The Reason I Opened An Etsy Shop for My Digital Illustrations As A Small Business Venture

It's going to be detailed, so grab a cup of coffee and sit comfortably.

Like all the other great (or bad) stories of 2020, my reason behind opening up my Etsy shop has a lot to do with the Pandemic. Just like the rest of the world.. I was initially very scared with the Covid Pandemic situation because it seemed like it would never end.

That is exactly what happened. I’m still stuck at home and even if I have a chance to go out, I’m too scared.

Technology, My Light In The Dark:

Unlike most people who have and are still suffering during this year because of their economic or medical concerns, I am comparatively privileged enough to own a laptop and an internet connection to be able to do this.

While I was always into reading and writing on my devices, I never realised that my laptop would become a boat for me to sail on during these mentally draining times. I am very inspired by the way technology has the potential to keep humans engaged with themselves, even if it has a bad side to it.

Also Read: "Does One Have To Be Good At Everything?" -The Lockdown Social Media Misery

It is also a matter of great relevance for me because I used to be a marketing professional. We all are aware about the perks of digital marketing in the current age, and I had chosen this as my career only a few months prior to when the pandemic hit.

But alas, when the pandemic hit, I lost my job as a marketer for a restaurant (since they thrive on social gatherings). I was scared for the loss of lives and economy more than I was about losing my job (yes, I belong to a well to do family).

Some time during the month of May, I started to get really bored of my schedule. It was getting extremely lethargic to do the same set of house chores.

Then on one fine day of May, I happened to pick up my laptop and started to draw a cartoon image of an animated series: “We Bare Bears” from Cartoon Network. It was very sudden and unplanned but the graphic turned out so cool!

It was just for the sake of doing something that my busy schedule could never allow me to do. Very soon, I began to think of ways to display it on my social media, since everyone was sharing something productive that they were doing.. (even if it was something as simple as making Dalgona Coffee!)

Meanwhile, I also decided to begin a music campaign to share my favourite indie music tracks from lesser known artists (something that I had wanted to do in last October but my job and inability to create good looking posts did not allow me to do).

Now when I say campaign, that is exactly what it was- a campaign implementing all over strategies that I had learnt as a digital marketing professional displayed to the virtual audience via a creative and unique execution (I was inspired by Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert that blessed us with an amazing track).

I posted on my Instagram regularly for 12 days. I named this campaign #12daysofindiemusic.

Here’s what the 12 posts comprised of-

• 12 digital illustrations (drawn by me, ofcourse), and

• 12 indie music tracks

Not only this, I also featured 2 of my singer friends within these 12 days as a part of the campaign.

See those 12 recreated images below-

(I started with recreating, now I make my own art. If you are recreating any pictures from other artists, always credit the original artist. In case they want you to take it down, respect their decision!)

I had learnt digital art as a beginner but it turned out to be so great that I couldn’t stop after those 12 days. So I continued creating illustrations for every single day even after that.

Very soon, I started receiving orders from people to draw custom artworks for them.

Months have passed by, I still draw and I absolutely love every minute of it. Today, I launched my Etsy shop as a small business venture and made 5 sales!

So essentially, I am writing my own product descriptions, doing the backend SEO and creating a mini brand for my creativity by generating revenue out of it!

Do you know why? Because I was bored? Nah! There’s more to it!

I used to do these same things for my clients as a marketer. But I was very undervalued, under-appreciated, not listened enough to AND underpaid!

(Check this link if you wish to read about one of my horrific experiences working for a company based in Indore)

I’m not sure if all of these efforts will pay me off in the future, but it’s worth a shot because I get to learn something new everyday. It’s definitely productive as well as related to my professional niche and there possibly is no harm to it.

I continue to focus on every aspect by myself. There's been so many learnings, so many fruitful failures.. I doubt if I could've learn all of this if I worked under someone else.

Check out my creative profile on Instagram to see how many experiments I continue to perform.

My bosses did not pay me good enough anyway. In case my venture succeeds, atleast these efforts & money would count as my own and not some rich ungrateful snob’s.

Check out my latest commissioned work-

Question: How Do You Define A Good Piece Of Art?

My lame attempt at a Maieutic (Socratic) Response: "What is Art?"

For me, it is an expression manifested in form of a piece of literature, a song, a video clip, a photograph, a painting. But that's not it!

Good art has to be capable enough to:

• start a dialogue; trigger an action or reaction,
• generate different views from a different sect(s) of people &
• generate a set of views (conflicting or non-conflicting in nature) from the very same person

In my opinion, interpretation is always best left upon the audience. It derives maximum reaction to it this way, with a prerequisite of it being an EXCELLENT piece of work!

Miley Cyrus, a pop artist (who millions of girls have seen on TV as Hannah Montana in our teen years) dropped her much anticipated and teased new music video with Mark Ronson this morning (at 5:30 AM in my country, LOL).

It goes by the name ‘Nothing Breaks Like A Heart’!

First Impression of Miley's song:
Must be about a heartbreak. (Oh, wait. This isn't Taylor Swift, pfft. Boo!)

Second Thought:
Could be about how she lost her beloved Malibu beach-house (the one that she's previously written a song about) and Rainbowland Studio, in the recent Woolsey Fire. Her house, where she lived with her loving fiancé, Liam, burned down to ashes. (Hence, the lyrics "This burning house, there's nothing left").

