Happy New Year, Everyone! This is the first publication of 2022, and it’s going to be a special one. As you might have seen, I took the past few weeks to relax, try to enjoy the holidays, prepare some handmade X-mas decorations, and do some planning for what’s to come!

This publication, The Creative Draft, is now going to extend a bit more, so we can all have a conversation about art, share tools and experiences, talk about clients, and more! I’ll tell you all about it below.

I will also cover a question I got asked about Patreon after posting my last video about why it might not work for most creatives out there and share my most honest experience. And also what you can do as an alternative

The Menu for This Week

🌳 Join The Creative Draft Art Community for free!

🌳 Over 350 Free Creative Tutorials to Keep Learning in 2022

🌳 Why Patreon Will Not Work for Most of You!

Thank you for reading The Creative Draft. The publication is FREE, so feel free to share it with other creatives & artists!

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Building an Art Community

The Creative Draft Discord launched last week. Why you should join!

One of the things I’ve learned in the past year or so, working with all kinds of creative platforms like Patreon and Substack, is that we all need a place to have a conversation. And sometimes, those conversations could be a bit one-sided. For example, a creators posts on Patreon, supporters comment, and that’s it. There isn’t enough room for conversation among other community members; no one can initiate a topic, ask or share experiences.

This is where services like Discord come into play. Last year, I started interacting with Discord for the first time; it helped me organize Our Planet Week's second edition with the hosts, have conversations, share the art, and prepare the full event.

When I decided to kill my Patreon last year, the first thing that came to my head was the idea to have a forum where we can all have a conversation about things that interest us. And since the past weeks, I have been working on setting up a nice Discord server all creatives can join for free. It’s an extension of this newsletter, called The Creative Draft Community.

Join The Creative Draft Discord

On Discord, we talk about art, digital art, we share tools we use, some experiences and tips on social media, how to work with clients, share our art, and keep opening topics while our community grows. Anyone can join the conversation server with the link above. Joining is Free; any creative can join now! Hope to see you guys over there soon!

The Patreon Dilemma

Having Patreon for over a year taught me a lot, and showed why it’s not for everyone!

No one will ever tell you that Patreon is harder than you think. Mostly when you are starting out, and it gets even harder if you happen to be starting out without a (HUGE!) community on your socials.

Two years ago, I started my Patreon page, following everyone's request for me to do so. I put a lot of effort into it, yet for some reason, it never clicked. Every time I share this newsletter, close to 10.000 of you read it, get notified, and participate in the conversation. That was not the case with Patreon I talk about in the video below. I share my experience, how It went for me, and why I think it’s not for all creatives, especially if your community is below a few hundred K.

It’s true; we see success cases on Patreon, especially creators with a big number of followers, but sadly that won’t be the case for most of us, and there’s no one to blame. It's how things are with those subscription/paywall platforms.

In the video, I talk about alternatives as well, and when making this video, I decided to open my Free Creative Draft Discord server for everyone who wants to chat about what we do as creatives! And I have chosen Discord instead of Telegram or Slack or something like that because the platform is quite mature for building communities

Join My Discord

Hope to see you guys over there! And let me know in the video comments what you think about my experience with Patreon; also let me know what’s your experience with Patreon, if you use it, or if you are thinking of starting one!

Also, Our Planet Week 3rd edition 2022 is around the corner! Head over to the OPW channel on my Discord and join the conversation!

350 Free Domestika Creativity Tutorials!

There's one for everyone! Have a look. There‘s something for you too!

What better way to start the year than with a new skill or learning something we always wanted to learn. Last week the team at Domestika shared almost 350 tutorials anyone can take in their platform that are totally FREE.

The amount of things listed is insane. From Procreate illustration tutorials to Social Media, Organization, 4D animation, and more. I added a few to my list as well. If you haven’t seen my Insta, I’ve been trying sculpture lately, so I’m taking a few of those related to it. The list is long, so grab a coffee and start learning! For sure, there’s something for you.

350 FREE CREATIVE TUTORIALS

The tutorials on that page are free at the moment, if you want to take any additional classes on Domestika you can check my prior newsletters where I recommend mostly classes for digital illustration. Also, my class is coming out really really soon so stay tuned for that. Like literally really really soon!

Thank you for reading The Creative Draft. The publication is FREE so feel free to share it with other creatives & artists!.

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The Creative Draft

Saying Bye Bye! 👋