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Art + Audience
Ep. 11: Finding Your Creative Voice with Genna Blackburn: Building a Cohesive Brand and Audience
00:20:01
Today, Stacie is joined by her good friend and illustrator, Genna Blackburn, for an insightful conversation about finding your signature style and growing a loyal audience. Genna shares her journey from graphic design to surface design, how she...
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- [00:00]
Stacy Bloomfield
Hey friend, Are you ready to pitch your artwork for art licensing? Then I have the thing for you. Presenting my brand new art licensing pitch Playbook. This free email course gives you everything you need to start pitching your artwork for licensing while leveraging your already awesome work into the next level of profitability and possibility. I'm going to teach you the five biggest mistakes that keep artists from crafting irresistible pitch emails, reaching out to their dream partners, pitching their work with confidence, gaining experience with collaborations, and building an art business that they love to run. So if you're ready to kickstart your art licensing business, visit artlicensingplaybook.com and I will send you my free 5 day email mini course. I can't wait for you to try it out. Bye.
- [00:50]
Jenna Blackburn
And you have to just know that you feel you've been talking about it everywhere and people are sick of hearing about it. But only so many people are opening your email. Only so many people are seeing your Instagram post. So if you're not talking about it so much that you feel like you're just talking about too much, you're not talking about it enough like you need to be talking about it over and over.
- [01:11]
Stacy Bloomfield
Wouldn't it be nice if your art business loved you back? Hi, I'm Stacy Bloomfield. After years of trial and error and late night doodling, I went from being a coffee shop manager to running a vibrant seven figure art business that I love. And now I'm on a mission to help more artists create an art business that they love too. So I invite you to find a cozy spot, pull out your favorite sketchbook, and listen in. It's never too late to chase your creative dreams. Welcome to the Art plus Audience Podcast. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another fantastic episode of the Art plus Audience Podcast. We're trying to help you build an art business that loves you back. And there are so many different ways to build an art business. Some people are creating art for products, some people are licensing their art, and some people are helping other artists learn how to find their voice and their style and build confidence. And fortunately, today I am joined by my good friend Jenna Blackburn, who has become a champion for artists who are right where we just talked about those artists who are trying to find their voice, build a small and loyal audience of people who care about what they're doing, and maybe improve their art skills along the way. So welcome Jenna Blackburn.
- [02:27]
Jenna Blackburn
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
- [02:31]
Stacy Bloomfield
I'm thrilled to have you here. Jenna, why don't you tell everyone about yourself and what you do.
- [02:37]
Jenna Blackburn
Yeah. So my name is Jenna Blackburn. I'm an illustrator, surface designer, and educator in Detroit, Michigan. I have had the pleasure of seeing my art on products like diapers and kids clothes and fabric and puzzles. I have a very childlike aesthetic to my work, so it does end up on a lot of children's stuff. I love that my artwork is on little baby bums all over the world. Like, that's pretty darn cool. I started out as a graphic designer and a ballroom dancer, and then, you know, over time, I've kind of morphed into an illustrator surface designer. And I almost dropped out of college to go pursue ballroom full time. And now I'm really glad I didn't, because while I do love dancing, the graphic design path has really led me to something that I love so much. And I'll just go off on a little tangent real quick. As a graphic designer, you don't really develop a style. You're not really making art per se. You're making, like, logos for companies. Like, you know, maybe you're making a logo for a manufacturing company or you're making a website for an art museum or whatever, and you're not really developing your own style and making your own illustrations. Like, I didn't do hardly any illustration work during that time as a graphic designer. And so when I wanted to get into illustration and surface design, I was like, whoa, I don't have a style. I don't know what I'm doing. And I had a lot of self doubt and fear and things that I had to overcome. And now that I've kind of pushed through that a little bit and I can draw without having an anxiety attack, I love sharing those tips with other people. And so, yeah, I'm glad I stuck with the graphic design because that led me to this path to become an artist to find a style. And now not only am I licensing my work, but I'm teaching other people how to do that for themselves too. And it's been so fulfilling.
