FIRST STEPS
How To Make Money As An Artist - that’s something we all want to know - right?
This is the title of a book by Sean Moore, who offers us ‘the 7 Winning
Strategies of Successful fine artists.
This is a book founded on the writers 30 years of experience as a working artist,
teacher and marketing communications professional. Although the book was
printed in the year 2000, and the face of the art world market has changed a lot
since then, there is still a lot of good solid advice for the beginning artist wanting
to take their art beyond the hobby stage.
He begins at the right place in chapter one with the basics of putting a marketing
package together. What you do need to consider, is that where he talks
about putting slides and photographs of your work together we no longer do that.
It is the same principal however, but we now use digital portfolios and websites
for people to look at our work.
This is awesome for us as artists, because it is so much easier to do and costs
very little. Technology changes everything eventually and it is an important part
of our art practice to keep ourselves up to date with technological changes that
are going on. The evolution of artist portfolios has been a very welcome change
as far as I am concerned and now we don’t even have to put things on CD’s,
rather we can use a cheap flash drive and leave it with the gallery at a small cost
to us.
What is important however is making your digital portfolio look professional. I do
mine in google drive - works like a charm. You can change the background colour, font and so on if you want to.
At the top of the post you cna see the cover for one of my portfolios. I tend to break them up into subjects as not all galleries will be interested in everything you have, and they like to see a cohesive body of work.
NEXT WEEK: Dress For Success