Archive for the ‘Your Art Offerings’ Category

Buyers Test-Drive Artwork in Virtual Rooms

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

As much as artists would like to think that buyers chose their work based on the art alone, in most cases the buyer is also influenced by the setting in which the art will be hung.   I have heard stories of buyers using colour swatches from their living room couch and paint chips of their wall colour to help them decide what piece of art would be suitable for their room.  Buyers also want to know if the size of the artwork will “fit” properly in the space they have available.  Context matters.

Often artists will let a buyer test drive a painting by letting them hang it in their home for a period of time before making a buying decision.  However when you are selling online, this option is less practical.   Another option that is being used on art websites is to show the prospective buyer on their computer screen what the art would look like hanging in a variety of settings, be it a living room, bedroom or office.  The buyer would chose the artwork they are interested in and a sample room to “hang” it in.  The user is then able to drag the artwork to the desired position on the wall.  It’s probably better if you see for yourself.   Click  here to hang this Klimt print (above) in one of the rooms available at OverstockArt.com.

Generally the rooms you can chose from are not exactly what you have in your own home.  The furniture is different.  The wall colour is different, the lighting is different.  So to overcome this, some sites like OverstockArt.com allow a visitor to upload a picture of their own room!  Then the buyer has a much better appreciation for how the artwork would look in its desired location.  This is an impressive application.   It gives the purchaser more confidence that they are making the right decision to purchase the piece.

You will find this technique of allowing buyers to see the art in a virtual setting used on E-bay,  reproduction houses, and individual artist sites.  This is one way artists can distinguish themselves online and engage the customer in a different way.  Just imagine having your art in these pictures.

Left:  A Claude Monet hung virtually in my office.

Posted in Artist Websites, Marketing Communications, Your Art Offerings | 4 Comments »

Extend the Revenue Flow From Your Paintings

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Most artists consider the revenue from the sale of an original work ends there.  In other words, once the product is sold you have received as much revenue as you will ever get for it.  Illustrator Lisa Rotenberg takes a very difference view.  She continues to derive royalty income from works that are sold and long gone. She considers a painting  just raw material that can yield a source of income indefinitely.  

 
Her approach to generating on-going royalties is to register her work with online firms that sell stock illustrations.  These online firms generally sell images to organizations, vs individuals, who want to include them in print advertising, displays, websites, brochures, greeting cards and so on.  Charges for the use of these images vary, depending on the application, the number of countries where the image will be used, the duration of use, and the industry. For example a painting of an orchid, for use in a movie circulated on 1 continent cost $849 on one site. A painting of a bird’s nest, used for product packaging for 5 years in 1 country would cost $1,213.   Sales revenue is often shared equally between the artist and the marketing company.  Examples of these companies are Stock Illustrations,  Illustration Works, and Illustration Source.  Lisa has been selling her illustrations this way since 2002.

Because customers of these services are often looking for something specific, Lisa will add many relevant tags to the illustrations so that her work will be found in the search facility of the sites.  If fact, she will often create art for a particularly popular keyword, such as “Christmas” or ”twitter” (see illustration on right), and sets of illustrations for keywords groups such as the “alphabet” or “zodiac signs”.  

In addition Lisa gets commissons when people use her images in greeting cards (see Greeting Card Universe) and in gift-ware (see Cafe Press).

According to Lisa, you continue to have rights to sell the image after the painting is sold.  One customer said he did not want to see an image of his work showing up anywhere else.  Lisa accepted the request provided that he pay double for the original painting.  He agreed.  In this case Lisa acknowledged this limitation on the back of the original work.

Fine art painters can use a similar approach and generate a revenue stream by offering their works on sites that print giclees from a digital image.

P.S.  Lisa also sells coffee and uses her art on the packaging.  See www.rocketfuelcoffee.com.

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Posted in Marketing Venues, Your Art Offerings | 3 Comments »

It’s New and Free!

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

It’s been said that the words “new” and “free” are the most powerful words in advertising.  And there they are together in the title of this article.  Admit it, you were a little hooked by the title weren’t you?  People love to get things for free.  When someone offers something for free many people are moved to action.  They like to get somethin’  for nuttin’.  That could work to your advantage when you are trying to promote your art.

For example,  artist Janet Nelson has a blog called A Planet Named Janet.  She grows blog followers  by regularly offering a draw for free original art. She has been giving away her art since the spring of 2009.  She offers a couple 5 x 7 acrylic paintings at a time.  Rules are simple. Visitors leave a separate comment for each painting they would like to win and they can enter as often as they like within a 2 week period.  Janet numbers the comments and uses a random number generator and pick the winners.  Janet even ships for free. She  considered giving away a variety of artwork in stock just to reduce inventory.  Instead she chose to encourage collecting by offering similar paintings as part of a series.   The series features a pair of items (2 peaches, 2 birds etc) painted on 5 x 7 backer boards. Winners also receive a blank notecard of the same image which she hopes will be sent to someone else.