- [04:41]
Stacy Bloomfield
You think if you have any artistic interest and you want to have a job, you have to go into a professional field like graphic design. And not that it's not creative work, but to your point, you're not really getting to pour like your own unique perspective into graphic design work because you're learning to design for clients. And that's a great skill set, one that I think is transferable a little bit for licensing, because a lot of times, yeah, you're taking work and tweaking it or designing to design briefs so that you can hit the nail on the head for a client. But then what happens is whenever someone's like, okay, I'm going to take the leap and I'm going to go start my own art business. I'm going to build my own portfolio, people get terrified, and they're like, what's wrong? I do this all the time. I design for other people. But when it comes for designing for myself, I feel scared, and there's just. I have no direction. And that's where you have come in and really helped nurture so many artists, because it's not just finding your voice and style. It's how do you build an audience of people who care about what you're designing? Jenna? Yeah.
- [05:41]
Jenna Blackburn
I want to talk about how I started to build my audience. And I think, like, it was so hard at first. I was like, what do I do? When you're making a lead magnet? So a free thing that they sign up for to get on your list, usually you want to take some time to think about what that free thing is so that you make sure you're attracting the right people. You want people on your list that want to buy your art, then you know, you want maybe something that's like a discount code for your art. But I was just like, I didn't even think about it that hard. I was like, I'm just going to make a free guide. I'm not even thinking about who I'm going to attract. I'm just going to make this guide. And it was a guide to developing your signature style and overcoming all the obstacles to making lots of art. Because that's what I was really passionate about at the time, and I'm still passionate about it. It turned out that it was attracting the exact right people for my list and building the right audience. But I. I'm going to just admit that I just got lucky. And I didn't give it that much thought when I first made it because I was overwh. But, yeah, I made this free guide, and I was like, hey, sign up for my email list. You'll get this free guide. And I built my list, my email list up to about 4,500 people just organically, without running any ads. I got to about 4,500 people. People like you, Stacy shared it, you know, shared the link to the guide and your membership, and that helped and started getting some really great people on my email list.
- [07:11]
Stacy Bloomfield
I tell people a lot. You know, you want to be known for something, like a lot of Times to attract people and build an audience. You kind of want to build out either a niche for yourself in terms of, like, the art you're making or who you're making it for. Yes, but sometimes it's not so much like, I've decided this is who I'm going to attract. It's just like, instinct. This is what I know how to do. So I'm just going to share about it and what you did, Jenna, which is like, I'm going to just quickly create something that I care about and put it out into the world and see how this goes is the best way to start. Right.
- [07:44]
Jenna Blackburn
And I just followed my intuition. I just made something that I felt really passionate about. And it turns out, you know, three or four years later, I'm still talking about that subject.
- [07:56]
Stacy Bloomfield
Oh, you just said something and this is important. You kept talking about it. Three and four years later, you're still talking about it. But I see a lot of times people will spend a lot of time on the lead magnet, the freebie, the guide, and they'll mention it, like, once online and they'll be like, it didn't work, it didn't work. Why didn't it work? Well, no one signed up for my email list. And I'll say, well, when's the last time you talked about it? Let's say when I launched it on Instagram. And so, Jenna, I know you because I followed your work. You talk about your guide a lot.
- [08:25]
Jenna Blackburn
Yeah, absolutely. I am always talking about on Instagram. I'm always talking about it when I go live for different things, like this podcast right now. It's part of one of my skillshare classes. Like, any place I can, you know, I'm going to talk about it because that's how you get people to know about it. They're not going to know about it if you don't talk about it. And then I also, now that I'm further along, I run ads to it, but I didn't do that for a long time. But now, yeah, that is something that I do to keep the conversation going on it. Anytime I post on Instagram something that has to do with style or making art, you know, I could easily say at the end of the Instagram caption for, you know, if you want more information on this, go get my free guide at blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, you know, three or four years later, after I've made it, like, there are still so many people who don't know about it. So I just keep talking about it everywhere.
- [09:21]
Stacy Bloomfield
We're kind of in our little bubbles, and the algorithm shows us each other's work all the time. And so we kind of feel like, oh, my gosh, I've been talking about this so much. People must be sick of hearing about whatever the thing is. But the truth is, we have a huge, giant world that we're living in, and we have to keep talking about things. In fact, that's one of the biggest roadblocks I see for most entrepreneurs, is they don't want to talk about things either, because, one, they tried it once and it didn't work. And to them, that's a confirmation of I'm doing something wrong. And that's not true. You have to keep doing things, too. They don't want to act like they're selling, or they don't want to ask people to join the list. They don't want to ask people to buy their stuff. They want to magically create beautiful art and put it online, and that's going to grow their business. And I wish it worked that way. But you have to ask for what you want. You have to become a salesperson for yourself. No one's going to sell your stuff for you. But no one likes the word selling, right?
