, he was learning a lot about Japanese woodblock carving.
I don't recall if he said how much he money he made the first year, but I believe calling him a starving artist would not have been a stretch. But nonetheless he continued.
The second year and another 10 prints and more patrons. It turns out that people that buy these sort of things, fine art prints, often collect them and will become repeat customers. No doubt there comes to be a stable of customers that are effectively subscribers and will henceforth buy everything he creates.
Going into the third and fourth years he can start to predict a lower threshold for what he will make as an artist in the coming years since he can more or less assume his regular customers will buy everything he prints in those years (and his work is no doubt getting better with each block he carves and learns from).
And of course the collector-type customers keep arriving as he and his work become better known — and so his business snowballs with more subscribers.
By the time Dave finished his decade-long goal he could comfortably call himself a professional wood block carver, no longer a novice but had now taken the vows so to speak.
Dave seems to have figured out the way to make a career out of art. I applaud him for that — brilliant. 10 fans became 100 became 1000 and then more.
Dave Bull says that, begrudgingly perhaps, some of the Japanese carvers began to at least then acknowledge him after his ten year carving odyssey.
He started a YouTube channel since then and it has really caught on — perhaps surprisingly as the field of artisans practicing traditional Japanese wood block carving has apparently been in decline. Dave has said that privately a few carvers have reached out to him to tell him that Dave is doing what they should have been doing all along.