As a result of the give-aways, her blog followers have doubled.  In addition, some winners have blogged about it. To produce that result she discovered that it was necessary to promote the giveaway, which she did on Facebook, Twitter and Etsy.  Unlike some other Etsy giveways, she made entry simple: just leave a comment.  Some artists require entrants to become followers to enter.

Janet also has a weekly give-away at a gallery where she is represented.  This has resulted in “a large fishbowl of entrants” whose e-mail address will be a valuable asset for marketing.

Other artists who have achieved a high level of exposure also use giveaways. Over 1800 people have joined the Facebook group, d’art Lottery for a weekly chance to win a piece of art by Val’s Art Diary.

I, myself  tried a little experiment on this blog last month.  I offered a chance for a  free  website analysis with every comment posted during October.   I was curious to see if the offer would encourage people to make more comments.  It did.  The average  number of comments per article jumped from 1 to 9.  Significant.  That does not include people who commented by e-mail.  Adding in those comments,  the comments per article jumped from 1 to 16!  The other interesting thing that happened was  a conversation among artists began.  I like that.  I see this blog as a place where artists can share their experiences and ideas about marketing online.  I encourage you to engage in the converations.

And the winner of the free website analysis is………. Ron Vickers!

Posted in Blogging, Increasing Traffic, Success Stories, Uncategorized, Your Art Offerings | 1 Comment »

Artists Use Wedding Registry to Sell Art

Monday, August 16th, 2010

 

Sometimes people buy art to commemorate a special occasion.  Artists Carol Currie and Stuart Leggett are a husband and wife team who have sold their art on the occasion of a husband’s 50th birthday,  a couple’s anniversary, and as a retirement gift.  In the past,  family members had gotten many people together to buy a gift certificate to purchase a piece of art.   Now Carol and Stuart are using their website to set up a gift registry for an upcoming wedding.  The bride is already a collector of their work, and she thought another work would be a wonderful wedding gift.  By promoting the registry on their website they are hoping that other visitors will consider doing the same thing for their special occasion.  The current registry is being promoted by the bride and groom, but Carol and Stuart have plans to market the concept to their client list.

Their website has been up for nearly 5 years and their blog, which is integrated into their website,  started about 7 months ago.  Sometimes having a website pays dividends in unexpected ways.  One collector thought it might be amusing to find an artist with the same last name.  He googled artists named Currie,  found Carol,  loved their art,  and purchased a piece for $4000 sight unseen.  Claustro have sold hundreds of paintings and most are to people who have seen their work in person.  However they have sold about a dozen paintings sight unseen from their website, which dispels the belief that customer must see a painting in person before they buy it.  Carol says they would allow a buyer to return a painting sold sight unseen if they requested it.

Most of their customers are in Toronto and Ontario, but they are now getting more momentum on the Internet and they finding more clients in the USA and the Canadian west coast as a result. 

” The Peak”  40″ x 60″  Sculpted Painting

Carol and Stuart  work in a self-developed medium they call ‘sculpted paintings’.   Stuart first sculpts a bas relief interpretation of landscapes onto a wood panel and then Carol paints the scene on the panel in acrylics.  Their process is unique and they highlight the process as a way to differentiate themselves on their website with words and images.  The collaborate artists call themselves Claustro,  an anagram containing the letters in their names Carol and Stu (It’s better than Orca Lust, they claim).  They own Claustro Gallery in Midland, Ontario where they show their work.

Posted in Artist Websites, Marketing Communications, Success Stories, Your Art Offerings | 1 Comment »

Illustrator Ventures Into Online Sales on Etsy

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
Jason Edmiston  is an award-winning commercial illustrator who has created work for Nike, Coca Cola, Kraft, Nestle, Hershey, JC Penny, Dupont, Hasbro, Zellers, Much Music, and Random House to name a few. His style ranges from realism to exaggeration, usually emphasizing the figure, and a certain degree of humour or caricature.
 
Left:  “Teeth” by Jason Edmiston. “This painting speaks of a recurring nightmare I have where my teeth crunch
and crack and fall out. I did some research, and apparently I fear the loss of something ‘permanent’ in my life.”

About a year ago he started selling limited edition prints of his work because “it opens up a new market to those who normally can’t afford my originals, and it hopefully widens my fan base”.  Although his original works sell in the hundreds to thousands of dollars, all of his prints sell for the same price, $30.  Each edition is limited to 100 prints because “it makes them seem more exclusive”.    

