This has already been active for awhile, but I haven’t pushed it or really told many people about it; So unless you’ve been checking out my blog posts here on the website it’s all new information.

Before I get into the meat of this subscription format, I want to explain why I’m pushing it now.
Today is May 3, 2024. I went full-time freelance as an artist back in around March of 2020, marking this around the four year mark.

And in that four years it has been a resounding struggle just to keep myself afloat.
I’m not trying to pull any kind of pity card here, life as an artist is rough and I knew that going in. In the four years since I started doing this full time, while I HAVE been struggling, I’ve also seen such an entirely different side of people; People who want nothing more than to see me follow my dreams, to be supportive of my goals, and to watch me improve and be a better artist and person than the day before.

I have repeatedly been uplifted, and encouraged by people.
And I appreciate that SO much.

I’ve done a lot of planning, re-planning, reviewing, and just every other type of analyzing you can think of, regarding how to make this all work. I’m not coming at it with any kind of funding and I have no fallback or safety net; I never did. I was fired from the last in a long line of jobs that just wasn’t cut out for me, and I decided to follow my dreams or die trying.

And now we come to the meat of things; I’ve tried commission-only work, and I’ve tried subscription services like Patreon, and Twitch, and I’ve done crowdfunding for specific projects; I also run a Redbubble shop where I sell merch and prints. The result that I’ve foind is that running any single ONE of those avenues is akin to a full time job if I want to make it work, between marketing and getting people involved. And I don’t want to make any one of those things my FOCUS. I’m not a content creator and I’m not a social media officianado. I’m an artist and I want to do art.

So, with all of that in mind, my issue becomes a revolving door problem; Do I focus on marketing commissions today? Or working on art? If commissions are slow should I start focusing on Patreon? What will do the best NOW?
And whichever one I focus on, I end up falling behind on all the rest.
If I had the income to hire a marketing guy to do half of it for me I would, but as it stands I have to juggle commission hunting, doing the commissions, marketing myself, updating all of my socials with my new art, and planning projects; Which in the end leaves me with almost no time to even work on the projects I plan out.

Now, a lot of you have been friends, fans, or supporters for most of the last four years, and you’ve seen the struggles I’ve been going through, even when I’ve tried to be quiet about them.
Today marks yet another in a LONG list of months where my rent is not paid and it’s past-due.
I hate having to run emergency commissions every month, and I know my entire social circle is struggling in the same ways I am right now.

I AM currently running emergency commissions because I do need to get that handled immediately, but what I want to request is this:

If you want to see me keep doing what I’m doing please pledge a monthly donation here on my website.
I have a lot of fans and followers, so if I were to get $1 per month from all of you, or $5 from 20% of you, then I would be able to have an actual baseline for my finances and be able to make all of this a LOT less chaotic.
I would be able to finally catch up on mycommissions without being impeded, and I would be able to more readily make REAL progress on the personal projects that I KNOW you guys will love.

You can schedule your donation on this page
Just scroll down to the Donate section and click either Monthly or Yearly, thenchoose which of the two you’d like to do.
Once you click Submit Payment you’ll be directed to the payment page which is protected by Stripe. I haven’t been through the process of cancelling donations before, but WordPress tries to make things like that relatively easy if you ever need to back out.

Some quick notes about your donation;
If you do this, I’m not just going to leave you hanging and taking your money without giving something back. I will be considering your donation to be a commission credit that you can claim at any time. Monthly donations will stack, and can be combined with credits you’ve recieved through me directly or via patreon, and can be redeened for part or all of a commission whenever you’re ready.

On top of this, once my website newsletter is up and running, and my discord is finally operating properly, I will be adding any donors to my Premium lists, which will give you all access to all of my VIP/Behind the scenes stuff (private streams and such).

It would mean the world to me to get people supporting me in this way, because I am in desperate need of a foundation, so I don’t feel like I’m barely able to keep treading water.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at ashsomethingart@gmail.com or on any social media where we may be connected!
Thanks so much for taking the time to read all of this; I love you and I appreciate your continued support!

-Ash