Hobby Turned Into Money

 “I’m tired of people asking me, again and again, to create a drawing they want, without getting any profit to myself”. This is the major reason and thought why Gilbert started to turn his hobby into an online business that can profit him.  

Gilbert, an 18-years old university student who enjoying himself as an English major student and a boy who loves anything related to art, especially drawing.

Gilbert is a boy who was born into a family that loves and appreciates arts in their life. All of them enjoying different art. His father and his oldest sister enjoying musical art, such as singing and playing many kinds of musical instruments. His mother and his other sister love to create some kind of beautiful and beneficial things, like handcraft. And Gilbert himself found his interest in drawing.

He started to draw when he was around 3 years old before he entered kindergarten, and his sister was the one who introduced him to drawing. Along the time, he started to learn and develop his drawing by himself.

Gilbert said he feels relaxed and satisfied when he could create a drawing. The process he runs when drawing makes him excited and fluttering, even though sometimes it could be tiring when running a long process of drawing. However, the result of the process could always pay it off.

Building, plants, fashion, people’s faces, and human or animal anatomy are things that usually being the object of Gilbert’s drawing. His favorite equipment to draw is a pencil, pen, watercolor paint, and also using a digital application.

“The type of drawing is kind of random. It did not radiate a depressing nor cheerful vibe. It is just random, but aesthetic ha..ha..” Gilbert shares his opinion about the type of drawing. He also said that lately, he falls into drawing some kind of culturally related things, for example, Thailand cultures.

His love for art and drawing become his daily life. He always set aside a little time between his activity to drawing. Many people recognized his artwork and also came people who asked him to draw something according to their wishes. Until he realized, why didn’t he use this opportunity, and turned his skill and his hobby into something beneficial for him? Eventually, he starts to create a business account based on Instagram to promote his drawing, so people will come to requested a drawing according to their wishes, and he will get profit from that.

Now, his business account, @melanesiarte, has a total of 372 followers and displaying some of the customers’ requests. Not only Instagram, but he also started to expand his business into twitter. He also said, when the time and situation allow him, he will expand more his business into a big and dedicated account.

We could create a big thing starting from a small thing!