Around a year ago I decided to become a full-time artist and stepped into the crypto world.
Today I wish to share my story and how it has been so far.
Was it worth it? Did I achieve enough to pursue it full time and what kind of hurdles are faced?
I will leave all this for you to decide, as I believe what constitutes a win for someone might not be a big deal to another.
I call it a win for me though!
Before jumping into my flashback trip, I would like to mention that I am not any super famous artist whose work sells within seconds.
But I am proud to be part of many great collections, amazing collector friends, and sales as good as 8 ETH( current value $29234) for my piece and my average price of a piece on Async amounting to $5,043.62
https://opensea.io/assets/0xe581b0b9de822aff8f9d8ae16d806df756a6a689/1
Owned by Xray (sold 8 ETH)
Async Sales data
https://cryptoart.io/artist/mehakjain
Now let’s dive into the start of it
How it started
It was no less than a fortunate stroke of serendipity haha
Someone reached to me through my Facebook art page ( https://www.facebook.com/mehak.artss/ ), whom I believed to be a scammer because of the information I was given. He told me my work is really good and I could sell a Jpeg of it, which seemed weirdly impossible to believe at that time.
So I thought of catching him red-handed and hence I asked for links and other details. And he delivered.
IT WAS TRUE!!!
There existed a world like that in 2020
Art is not bound to those physical canvases anymore.
It was like a fascinating world I discovered and started digging deeper. I learned about blockchain, understood why NFTs are cool and have value, interacted with the community, made friends, and before I knew it, it already became a world I want to live my whole life in.
My initial time was spent understanding the community through beta.cent ( https://beta.cent.co/Mehakjain/ ) where I discussed my work and work in progress, learned through others, and got an understanding of the space and technical possibilities.
Surprisingly, that was the place where I earned enough to finance my initial minted pieces.
Yes, I started my journey with 0 investment and also when gas wasn’t that high haha.
My first minted piece wasn’t created for selling purposes but to award the winner of weekly tournaments I used to organize on Cent.
You can also find my chess-related blogs on Cent.
https://rarible.com/mehakjain?tab=liked
Pricing
I started initially with a safe price of 0.3 ETH each for 2 edition work. And had a good reason to justify it too.
I minted 2 copies of the knight on Rarible (because one side on a chessboard has 2 knights) and priced 0.3 ETH (because Knight equals 3 points on a chessboard). And followed the same pattern for the rest of the series.
And slowly with each mint, I started increasing my list price, taking into consideration my collector base, efforts involved, and emotional significance.
I normally never price any piece lower than the last sold value (exceptions included), because
- I want my price graph to move upward
- It is a good incentive for collectors from the investment point of view
- I believe with time my skills improve as well which prices should indicate
Where is Art Community
I have found all my collectors through Twitter ( https://twitter.com/MehakJainArt ) and I am pretty much very active there. CryptoTwitter is a place for everyone (Artist, collector, builders, etc) to connect and discover each other.
Other than that, the platform’s Discord, telegram are some other places to spend time on to get some eyes.
What worked for me (according to me xD)
I am a strong believer that art is very subjective and can’t appeal to everyone. What could make a difference is standing out and doing something unique and doing it consistently.
Some do it by having a unique style, but I didn’t have one nor did I expect it to develop so early in my art career.
Though my themes involve patterns. They are based on experiences, stories, dilemmas, and work as thought initiators.
But for a person new to this space with no high reach at that time, the theme demands too much time and dedication of a viewer, which is hard to get most of the time until you are already famous.
So I developed my niche around Chess art. And there were many reasons for doing that.
- I love chess and creating chess art
- I already had an awesome community through cent chess tournaments
- I am a professional chess player since I was 11 years old with impressive achievements like qualifying for the World Championship in my category, which could hence increase the value of my art more with future achievements in this field (https://ratings.fide.com/profile/45027692/calculations)
- It is easy to get the community involved with pieces if it’s game
- A lot of people love chess hahaha
For my first series, I started with 0.3 ETH and sold the last release for 5 ETH (King). It was definitely a very successful series for me and I am not denying it was more about marketing and building connections for this. I still keep my chess art scarce. My latest chess piece was ‘Chess and Addicts’, also my genesis on Async which sold for a total of 6.8 ETH. ( https://async.art/art/master/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8-934 )
So what it did was attract eyes towards my work and since then I am not having much of a hard time.
And I guess after breaking a nobody status, all someone needs to do is be honest and dedicated to the work and this space.
I have since then created many symbolic and deep meaning pieces which involved using a platform tech as a part of work and what it intended to deliver. And fortunately, it was received well.
Sold for 4 ETH
https://async.art/art/master/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8-1114
Read -https://beta.cent.co/Mehakjain/+l354k4
Digital from Traditional
I was a traditional artist before I discovered crypto art and my initial mints included digitalizing those canvas paintings. But later I shifted to digital mediums, got a hang of some software, and experimented a lot, which was very well taken by my collectors. This is another thing I find fascinating, people enjoy our experiments here, they support the learning curve throughout. So you don’t really have to be perfect to be part of this space.
Many of my works also involved poems.
There are many in which I mix Indian art style with themes of my work. I have always found it important to bring or show our culture through our pieces.
(Owned by KryBharat)
Sold for 2 ETH
https://async.art/art/master/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8-1401
Numbed emotions- Changes 4 times a day
(Unsold)
https://async.art/art/master/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8-1495
Read- https://beta.cent.co/Mehakjain/+hhaeju
I have enjoyed the transparency of this space, the possibility, and ease of connecting with collectors and fellow artists, the immensely supportive community, and the creativity that flows and is shared.
Last Note- If you are planning to be part of crypto art, just dive in, make friends, learn, grow and support. You will find that the more you give to this space, the more you will receive as well.
For me, it has been a success so far. Which I measure in terms of people I have found and had an opportunity to learn from.
