Hey all! This isn't really an announcement I wanted to have to make, but at least y'all can benefit from it!

Long story short, I've had some changes in my financial situation, and unfortunately my focus is gonna have to shift from ensuring long-term success to gathering more immediate income. So, to hopefully make that happen even though it's not ideal for the long term, I'm significantly lowering prices on all my commissions until things are a little more stable.

New prices, examples, and request form can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50962570/

I should also mention here that I'm in the process of moving into a new apartment, so any commission requests put in now will be started on Friday, July 7th, when my workstation will be put back together.

I apologize to anyone who has bought commissions earlier this year and might feel blindsided by the price change. Sadly my options are very limited right now.

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If anyone's interested in the long story (as if I don't complain enough in my journals here haha), basically one of my roommates brought to my attention that my lack of ability to work full-time and my resulting lower income has been a major stressor for a long time to them, and has expressed that some immediate changes need to happen. Obviously this is stressful for me, as I've been focusing more on long-term goals for my art while avoiding strategies that might work in the short-term but aren't the best in the grand scheme of things... like lowering my commission prices. Previously, they were structured so that I could focus primarily on prints, merchandise and making conventions work, while ensuring that any commission I did take was worth my time spent away from those endeavors and wouldn't lead to me feeling burnt out, or like I might as well just pick up more hours at my day job.

Sadly, I've failed to sell a single print or get accepted into a single convention this year. I was waitlisted for a couple, but continuing to pursue them would require me to drop stuff at my day job, make hotel reservations, pay extra for faster shipping on merch, etc. on short notice. I last did conventions years ago, so I don't have any current merch stock just sitting at home... and I was hoping that online sales would help me gauge demand for stuff, and that I could know that I'd actually have a show lined up before I could invest money I really don't have into keeping stock on hand. So... none of that has really worked out.

I might also be a liiiittle frustrated/dealing with an inferiority complex from seeing other artists out there who have been drawing and putting themselves out there for the same amount of time as me or less, who have been able to gather such large audiences and get consistent requests for their work... meanwhile I've only gotten a handful of commissions, mostly from IRL friends and my spouse--very rarely from someone actually finding my art and being interested enough to pay for it. And I've been on FA for over a decade and haven't even managed 1,000 followers. I know I'm not like other artists. I can't do NSFW without feeling like I'm sacrificing part of my soul, and I don't like fetish stuff. So maybe I'm a bit out of place here on FA. I love the natural world and drawing what I see, and I guess that just doesn't resonate with a lot of people. (At least not the way I do it... I can think of artists off the top of my head who DO gather an audience on this, not gonna name any names in particular... but for some reason it just hasn't worked for me.)

The best I can do right now is lower my commission prices in the hopes of generating more immediate interest and income, and deal with it being a little more work for the sake of being able to stay in my current living situation. >~< It pains me that I have to ignore all the advice I've heard from fellow artists to not lower your prices just for the sake of getting work, and bend to the requests of clients potentially outside my ideal clients and try to make things more "affordable." I just don't see any other option right now. OTL