How to Promote Your Paintings: Ideas for Selling Your Art

Most artists start out just wanting to create. Then, time goes by and they realize that they want more; they want a career.

The only problem is, most want-to-be pros don’t realize how much time, determination and spunk it takes to make it in the business. Oh, and not to mention connections. Selling art is all about networking.

Networking

Surely this word used by high powered executives has nothing to do with artists, right?

Networking has everything to do with anyone wanting to make money off of a product. Your art is your product.

1.a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest: Working mothers in the community use networking to help themselves manage successfully.

Networking is meeting others in the hopes of making connections with others that will bring you profit later. So, how do the pros network and still have time to create?

The answer rests in the use of some pretty common business tools and how they use them.

Cataloging Your Art

The very first thing you should do is catalog your art. What I mean by this, is, art needs to be recorded by photograph and these images should be put into a form that can be accessed by people that may want to buy your art.

Photographing your art is very easy to do. For the basics, the article Photographing Your Artwork by Cecilia H. Lee is a good place to learn how. When getting your film developed, make sure to pay the extra few buck to get the images put on a CD. These digital images will come in handy, as you will see.

It is also possible to scan smaller works to get good, high-quality digital images of your work.

A traditional portfolio is always good place to display your work to potential clients. This doesn’t need to be anything fancy. A simple, black, hardbound three ring binder with plastic sleeves will work just fine. Line all of the sleeves with a sheet of plain, white paper and center one photo on each page. You may want to include a small card at the bottom of the page listing the name of the work and the price.

Another good thing to do with your images is to make an online portfolio. You can send potential buyers from all over the world to an online portfolio. There are some very nice websites out there that will host your art for free. Here are some of the better ones:

Feb 25, 2009 2:10 PM

Guest :

I have a very interesting painting that I made and I was wondering where I would be able to sell my paintings for good money.

Jun 3, 2009 9:29 AM

Guest :

Try to sell it on ebay or craig's list...or attend any of the many art fairs this summer in your suburb and reserve a booth (can be pricey though). The skokie booth for the skokie art guild fair is $150...better than $420 that many of the north shore art fairs ask for...

Aug 5, 2009 3:07 AM

Guest :

All this talk about PAYING for a Booth are you nuts? only under certain Specialized culture / art fares would i ever consider paying for a booth. Believe me I?ve tried to make a living at the farmers market Wed and weekend booths at a nominal cost of $25 per day, what i found was that the only good that did me was, fresh air and postcard sales, nothing sells for more than $5 at these locations so don?t bother trying to sell your originals in the hundreds, who has two franklins in their wallet anyway?

on another note, if Publicly owned land is being used for a Craft fair or / farmers market / art festival and the city requires a permit to set up a booth, you can ignore the permit with complete impunity under certain conditions,

White vs. City of Sparks was the Federal case that settled the details of it.

Essentialy it boils down to this, Your art is your free speech which is your right, even if you are making a living off of your art, the city can not demand an exemption form be filled out because that would violate due process, most artwork is accepted as speech so long as it has another purpose than utilitarian. for instance hand carved wood bowls may have 1 utilitarian purpose but they are not used that way when they cost $400 for example per bowl and are hand painted .. this is clearly art, a lawnmower is not art, dance paintings music wood stone metalic statues are art..

but if you are selling someone elses art on public land this is not a protected right, because it would be considered INCOME = profit or gain above an original source unless authorized under power of attorney by the selling party due to medical inability or other inability.

if you are selling your art it is not considered INCOME , it is compensation

federal courts have ruled that income is not to be construed to mean the same thing as compensation, and that the tax on income may be from any source however only the gain or profit may be taxed!

dont take anything at face value, do your legal research before your practice this, but I have for the past 8 years and so far the govt is afraid to challenge my higher constitutional law.