Pros
Being a freelance artist offers flexibility and the opportunity to build a career that exercises your specific skills. You get to do creative work every day and advance your artistic practice while making money. As a freelancer, you have control over who you work with and what you are willing to do.
Cons
Freelance art requires you to market yourself heavily, especially when working in a direct-to-consumer format like taking commissions or selling art products. The skills required to successfully market yourself are constantly expanding as more people become savvy in the realms of social media, videography, and SEO-optimization. It is a highly competitive market and most well-known avenues of making money with art are extremely saturated. Focusing on content creation and making art that builds a following or sells well can also detract from the time and energy you have to work on creative projects that are personally important to you.