Ryan Maloney built a decades-long art career by drawing in public and giving work to his most enthusiastic fans. His formula: create where people watch you work live, like TikTok, and reward your most engaged audience. Word spreads, conversations grow, and some will pay for commissions.
Chapters
Learned how to do this when I was 10 years old. Story time. Elementary school, I really liked to draw. I was okay. I would draw so much that people would gather around and watch me draw. From this habit, my skills got sharper. I got a little bit better. People expected it on a daily basis. They watched me often. After said drawing sessions, I would give my art away to the people that liked it the most. Those people would tell people. Pretty soon, to all my classmates, parents, and teachers, I was the artist. I got asked to draw every day for the next 28 years. Don't do the age math. Let's recap the necessary ingredients to generate demand for your artwork or anything. 1, create in public. That's why TikTok's great. It's like a million people looking over your shoulder as you draw. Give whatever you do away to the people that like it the most. Your little skill or your knowledge or something that somebody pays you for right now, give that away to the most enthusiastic people that are in your comments that you engage with. The demand will take care of itself. People will be talking, and a certain percentage of those people are going to be begging you to take their money for you to create something for them. That's Demand 101, just from my experience.
