#generalists

I’ve been pondering how to balance all my different passions, interests, and side hustles, as I’m the kind of person who tends to love variety and easily gets excited about new projects. It’s often the completion part that I struggle with! This is a fairly common conundrum for certain personality types, and can also be related to conditions like ADHD. It can be really hard to know how to streamline and simplify things to make it more manageable and less chaotic.

Chronic illness can be a factor here too, as I often start a new project in a high energy period, but then may not have the physical energy to easily complete it. It can be hard to know how to handle this sometimes, as I can’t predict how I’ll feel from day to day or week to week. Sometimes I just have to let something go for a while, and accept that I will come back to it later. I also accept that there’s some projects I will abandon, and I don’t see it as a major problem as long as there’s no financial investment.

So how do you handle this tendency? 

I personally find it’s best to embrace it, and find ways to work around it rather than trying to pigeonhole myself into only one project, passion or interest at a time. However, if you’re trying to make money, earn an income or build a business - and you need to pay the bills with it to survive - then you will probably need to narrow down to one thing at a time for work. You can still allow yourself freedom to explore in your free time, though.

For example, I love borrowing a wide range of books from the library, and reading about a bunch of different topics at once. Switching from one book to another works for me and I find it stimulating. The great thing is that the books all get returned to the library, so they don't create long-term clutter. I also enjoy writing blog posts about a range of different topics, rather than sticking to one particular subject.

Same goes for my art - I have one style that I sell commercially, and then do whatever I want in the rest of my spare time as it captures my fancy. I find creating different IG/Tumblr accounts for particular art styles/niches works well. If it becomes popular and sells it's a cool bonus, but I don't worry too much about it making money. Digital art is great because it doesn't take up storage space, so I'm shifting from doing large pieces on canvas to doing more digital art.

Having said all that, I do have a bunch of blogs and Tumblr accounts floating around on the internet that I've forgotten about and largely abandoned. Same with old creative projects in storage. But it's okay, because I enjoyed exploring that idea/hobby/style for a brief period of time. Sometimes I go back and integrate creative stuff from the past into my current projects (for example, taking an old blog post and updating it for my current blog).

It can become a problem if you waste a lot of money on hobbies you forget about or business ideas that never get off the ground, so I’d recommend finding ways to avoid spending too much money to begin with. Ideally, it’s best to spend no money and find free activities, but obviously this is not always possible. My post about Decluttering My Fantasy Self may be relevant if this is you.

This is a question that I see a LOT of confusion out in the art world, so let’s break it down:

There are 2 kinds of artists: Specialists & Generalists. Specialists have 2 types: Style vs. Expertise. 

Style Specialists have a really unique style, and they are hired to apply that style over and over again to many different types of work. These folks tend to be freelancers, because they work for very different clients project to project. A really example of this is Victo Ngai. She does books, she does ads, she does editorial, she does packaging…she can do anything. Clients are hiring her to apply her style to their project.

Expertise Specialists often do have a style, but they are hired more for their expertise in a field. This is where you find a lot of your concept artists. You’d hire Karla Ortiz for her ability to design characters, Thom Tenery for his environments, Brynn Metheny for her creatures. You wouldn’t ask Thom to design a creature or Brynn to paint an environment. These kinds of artists are hired for their thinking process more than for their style. You come to them with problems to solve visually.

Generalists are hired for flexibility and technical skills. They are hired for their work volume and speed. These are the artists that tend to work in-house or are brought in as temps, or if they work from home, just for a few steady clients. Most designers fall into this category. Illustrators can too, but they tend to work on many different projects in different styles. A lot of work in advertising falls into this category, as well as film. Storyboard artists and pre-vis (pre-visualization) artists usually fall into this category. A lot of animation artists fall into this category. People that work in-house for video games often do as well. Your style has to match the style needed for the project, and you’re more the hired hands to get the work done. 

Make sense? 

So yes, there are jobs for both kinds of artists, but think very hard about the kind of career you want. Generalists have a very hard time being noticed and remembered because their work doesn’t look like it’s coming from the same person, so they have a very hard time freelancing — they rely on in-house work and/or agencies who hire them out to companies as needed. Style Specialists have a very hard time finding in-house work because their style is often great for one project, but not adaptable to many different projects. Expertise Generalists kind of split the difference, but they work in one field and one field only.

How you decide is thinking about these things:

—Do I want to work in-house or freelance?

—Do I like working in the same style all the time and keep honing it and honing it until it’s uniquely mine?

—Do I have a love or expertise I want to nerd out on for the rest of my life and be known as the expert on that?

—Do I like the spotlight and want fame, or hate the idea of worrying about fans and promoting myself on social media?

—Do you love practicing and honing your skills and your speeds more than you care about whatever in particular you are drawing/painting?

Those kinds of questions will steer you toward the kind of artist you want to be. But I will also remind you that you have to do what you genuinely love doing or you will hate your career and end up giving up and/or course correcting a few years in anyway because you’re miserable. Don’t just think about what you think is easier to find a job in, because doing the work just to get the job is always visible. You also have to enjoy what you are doing to put your heart and soul into it. If you’re just in it for the money, then for heaven’s sake pick a career that’s easier to make money in, like being an accountant or something!

—Agent KillFee

That would make their lives, although technologically marvelous, rather limited in terms of diet and culture and leave them vulnerable and disadvantaged to sudden changes in the environment (like specialist life on Earth)