Welcome to the Nouveau Renaissance

A blog about the multidisciplinary, unbridled, creative freelancer mind. Showcasing my own work as well as the work of other nouveau renaissance creative freelancers.

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Pay Me What I’m Worth

Pay me what I’m worth. Hey, I know that times are tough, they’re tough for me too, but the fact remains that I’m offering you a professional service, so I expect professional compensation. I studied hard, spending long hours either seeking the information and/or practicing to sharpen my skill set(s) so that I could offer you a service that would be useful to you. Understand, I’m not saying that everything I touch turns to gold, realize, however, that you came to me because you liked the work that I do. You saw that I could do something that you couldn’t. That makes that service valuable and as such I expect to be appropriately compensated for the work that I do for you using those rarified skill sets.

I am not a greedy individual, I’m not asking for more than my due. You need to understand, though, that in my career field(s) I don’t have the luxury of resting on my laurels. I need to constantly learn new things; keep up with new technologies, research new methodologies and practice like I’m a garage band musician and there is only a week before my first big show. I put a lot of my personal time into my profession. I do this so that when the time comes for me to create a product for you I have a better chance of exceeding your expectations and delivering something that goes beyond what you requested. That’s my job: I see the things that you see, but I think about them in ways that you don’t. That comes from long hours of research, study and practice, and that’s worth something.

Yes, It’s true that I do the things that I do because I’m following my bliss. I love being a creative, but at the end of the day I still have bills to pay just like everyone else. Why don’t I just get a job like everyone else? Because I have a career as a freelance creative, that’s why. Would you tell a doctor or a lawyer to “just go get a real job?” Of course not, and like a doctor or a lawyer I have a specialized skill set, and that’s why I’m worth the money that I ask for.

And no, I won’t take your gig just to “get exposure.” If I feel like doing work for someone for free just to get exposure, I’ll approach them. To be honest, I will get more exposure by my self just doing the things that I’m already doing to advertise myself (chances are that is how you found me, after all) than I will get by working on your project.

I’m really not trying to be a jerk here. It comes down to simple mathematics: if I break it down to the hours worked to give you the best product possible, you lowballing me on a flat fee means that I will end up making minimum wage or less. I didn’t go through all of those years of school, and I don’t spend all of the time that I do now just learning new things and keeping my skill set fresh, so that I can make less than someone at McDonalds makes.

So, respect me, respect my time and respect my education and pay me what I’m worth.

Since this blog is about freelancers who do more than one thing to keep the bills payed, and I don’t want to be viewed as a hypocrite, here is a local commercial that I created for a pizzeria in my town.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a vanity blog, but I feel it’s appropriate to demonstrate, from time to time, that I am a nouveau renaissance freelancer just like the people that I feature here. That’s right, I’m engaging in self promotion at the same time that I promote others who work and create in more than one field of endeavor. I have bills to pay too, after all, and as a freelancer one should never miss an opportunity to self promote.

Figured I’d show a bit of my work as well. Let’s start with the sort of illustration work that I do. This was a piece for a client that wanted a tattoo designed for the back of her hand that would go up her forearm.

Figured I’d show a bit of my work as well. Let’s start with the sort of illustration work that I do. This was a piece for a client that wanted a tattoo designed for the back of her hand that would go up her forearm.

Get DISTRAKT-ed

To start things off, here is my good friend DISTRAKT, Hip Hop artist and all around renaissance man. DISTRAKT is a DIY superstar! Keep your eyes peeled for an interview with DISTRAKT coming very soon. We’ll try to get to the bottom of his techniques for keeping focused on all of the creative disciplines that he’s involved in.

Calling all nouveau renaissance freelance creatives

The idea behind this blog is to showcase the work of folks who make their living as freelancers, but who, like myself, do so in more than one creative arena (see some, but by no means an exhaustive collection, of my illustration work here, and my local commercial video production work here.) If you’re a musician/graphics professional, a writer/photographer, an artist/actor, or whatever combination of creative endeavors for pay, I want to hear from you.

The economy and workforce are shifting around the world with more and more people moving into the gig (freelance) economy than ever before. For many of us, however, specialization is just not practical, we are driven by too many passions to pick just one to do for the rest of our lives. We are nouveau renaissance creatives, stretching our abilities into new frontiers; instead of attempting to shoehorn ourselves into cookie cutter professions, we are attempting to create new professional paradigms that are better suited to us.

This blog will be connected to an as-yet-unnamed  e-zine that I will be publishing in the very near future, and then quarterly after that. I look forward to hearing from all of you and getting a look at your work. 

Paul