A closer look at the (now deleted) 9 mini-teasers Miley had posted on Instagram:

1. A broken heart hung from the ceiling (could be inspired from the WRECKING BALL?)
2. A little girl playing with bullets
3. A stranded car with numerous toys laying about in the room
4. Lustful gaze of a man at a stripper performing in a club
5. Protesters with placards "All Or Nothing", "Fight for Miley"
6. 2 little girls standing in a firing range, pointing & nodding at the prop-board (these boards little girl figurines, not the usual ones of a man)
7. More protesters and placards (the one with '#MeToo'.... is it a man, a lady, a trans? You decide)
8. A car being chased by numerous police cars and a helicopter

Lets get to the video itself:

My Interpretation of the music video:

(Everything is a personal interpretation, especially those in green)

It begins with a car chase.

It's been made clear at the very start that "the destination remains unknown". People, supporters alongside the roads, standing with placards that state "We Are Miley" "Fight for Miley". She's referring to herself as a metaphor, perhaps. The 'various law enforcement vehicles' are chasing her vehicle.

There's a bunch of Christian nuns standing in support. Next, we see a strip club and numerous girls performing. There's a priest here. A man who has been introduced before. He has a lustful gaze.

Meanwhile... the lyrics,

"We're broken, we're broken,

Mmm, well nothing, nothing, nothing gon' save us now"

Next, Miley's looking right into the camera, as she sings these lines-

"Well, there's broken silence

By thunder crashing in the dark (Crash in the dark)

And this broken record

Spin endless circles in the bar (Spin 'round in the bar)"

Something about Miley's gaze towards the camera and the content of these lyrics make me think if she's referring to this song as the one that's gonna do rounds in these very bars, and is a call for these strippers to 'break their silence'.

Her car crashes through a wall. This is my favourite part. I interpret it as the wall of Ignorance, breaking apart, to reveal what's actually happening inside. We see two young girls standing on the other side of this wall. These 2 happy girls (engaged in clicking pictures of themselves with filters, the filter of social validation?) represent innocence that exists outside of these walls, perhaps. Completely unaware about what's happening inside.

Next, the car breaks into a second wall where there are 2 under-training girls in the dark alley, separated by this wall, of neglect towards the 'darkness' that this alley is representing. The darkness is a metaphor for the circumstances that led upto it. From innocence, to violence.

Could this represent mental health? Lack of recognition of severity of the situation? That's how I interpret it. Young children exposed to 'social validation' at a very ripe age, turning them from the victims of that darkness, to the culprits behind another form of darkness: Gun Violence, happening inside schools.

Miley, representing all of us, who're willing to take an action, stands in the way of these bullets being shot at their own peers (metaphorically represented by those unusual shooting placards).

Next up, another crash into yet another wall that shelters two female lovers in a hot tub. Chasing by the 'law-enforcement' continues.

We spot a man here in the crowd, with "Miley For President" tattoos. No, it's highly unlikely that Miley's gonna stand against Trump despite having openly opined against him multiple times.

When Trump was first elected president, a crying footage of her had surfaced. A very bold interview with Billboard magazine soon after. Although she did make it clear in that interview that she wanted to be taken seriously, and that's when she decided to get past the hippie-pop phase.

Another metaphorical message for all of us? This Miley standing for what she's voiced against time to time, aka, the Trump ideology.

(This very moment that we speak of this breaking-walls metaphor... there's the Mexico-American border thing going on. Now I don't really have a stand for or against this one. Migration is a pretty serious issue, for any given country.

I think that it needs to be pondered upon that WHY HAS MEXICO COME TO THIS POINT where emigrants do not care about being open-fired at! What has been happening in that country, and why isn't this debate replacing the entire anti-or-pro Trump debate altogether? Is one country's supremacy so much important as to over-shadow the actual cause of the consequent debate?)

There's more, NFL players kneeling in support of the car, as it approaches towards the 'destination unknown'.

Prison inmates, fighting over, hugging, clutching on to the toys we saw in the teaser. They're soft toys. What do these American prison inmates represent? Tell me what you think in the comments section below!

The car finally crashes. Miley and Mark approach the protesters where she's finally crucified to this car, something that she stood for.

Some major themes that Miley and Mark covered in this 4 minute video, and how they’re related to the Indian context:

1. Religious fanatics and all the problems that they lead up to
   
   Corruption within these ‘sacred’ bodies, sponsorship to moral policing with utter disregard to self-policing, etc
   
   
2. The un-defined code of moral social conduct
   
   The issue of 'appropriateness' when it comes to clothes, behaviour, respect towards certain people of certain professions (Strippers, Sex-workers)
   
   Who exactly is supposed to be the judge of these said morals?
   
   
3. All that is wrong (or, right. You decide) with the #MeToo campaign
   
   
4. LGBTQ Supreme Court Judgement: scraping of Article 377
   
   And the rightist-rage/lack of ground level recognition & acceptance towards it
   
   
5. Gun violence isn’t an issue in India, yet
   
   But incidents like the Ryan International, Gurugram incident with the DEPRESSED school kids (I cannot stress this enough)
   
   
6. This artist has been criticised so widely against the “wild” phase of her life: which is something every Indian kid is put through!
   
   In light of constant scrutinising of every action by the society.. how is one supposed to grow, if not by experiments or trial and error, or whatever approach one deems to consider as right for themselves?

What's your take on the video?

Also Read: An Open Letter to My Parents for If & When I Get Married