Jason has been successful in selling his prints at comic and monster shows and recently began selling his prints on Etsy.  Etsy is an on-line marketplace that caters to buyers who are looking for hand-crafted products. Jason chose Etsy because at least 5 of his friends sell prints on Etsy, and have spoken highly of it for sales. He chose to use a commerce site to sell his prints because he did not want to add a commerce capability to his own website.  It is important to Jason to control quality and delivery of his work (he prints on his own equipment) and Etsy allows him to maintain this control.  Jason also found Etsy’s low commissions to be attractive. 

Jason sold 8 prints in his first month on Etsy.  Jason has also shown his work on DeviantArt  for 1 year where he has over 100 “friends” and 200 “watchers”.  He is also represented by Threeinabox.com, a Canadian firm representing illustrators worldwide. In addition Jason uses Facebook to market his work.  All of this online exposure drives traffic to his Etsy site.

Jason said he is not concerned with people downloading and printing his images because the images are low resolution. His next step is to sell original works online, on Etsy.

His online presence is connecting him to a global market.  One of his Etsy customers lives in France.   Recently a Japanese blog commented positively on one of his paintings, as did a German site. This kind of global reach is made possible because of the power of the Internet to connect people in a way that has not been possible before.

Posted in Marketing Venues, Sales Fulfillment, Success Stories, Your Art Offerings | No Comments »

Your Process Stands Out in the Crowd

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Last weekend I attended the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, a massive show featuring 400 artists.  There was a wide diversity of art on display, as you can well imagine. With so many artists present, how does an artist stand out in a sea of white canopies?  Well one obvious way is to present a distinctive style of art.   Many artists  there presented works that were unique in some way.  Another way of distinguishing yourself is by the unique process that you use to create your work. 

There were no less than 15 printmakers at the show and I met most of them. Printmakers who work by hand see their work as very different from Giclée prints that are printed by “pressing start on a photocopier”.   Many buyers are not aware of the difference, so one printmaker, Vedi Djokich,  uses the Internet to clarify the matter.   He has created a  2-minute video called “Behind the Screen” that explains the difference between a hand-pulled screenprint and a machine-produced Giclée print.  The video is posted on his website and on YouTube where hundreds have viewed it.  The video also explains how the value of the art is impacted by the number of prints in the edition.   Vedi produced the video himself.  He does not begrudge the 30 hours it took to shoot and edit the video because he thinks of it as a piece of art in itself.

View the video here.  It’s raw, edgy, and profane,  all consistent with Vedi’s style of art. 

I know many of you are not printmakers and you may not produce Giclées of your work either.  However, you may be using a unique process to produce your work, and by letting the world know about it you can differentiate yourself in that sea of canopies.  The Internet offers new ways of letting people know about your how you produce your work.  Make a video. Post some photographs. Describe the process.  We would all love to hear about it!

Posted in Marketing Communications, Your Art Offerings | No Comments »

Barbara Muir’s Art Goes Global With Skype

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Barbara Muir is a Toronto portrait artist. When her son moved to Korea she naturally wanted to stay in touch, so she installed Skype, a software tool that allows people to have free voice and video calls over the Internet.  Little did she realize that that decision would ultimately lead to an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, where 20 million people watched as she sketched Oprah.

How did that happen?  Well,  Barbara began by sketching her son while they were talking on a video call.  Soon some of her friends found out that she was on Skype and they began to communicate that way.  Barbara did sketches of them too and posted the sketches on her daily blog.  Sometimes she would paint  full portraits from the sketches and Skype screen shots.  Her Skype sketching caught the attention of freelance journalist Howard Wolinsky, who interviewed her on Skype and posted the video interviews on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2). This led to an invitation to sketch guests at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, and finally to her being invited to sketch Oprah on her show.

Above: Barbara Muir during a Skype conversation with blogger Howard Wolinsky

Click here to see the sketch she did of Oprah on her show and her account of the experience.

“Oprah Winfrey”
Skype Sketch
willow charcoal on Canson Mi-Teintes paper
11 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches

To be clear, Barbara didn’t start Skype sketching as a marketing initiative. She explains, “I was found. I blog, I look for something to draw, and that’s how it happened.  The Oprah team liked my work.  The slideshow paintings on my blog showed them that I was a pro portrait painter, and could do the drawing of Oprah in the 45 minute live taping of the show.”

She began to experiment with a technology, one thing led to another, and very quickly she established a global presence.  She has been interviewed on City TV and written up in the Globe and Mail.  Her portraits appeared on HGTV’s Pure Design, on City TV’s Breakfast Television, and on Real Life CTS TV.  She presented her paintings at the Florence Biennale last December and showed her work at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in NYC last month.

