A sound tactic for any artist is to diversify your income sources. Even if have a day job and make your art on the side, splitting your sources of income among various ways and means is far better than relying on only one source. Diversifying where your income generated from art originates is equally important.

You don't have to replace your salary with other income, yet earning a portion of the total offers choices and makes you more resilient. Building resilience is key to living the art life. Maybe these other sources of income pay portions of your needs. Having necessities taken care of frees you from financial stress and allows you to focus on your art.

Knowing what you need income-wise to pay your basic expenses gives you a better idea of how you might approach spreading around the sources of your income. For example, even in retirement I'm looking at having multiple income sources: pensions, rental income, business (art) income, and funds generated from savings and investments.

Ah, savings. What does this mean? To me, savings equals 'possibilities.' Sadly, for too many, savings are meant to be spent, especially when a certain level gets reached. "Hey, I have some cash around, let's spend it on a vacation. Or a new couch." A longer term view of savings is to use these funds to cover emergencies. For example, always have a few months of savings to cover basic needs. Therefore, with the loss of a day job, a few months of emergency cash set aside helps weather the storm a bit better while a new job is searched for and found. Longer term savings are generally earmarked for retirement.

What rarely occurs to people is how savings can also generate current income. Building a substantial capital base that's invested in some manner, can kick back money to help pay for some of your bills. And since this income comes from interest and dividends, the original capital base remains intact. In fact, many people define being financially independent as earning enough passive income from invested savings to pay ALL their bills. Imagine that: being FI (or even partially so) with no need to work (but you still can).

A side business (or two) comes next as another way to earn income. Developing and building a business large enough to replace a job's salary takes a gargantuan effort. But it can be easier to make lesser amounts of money from several smaller activities than it can be to make a larger sum from one intensive activity. The choice is yours, of course, but stitching together a series of related tasks that pay can be a fine approach. For many artists, this is the plan (e.g. writing, speaking, teaching, consulting, etc.). And when they feed one another, even better such as speaking and publishing a book on the same subject. This forms a web which has greater resilience and avoids a catastrophic cascade.