a few years back I was complaining to a friend about how much crappy art there is on the internet, and instead of sympathizing he answered with "that means I ca

a few years back I was complaining to a friend about how much crappy art there is on the internet, and instead of sympathizing he answered with "that means I can make crappy art too" and felt empowered by the permission to not have to be good at it at first. As for gaining talent at art this is my best advice to allow yourself to be bad at it for a long time until you are good at it. This takes years, usually like 10 years or more, but you will see significant progress in a month, a half a year and a year. But let's try to answer your other questions. Making money - look up the 1000 true fans article, that's the core of it. With this there are many routes like having a storefront online, money from ads on YouTube, creating products (like a coffee table book or a card deck with art on it, or a coloring book, or others), but as for getting into galleries that requires being somewhat known in that local community, for that you have to do competitions, go to shows, and participate at the local level, basically focused networking. Getting Known - Besides that you'll be doing what most marketing people do for yourself an your art, lots of social media posting(probably daily multiple times a day even - see successful Instagram campaigns), joining and building communities interacting with them and tailoring/catering to them. Ideas for content include 1.showing the art, 2.my process commentary, 3.speed painting, 4.tricks & techniques, 5.reverse engineering another artist's work, 6.inspiration and references - these matter as artists are a big part of the audience themselves. Shows - once one has talent, network/community and awards then they get invited to shows and galleries. It would probably be best if you asked someone that works at a local gallery how they do it and what they look for, and what they know. But all of that said the first steps is to get good, for that I recommend "Draw a Box" or college courses - professors are a good source of networking too, after that the local community is where it's at, go to art meetups, figure out where they hang out, some communities even have studio space to rent or live in things like that. It pretty quickly becomes a small world, so careful who's toes get stepped on along the way.