The genesis of this fascinating story is that this artist was willing to learn how to use an Internet technology that was new to her.  That led to an intersection of art and technology which was novel, and novel things can go viral on the Internet, fortunately for Barbara. She now attributes her Skype exposure to the constant demand she enjoys both for Skype and more traditional portraits.

Related Stories

Other artists now see Skype portraits as a way to further their business.  In 4-6 hours,  Ian Bruce in London, England will paint a portrait from life, of a sitter posing anywhere in the world.   Ed Marion  lives in rural New York state, but that presents no geographical limitation to connect with his portrait customers who could live anywhere.  He charges $400  which includes up to four one-hour online sessions.  To see how a Skype portrait would work,  here is a 1 hour video of artist Susan Carlin, in Texas, painting an oil portrait of  Barbara Muir, in Toronto.

Posted in Blogging, Success Stories, Your Art Offerings | 1 Comment »

Resolve This

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Sometimes you want the resolution of your digital images to be high, and other times you want it to be low.  I’ll explain why in a minute but  first let’s understand what we mean by resolution. 

Resolution is the number of pixels captured by your camera, usually expressed in megapixels (millions of pixels). Sometimes the resolution is expressed as something like 2400 X 1600.  If you do the math, that ends up at 3.84 million pixels, close enough that we just round and call it 4 megapixels. Your digital camera probably has several quality settings.  The higher the quality setting, the higher the resolution. 

By the way, don’t confuse megapixels with the size of your stored image file (in megabytes).   When the image is saved, it gets squished down (a technical term) in size to save storage space, but the quality is retained.

If you are planning to make prints of your work, you should use the highest quality setting when shooting.  The resolution will determine the largest picture you will be able to print without distortion.  For example, if I had a 4 megapixel image,  the print-on-demand service RedBubble would not  make a print larger than 8″ by 10″ to ensure satisfactory quality.  A 18″ x 12″ print will require 7 megapixels and a 24″ x 16″  10 megapixels.  These are normally higher standards than your local chain photofinisher. If you want to sell higher-priced prints, you require higher resolution digital images.
 
Left:  Mona Lisa smile showing effects of low resolution.

FineArtAmerica will not determine whether the image resolution is adequate for prints until someone requests to buy one.  This can lead to delays if the work has to be reshot with higher resolution. A friend of mine was requested to reshoot one of his works 5 times by FineArtAmerica,  so give it you best “shot” the first time!  Also make sure any original artwork you put up on a print-on-demand site is available to you if you have to reshoot it.

Now when would you want low-resolution images?  When you don’t want people downloading and printing them for free!   Most photo editing software will allow you to take a high resolution image and lower the resolution for display on the computer screen.    You can fill an entire 1024 x 768 screen with a .8 megapixel image, and that is enough resolution to print a fairly decent greeting card.  However, a .2 megapixel image will be sufficient to display your work on a computer screen. This lower resolution makes the image even less attractive for downloading.

So to resolve the resolution issue, take the highest quality picture possible for printing purposes, and reduce the image size for your website or blog.

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Posted in Artist Websites, Your Art Offerings | 3 Comments »

Publish Your Own Art Book

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

This weekend I visited well-established artist, Barry McCarthy, in his studio.  His work is represented by the prestigious Loch Gallery in Toronto.  He showed me the layout for a book of his work that he plans to publish soon.  He said the large publishers are generally not interested in publishing art books.  Fortunately, that is no longer an impediment to publishing. He chose instead to publish the book himself using an on-line printer called blurb. 

There are many Internet publishers available  to publish books.   Even your local photo-finisher will publish a book for you at reasonable cost. Artists who have accumulated a body of work can create a book of their art, as a marketable product or as a record of their work.  The beauty of this type of publishing is that you can order as few or many books as you like.  Yes, you can even order just one book!  This means that you do not have to invest in a large print run.  As a result you could have a book printed on demand, driven by an order from your website.  Moreover, as you continue to expand your body of work,  you can dynamically update your book between printings. 

Generally artists think of selling original works or prints.  Self-publishing allows the possibility of including a book in your offerings.  The fact that you have published a book  (even just 1!) could have a positive impact on purchasers who see the book on your website.  A book could also be of value in shows to allow visitors a chance to see your works not on display.

Another interesting possibility is to create a book related to a cause.  A group of artists calling themselves “The Moraine Artists” published a book of their work to raise funds for the conservation of the Oak Ridges Moraine.  In this way  artists can contribute but still retain the art for sale or print-making.

If you are considering publishing a book the quality of the photos is key.  You may want to have that done professionally.

Allen

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Posted in Your Art Offerings | 5 Comments »