Selling Art

[Oriole]

I have some paintings piling up that would fit folk-art / children room decor style. Anyone was successful at selling their art? How did you do it? Where did you start? What about selling prints vs. paintings themselves? What else to do with the images you make?

Thanks for all and any advice.

[Kristine233]

I haven't but would love to see them! (hint: take pictures and post them for us to see somewhere, lol) If it were me, I would make a website, even a simple blog, that you can put pictures of them on like a portfolio site that you can direct people to. Include your contact information so people can get a hold of you if they are interested in one. I love artistic stuff like that and would jump on something that I thought was amazing. I'm sure lots of people would. You could even try Etsy? I don't know much about selling stuff locally though.

My husband and I do photography and I just set him up a website this weekend. He wants to sell prints eventually but wants to amass a bigger collection first. I want to sell them as stock photography and we'll probably do that first. A totally new area for us both, probably similar to the area you are venturing into as far as the sales side and art.

[DaughterOfKali]

I used to sell my paintings. I started by having art shows in cafe's.
From there, you can try to get into galleries.

In my current area, they only seem to want oil paintings at galleries. I don't want to work with oil so that's out for me.

[Oriole]

Well, since you asked...

here is a link to the three uploaded cats' paintings in Flickr.

I just don't know how to set up my website. What to market? What to sell? I don't have framing, or the money to invest into framing (it's so expensive!), so what do I do? Try to sell unframed prints?

[ilsesthings]

i think you could frame cheaply enough (look for standard size matting and frames, metal black frames are cheap enough and look simple and classy)...

i'd say etsy is pretty feasible (i have a pretty inactive site there, but i find it affordable and a nice setup)... i also like the blog/portfolio idea, but i'm yet to discover how to set up a gallery on a blog.... if someone has info, I'd love to know...

your art sounds sorta like mine, but i'm off to look at yours! mine is child-like (Miro, Klee type stuff, i'd like to think! )

let us know what you decided?

[ilsesthings]

loved the kitties, btw!!

[DaughterOfKali]

You could set up a blog or you could try selling them through etsy.

[provocativa]

I have a friend who makes money selling his art on Ebay. You can also get rolling on Facebook, and post your art there. Here, there is a huge art fair in the summer, and the poorer artists set up on lawns just outside the fair. Our town also has an outdoor artist's market near the farmer's market, and artists aren't required to rent a booth all summer, only when they want to set up. It's nice because folks can browse after veggie shopping and not always see the same artists. So, if you have a decent farmer's market you might start a movement for an artist's market. Also when we have street fairs like july 4th or etc. some artists set up booths. If you feel your demographic is really kids, you might try setting up at maternity fairs. If you do a lot of work with animals you could market to vets or pet owners somehow.

[Ella-6]

Hi Oriole,
Cute kitties.

To sell the originals I agree with pp when they recommend selling at cafes and markets. Also you could try entering them in church fund raisers where they earn a commission from selling your work and local competitions/fairs where they do the same.

If you can't afford framing just extend the painting from the front to the sides of the canvas as well.


For prints etc. these two places come highly recommended from my artist friend community...

You could set up a store (for free) at zazzle.com to sell your art printed on all kinds of things. You can also promote art from other artists there to receive a commission. For good quality prints of your work: imagekind.com.

Ideally when you sell work online you need to be able to send traffic to your prints. This could be from a website, blog, your own advertising ie. business cards, flyers, ads, articles about you in the paper etc. If you want to be a bit more ambitious you could start an online newsletter to encourage repeat business from your fans.

Hope this helps - 'cause art is fun!