- [10:16]
Jenna Blackburn
Absolutely. And there's a way to do it where it doesn't feel like selling. Like, it doesn't have to feel sleazy. There's definitely a way to do that. Only so many people are seeing your Instagram posts, so if you're not talking about it so much that you feel like you're just talking about too much, you're not talking about it enough.
- [10:34]
Stacy Bloomfield
So let's pivot a little bit, because I agree with everything you're saying. And, you know, you're building an audience now of people who get on your email list because, you know, you're trying to help them, and you found a need that needed to be met. And so you showed up with your skillset and your knowledge, and you added your flavor to it. You created that guide. Consequently, it does grow your social media audience, too. And what happens when your audience grows is it gives you, like, this social proof that you're really good at what you do and also that you're credible, which I believe in turn leads to why you're able to get licensing contracts. Jenna. So let's talk a little bit about that.
- [11:14]
Jenna Blackburn
So I grew my Instagram following to about 2,000 people, and it just stopped there for a really long time. And that was back when I was like, you know, I was doing a little bit of everything at that time. And then when I really got clear on my signature style and the art that I wanted to lean into, and I got really specific about what I was sharing on Instagram, my Instagram following started to just take off. And I think it's because my feed had a cohesiveness to it that was really pleasing to people. And I think that cohesiveness has attracted art directors. I think it's attracted audience people, audience members on my Instagram and my email list. And so I feel like that was definitely a turning point for me. And then, you know, as you're building your email list. Yeah. You're building your social proof, your social media following, and definitely running ads, running Facebook ads. I've noticed my Instagram following goes up because people are getting the ads on Instagram and they're going to my profile and following me. And I definitely think having the amount of Instagram followers I have has helped. You know, when I reach out to companies and I'm like, hey, do you want to work together? And they see, you know, they see that. I do think that helps a little bit with them wanting to work with me. Like, they know that it's going to reach a decent sized audience. And so that has helped me get more licensing deals.
- [12:44]
Stacy Bloomfield
So you mentioned cohesiveness. Do you think you could give some tips for people about what you mean by having a cohesive feed?
- [12:51]
Jenna Blackburn
Sure, absolutely. Yeah. It's hard not to share about every single thing that you do. Like, I had to say no to some things to myself. I was saying no to myself. You know, for a while. I was still doing wedding invitations and holiday cards and like, graphic designing type things. As I was transitioning into illustration and circumstances sign. And I'm like, I just made this wedding invitation. I want to share about it on Instagram because maybe people want to buy it. And then I was like, no. Like, that style that you did for that wedding invitation, it doesn't fit the style that you're going for as an illustrator. And if you share it in your Instagram feed, it's going to water down the overall look. And so I had to tell myself, like, don't do it, don't share it. I plan out my Instagram feed in indesign before I post anything because I like to move things around and I like to see, like, did the colors look good? And not saying that you need to go crazy and spend that much time on it, but it's really helped. Since I started planning out my posts on Instagram, it's Really helped with the cohesiveness of my feed. So I tend to use a limited color palette in my work. That's one of the things that defines my signature style. And I think some people are afraid to do that because it feels very limiting. But for me, it's actually really freeing because I don't have to think so hard about what colors to use when I sit down to make artwork. All of my work looks so good together on Instagram and on my website because it's all kind of using the same colors. And so just the style of drawing that I'm doing, I try to keep that consistent as well.
- [14:27]
Stacy Bloomfield
People are terrified about limiting color palettes. It's what I teach inside my course. Leverage your art, too. Because for me, early on, when I felt like I was unfocused and doing too many things, I literally created, like, rules for myself for a while to stick to guidelines. You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there, not artists, who actually will limit as many decisions as possible in their life so that they are only putting their energy in the most important places to become a better designer. Sometimes you do need to work within limitations. You work digitally, and so do I. But we have a lot of listeners who are not digital artists. They are, you know, mixed media. They paint. And whenever you say limited color palette, they go, oh, my gosh, what do I do? Do you have any tips or advice for, like, if you're working in a different medium, how to not feel as afraid of limiting your palette?
