The Last Update

Hey people!

I haven't been posting anything here for quite a while, so I feel I owe you an update ☺️

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to my newsletter! Unfortunately, I've decided to stop working on my colouring book and pages, and there are several reasons for that. The biggest one is the spread of AI art on Etsy. While I don't think AI colouring pages are particularly good - they often have parts that don't make any sense (for example plants merging into chairs and some random shapes and lines between them ect.) But those pages and books are really cheap and take minutes to generate - we artists can't compete with that. They generally receive positive feedback on Etsy, too. My pages take me 3-4 full days to create, and they don't even show up in Etsy search results anymore due to the overwhelming number of AI colouring pages.

And the second reason is the frequent unauthorised use of my work. I often find my pages being sold on various online shops, and I've even seen colouring books on Amazon featuring my designs, obviously without my permission. Removing these listings takes so much time and on standalone shops is even impossible to do. I'm just an artist and can't really afford a lawyer or spend a whole day filling in the various forms. The rules for IP violations on many websites are always very confusing and most of them (like AliExpress) don’t give you any support or human answer. They are not interested in that side of their business, and they are trying to make it incredibly difficult, or even impossible to remove your unauthorized art. Even when I successfully removed the exact copies of my pages (futuring in a few books on Amazon), Amazon still decides to keep all the traced versions. I guess this was the last straw for me, and I decided it's just no longer worth it for me to continue this project. I live in the UK and my rent is really high, and I've decided to focus my time on my 3D art skills and client/freelance work. I picked one personal project that I'm the most passionate about, but anything else starts feeling like a waste of time in the current art envioranent with extremely high living costs in the UK.

But I also think it's okay, I don't want to sound overly negative. We all have to adjust to the modern world and do what we can to survive. We still can and should make art, even if it’s harder these days to build a stable income from it. I know many other artists are closing their Etsy shops and moving to other fields, but they keep creating art as a hobby.

In any case, thank you so much for being my subscribers here! I wish you all the very best and Happy Halloween! 🎃