The Sims: Legacy Edition has over twenty careers for Sims to choose from, thanks to its inclusion of every expansion pack. Sims can become almost anything they could dream of, from a Professional Party Guest, to Animal Magician, to UFO Investigator. Despite that, one career path was never formally added: Artist.
Related
The Sims 1: 8 Essential Items For Your First Home
These items are must haves to keep your Sims alive.
Despite the arts being neglected by the SimCity Times’ careers pages, Sims have the unofficial option of pursuing self-employment using some humble homeware: the easel. With just a few Simoleons in their pocket, and some handy tips, Sims can set sail on the journey to become the next Basquiat or Kahlo.
How To Paint
Just like in most other games in the franchise, Sims need an easel to be able to paint. You can buy the Dimanche Folding Easel for 250 Simoleons in the Miscellaneous section of Buy Mode. It’s in the Creativity subsection along with the musical instruments.
Once you own an easel, select it and click the Paint interaction to start painting. Canvases are free, so don’t worry about this costing extra Simoleons. The only thing you need to invest in is the easel itself.
As your Sim paints, their Creativity skill will build. Painting also takes care of their Fun need, so you don’t need to worry about your Sim getting bored. However, you will have to keep on top of their other needs, because Sims can easily become too unhappy to paint.
Sims can take breaks in the middle of a painting. Just cancel the interaction by clicking the icon in the top right-hand area of the screen. When your Sim wants to return to it, click on the easel again and select the Paint interaction again.
Unlike in some later Sims games, there’s only one easel to choose from, so ironically you won’t get much control over aesthetics here. On the bright side, it also means you don’t have to worry about the quality of the easel holding back your painting’s potential.
How To Sell Paintings
After some time, your Sim will finish painting their first artwork. When finished, they’ll automatically cancel the action and move on to do something else. Select the easel and use the Sell Painting interaction to sell.
The higher your Sim’s Creativity skill, the more Simoleons the painting will sell for. At first, paintings can sell for as little as a few Simoleons, so it takes a while to break even on the equipment. But, once you do, it should be smooth sailing.
Sims with a high Creativity skill can expect to sell paintings for much larger sums, with some going for 166 Simoleons. Thankfully, your Sim builds their skills while painting, so you can earn while you learn.
Other activities besides painting can also build the Creativity skill, like practicing piano or learning guitar. This can be a useful way of mixing up gameplay, although Sims can’t make money from playing music at home.
Tips For Earning Money From Painting
Making money while painting is fairly straightforward, but there are ways of helping to line your Sim’s pockets a little quicker. To earn as much cash as possible, you mostly need to focus on levelling your Sim’s skills and keeping them happy.
Managing A Sim’s Mood
Unhappy Sims make bad painters. In fact, Sims with a very low mood will refuse to paint at all. Improve your Sim’s mood by staying on top of their needs as much as possible. Give them regular breaks to eat, sleep, and relieve themselves.
Buying more expensive items is the most efficient way of filling a Sim’s needs, as better items fill the relevant need(s) faster. Getting the best of the best probably won’t be possible until your Sim has a super high Creativity skill, so just try to get what you can.
Hiring services might also help your Sim to cut corners with their needs. For example, ordering a pizza gives them more time to spend getting their creative juices flowing instead of hanging around over a stove. It also prevents any pesky fires from breaking out.
You can hire services using a phone. Or, if you’re struggling with keeping a clean house, try buying a Bag-o-Bones Skeleton Closet or the Introducing Servo from Buy Mode instead for on-demand cleaning help. This should help to keep their Environment motive high.
If you’re not interested in taking care of your Sim’s needs at all, then there are some hacked items floating around the internet that you can use to make a Sim happy almost instantly. The Rejuvenation Chamber Plus by Simslice fills every need at once, so your Sim can get back to their art quickly.
A lot of old fanmade content still works with the Legacy Edition, so you should be able to load this into your game easily. The downside is that this specific item costs 10,000 Simoleons, so you might need to cheat to afford it. Unless it’s one of the only items you own.
Download and use custom content and mods with caution. Use due diligence when using unofficial items.
Magically inclined Sims can also experiment with witchcraft to keep themselves satisfied. Adult Sims can use equipment from the MagiCo Magical Starter Kit and ingredients from Magic Town to cast Get Happy to fill their needs quickly, making breaks as brief as possible.
Run A Family Business
Households with more than one Sim in them can all work on earning money through painting at once, or one after the other. This can help to maximise the amount of Simoleons you can make in a day by selling paintings.
Adults aren’t the only Sims who can get in on a little creative money-making in The Sims 1. Children can also use the easel to paint and sell art. They’ll even build their Creativity skill along the way.
While they can help out with building the family savings, it’s important that children don’t miss school for it. Even besides ethics, Sims with poor enough grades will eventually be shipped off to military school. When this happens, they get removed from the household entirely.
Another consideration when starting a family painting business is that every time you buy an easel, the overheads will get higher because you will have spent more money setting it up. Owning multiple easels allows more than one Sim to paint at once, but the costs add up quickly.
It could be more cost-efficient to get different Sims in the household to take it in turns using the easel while the other takes care of their needs instead. You could basically give them shifts like they would have in a regular career
Taking On Another Job
There’s no shame in funding your Sim’s passions using a day job. Although it can make taking care of their needs harder, having extra income from a traditional career alongside painting can be useful at first while a Sim builds the Creativity skill.
Try to choose a job for them that doesn’t require too many hours so they still have the time and energy to dedicate to their creative pursuits outside of work. You also might want to choose a job that needs the Creativity skill to get promoted, since they’ll be working on that anyway.
The Musician career could be a good choice as it starts off with minimal hours, and at first, has no real promotion requirements besides showing up. The Slacker career is also a good choice thanks to short working hours, so long as you don’t mind the weird working hours.
If you want to completely decide your Sim’s schedule then you would be better off starting them on the Fame career instead. This career path allows Sims to take on gigs and earn tips around Studio Town on their own terms, so you can dip in and out as you please.
If taking on another job is too much, you could always experiment with other money-making methods. The Sims 1 has a few options kicking around, including gnome-making, bee husbandry, and even magical charms.
However, they do all require other skills to be built, so you might find that it takes too much time away from painting for your liking.
Next