Hello again, it's Byron doing an #introduceyourself again. This is my second Hive account, now on the peakd.com platform. I'll be honest, I lost my inleo information. I didn't write it down properly like I normally do so it's gone.
And I'm back again :)
So for those that have never heard of me, which is 99% of you, I’m married with 3 adult sons, 3 cats and 1 dog. I am a full time artist, I draw zombies. I’ve been drawing and painting zombies, specifically zombie portraits, since 2009.
I began my artistic journey in high school. Full of hopes and dreams but not much skill or even the real confidence that a person needs to grow as an artist. After highschool I spent a few decades working regular 9-5 type jobs while dreaming of being a full time artist. After a 4 year stint as a telemarketer, I took the plunge and began to promote myself online and became a freelancer.
I started with a blog, got onto facebook, and then immersed myself in to the GooglePlus platform when it came out. I had fun spontaneously drawing peoples profile pics as zombies and then sharing it with them. At that time I didn't really understand how to monetize myself.
This is a family portrait I painted in 2018 and it hangs on our kitchen wall.
I've always put family before everything else, and while it might have hurt my career it was totally worth it. iykyk
Marriage going on 25 years, all the kids are grown and still like me, so that's a plus. I never had great parents so I never learned how to parent properly, but I think we did alright, my wife and I.
We have 3 cats and a dog, they are headaches but we love them anyways.
I've always been an artist, though I never had a proper direction. In 2009 I painted a zombie and that finally gave me the direction I craved. Visual Chaos in a way that people could understand and connect with. I originally wanted to be a comic book artist so this was pretty close and I embraced it. I was in my 30s trying to make a living with my artwork and mostly failing at it. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be, and it's still hard.
Back then I focused on zombie portraits.
(This is from 2014)
I started to gain some attention on facebook and google plus, thanks in a huge part to being interviewed by Forbes and Global News. I was also commissioned by Google Canada to paint their employees, which they displayed in their Toronto Office.
It was cool but I was never really able to capitalize on any of that. I don't seem to have the knack for financials. I need to learn how to be smarter with self promotio, especially with follow ups and pursuing leads. When I reflect on my life, I sometimes feel that I have only ever been a drifter of a person when it came to treating my life and art as a career and a business. I am starting to get more serious lately and I am slowly building and planning.
I'm trying and learned a lot recently so we'll see what happens.
For a while after googleplus died I didn't quite know what to do so I started playing around with youtube shorts and videos. It was fun to experiment with video and music. Given enough time I think I could eventually do some interesting things. But I needed to find a way to earn some money ... It was at this point that I was pushed into the NFT art scene.
It was early 2021 adn the crypto scene was in full swing for NFTs. I was a bit late to the party but it was perfect timing for my career. I dove head first and started to mint my artwork on the #wax blockchain. It was amazing to reach and connect and engage with so many people so quickly.
I started with, embraced, and still build on the WAX.io blockchain, but after such a long bear market the whole attitude has shifted. Less people are here for fun, with more focus on ROI which has really hurt the small creators lately, which is why places like HIVE and other creator content driven platforms are essential.
I try to hustle hard to earn a living because earning a living as an artist is hard, even though crypto has made it easier. One of the greatest things about being an artist that mints on the blockchain is the fact that I can reward my fans and collectors whenever I feel like it. I can also explore my creative side and unleash whatever whenever I want.
So that’s a small break down of my life, I don’t really know what else to say next. I’ve been exploring a lot of animation lately to make my art pop a bit more, and I’m finding some decent success on the DRiP.Haus platform. It’s a fun little platform that allows me to do whatever I want and not have to worry about promotion and selling. https://www.drip.haus/driphorde
My WAX collections are still active and I am still building on that blockchain, but things have slowed down and I am trying to focus on collecting activities that will help burn some of the oversupply. It should be fun and hopefully bring some extra value to long term holders. If you are a WAX NFT collector, reach out and I’ll hook you up with some of my work there.
At one point during the bear market I teamed up with a group called AAA Metahuahua. With them we launched a re-genesis collection on the Stargaze blockchain. It was a 2455 piece collection of 1 of 1 artworks and we called it the Creepy Companions collection. Each piece was a milestone marker of my 20 year artistic journey, from sketches to fully painted artworks. It’s one of the most diverse collections I ever minted. https://www.stargaze.zone/m/creepy-companions/
Then the AAA Metahuahua team and I dropped a free mint on the SEI blockchain called ZombSEIs. This was a reward for people that minted a creepy companion and the entire 8888 ZombSEIs collection minted out. Since then we have burned over 1000 of those NFTs in different events that rewarded people with 1 of 1’s https://magiceden.io/collections/sei/zombseis
I’ve also recently started to post my work on Access Protocol. It is a subscription based platform that lets collectors stake ACS (a solana coin) to their favourite creators and get NFT rewards, as well as staking rewards. I’ve only just begun minting there but I do like the fact that once again, I don’t have to do a lot of selling and self promotion. https://hub.accessprotocol.co/creators/artist-byron
And that’s probably enough for today. If you read this far, thank you and welcome to the Horde. Byron www.artistbyron.ca