- [15:13]
Jenna Blackburn
That's a really good question. I never thought about it that way. Yeah, when you're a digital artist, you just know, like, I just know the CMYK values for all of my colors, and so it's so easy. And within the last year, I started drawing with crayons, and I had to go out and get, like, the really big box of crayons so I could find the most close colors that resemble my color palette. I think there's ways to do it, too, if. Yeah, if you're not. If you're not digital. I think one of my favorite things to do is just pick out, like, five colored pencils. Like, just pick five of them or pick five crayons or eight crayons or whatever, and just experiment with those for a little while and see what happens. Like you were saying about decisions. Like, there's something that you would think that having only five crayons to choose from when you're drawing something would be paralyzing, but it's actually, for me, the opposite. When the world is your oyster, and you have the whole huge box of crayons. Like, any colors you want, any supplies you want, any subject matter you want, any style you want. When you have all of those options, it's actually more paralyzing because you're like, what do I do? Like, I've made rules for myself, too. Like, I'm not going to do any texture. That's one of my rules. It might change in the future as my style evolves, but to be able to just eliminate that and say, nope, no texture. All my work is going to be really flat and graphic. It's like. It's so freeing.
- [16:43]
Stacy Bloomfield
But what's great is you can take this and you can even share the challenge of I'm designing an unlimited color palette, and you can put that in your social media feed, and you can even talk about it and create discussion around it, which is funny, because another way to grow audience on social media is posts that spark discussion. So let's say that you are hearing this and taking all this advice in, and you're like, okay, I'm going to go now and try to muster up some audience for my art. You can either make a guide, like Jenna has suggested, or you can even just discuss. Like, I am trying to create a more cohesive Instagram feed, and I'm going to do it this way. Follow along my journey as I do this. Bringing people along for the journey, as opposed to acting like you already have it all figured out, is a great way to build trust and honest relationships with people online, which then in turn builds loyalty with an audience. And that's what we want to do, is build a small and mighty loyal audience of people who care about us as artists. Sometimes it's mutual, other artists following us, Sometimes it's customers, sometimes it's art directors. But people are connecting right now with authenticity. Knowing that whomever I'm following or listening to for advice is speaking from their own personal experience and not just mimicking what they're seeing everyone else do out there, right?
- [17:57]
Jenna Blackburn
Absolutely. One of the things that I love to do when I'm on Instagram here, wherever I'm talking, is to be vulnerable about what I'm struggling with, what I've struggled with in the past, like the guide that I wrote about finding your signature style, it's more about overcoming the fear of making bad art, overcoming all of the things that can keep you from making art. And, like, I'm not afraid to talk about that. And that that's something that I struggled with at one time. And then I continued to work on. And I think people have really connected with that vulnerability and authenticity. I'm like, I'm honest about what I've had to go through to get to this point and what I'm still continuing to work on. And I think people really connect with that and they feel seen. And people love that, being connected in.
- [18:48]
Stacy Bloomfield
That way, because connection builds trust. It builds an audience. And then whenever you go to share something or sell something, people actually care, and then they want to share about it. And that's really a cornerstone for creatives like us whenever we're trying to build our audiences. Share something you actually care about. Share your own struggles and journeys with people. Sometimes you can take all those observations and put them into a guide and share them with people and help others. But, Jenna, your guide, where can people find your guide if they would like some help with their signature style?
- [19:18]
Jenna Blackburn
Yes. So I would love for you to check it out. It's at jennablackburn.com style and that's Jenna.
- [19:27]
Stacy Bloomfield
With a G. Jenna with a G. Well, Jenna, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your perspective about being an artist who is building an audience and building cohesiveness and actually making your life easier by creating. Creating some rules for yourself as an artist. Jenna, any parting words?
- [19:44]
Jenna Blackburn
Thank you so much for having me. This is. I feel like just this conversation has helped me, like, kind of realize some things about myself. I hope everyone listening, go out there, build your audience. Don't be afraid to ask for people to join your email list. They want to know what you have to share. You have unique perspectives, you have unique things to share, and people want to know about them. So don't be afraid to get out there and share about it.
- [20:10]
Stacy Bloomfield
Sharing is caring. And with that awesome ending, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Art plus Audience, and I will talk to you all next time. Bye.
- [20:19]
Jenna Blackburn
Bye.
- [20:21]
Stacy Bloomfield
Thanks so much for tuning in. Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you subscribe to this podcast and then share it with one of your best art friends? I'd really appreciate it. And then head on over to Instagram and follow me at the leverage your art account and you can keep up with all of our future episodes. Thank you so much for your support. It means everything to have you here listening and learning. Bye.