Getting Your Work out There!! (1)

Power of Wind 3 30x48 $3000 Join every free website you can! For years I resisted this notion but finally realized that this is another way to get my work in front of as many probable purchasers as possible. Of course it made sense to me after I read the article in Art Calendar, featuring artist Martha Marshall who uses the web extensively to get her work out there. So right now I am on Art Scuttlebutt, Saachti Gallery UK and I have a link to Absolute Arts to name a few websites and I'm still looking. Look below for the links to these websites. And now I'm writing a blog. What are YOU doing??

Get your name out here! (1)

For You 16x20 $800 AoC*

Get yourself a website! Nowadays galleries and exhibition spaces expect you to have a website, customers expect it too. You don't come across as a professional artist without a website. It's like not having a business card when someone you meet ask for it after you tell them, 'I'm a full time artist now!'

My website service is Artspan, they have hosted my website for about five years and I am very happy with them. They manage all of the technical stuff: software, server and network updates. I just create and update the content any time I want. I find it very easy and the cost runs me a little less than 20$ a month with unlimited images. I have the premier plan but there are other plans. There are other website services out there, find the right one for you but use a service. They are connected with all of the major search engines or should be and can get your website high in the search rankings. So if someone googles your name, you come right up, instead of in the back pages. A website which does not appear on the first page is useless, I never go to the second page, do you? You can also use a website designer to create your website but know that every time you want to change the content know that you, your money and time are on their schedule.

Or you can create your own, wouldn't you rather create art instead of a website??

Invest in yourself, get a website!

*AoC means Acrylic on Canvas

Pricing without emotion.

Spring Burst II 40x30 $2400 AoC* I use a formula to calculate the price, it is: L*W*F/.50 = retail price L = Length of the painting in inches, W= Width of the painting in inches. F=Factor allow for the growth in price of my paintings and .50 is the markup for the gallery Add cost of framing to the retail price of the painting. I know that many of you suffer when pricing your work, it's very emotional for you: you want to consider how much you love the piece, how much you suffered when creating the work and how much time it took to create the masterpiece. I want to focus on my work so I developed a formula to automatically create the price. I put the formula in an excel worksheet and after I enter digits for L, W and F(in the beginning I used 1 for Factor), the price is automatically generated. My husband later helped me simplify the formula to the one I use today. If I am not happy with the calculated price I use factor to make it more to my liking. Factor is used to increase the price of my paintings over time but can be used for other things. I also put roundup or round down in the formula of my excel worksheet. I keep the gallery markup at .50 regardless if it's a 50% commercial gallery or a %20 exhibition spaces. Thus pricing without emotion. *AoC = Acrylic on Canvas

Should I paint to sell?

Expansive Spring 24x40 $2600 AoC*
Love your work and create what you want!! Look at what the 'probable purchaser' actually buys from your work. If you want to make a living selling your paintings, create more of the same, not the same painting with different compositions and colours but with the same feel. You can find out more about this in Jack White's articles published in Art Calendar. 'Probable purchaser' was coined by John Patterson and means the prospect, the person with the ability to make you happy by buying your work. I found this concept in Jeffrey Gitomer's books on selling and personal development. *AoC means Acrylic on Canvas.