joeReputation more than anything else, will help you become a highly valued and desired artist. Here are ten quick secrets that will help you enhance your reputation.
1. An Awareness of the Audience:
When you can target a specific audience who will be most attracted to your work, you can focus your energies and creative spirit in satisfying that particular niche. For example, focusing on painting race horses is one niche. You try to get people to think of you when they think of this topic. Ask yourself….. what kind of an artist will someone remember me as?
Then find a large enough market that will support your market….
2. An Eye for Design:
Once you focus on a particular audience ask them what they look for in a painting. Get to know your buying andience and find out what they like. What have they bought in the past. Which artists do they L-O-V-E buying from. Study that artist’s style and find out if you’re leaving anything out in your designs. Ask your audience what is it they want, but can’t find anywhere. These answers might just surprise you but they do indicate what people will pay good money for these days. Your best product design consultant are your customers and prospects that look just like them.
3. Creativity: Constant new ideas for projects.
Try things. If you get a good response, explore more and expand. If you do not get a good response, ask what people didn’t like. Then change your creative designs. Remember, the success of an artist in selling artwork today and making a good living is painting what people want to buy. Painting for yourself only or painting what people do not want NEVER helps you sell paintings. So get to know your audience and what they want. Mingle, mingle, mingle….. Network with other artists and find out what they’re doing that works. Visit their art shows to find out what’s happening. Keep your eyes open, listen, and modify what you’re doing so your customers will not only like your work, but crave every new artwork you complete.
4. Humility: A great artist has a sense of humility and is open to criticism.
I see so many artists offended by opinions some of their audience have voiced. Simply say Thank You. It’s not important that they love your work. It’s not important that they hate some of your work or give you opinions or reviews you do not like. What is important is why they say that. So don’t react to what people say. Take notes on why they’re making their statements. Later as you review all the notes, look for any common comments from several people. That could well become a critical component that if addressed will create a tremendous demand for your painting. Why is this so important.
Consider that you’ll design 12-24 paintings a year. If your analysis shows that by changing an approach or design element you could up the price of your artwork by $500.00 each, you’re being well-paid to listen to people’s complaint. Good artists understand that not everyone will have the same feelings about their work, so be humble, don’t get emotional or hard, just thank everyone for their opinion.
5. Knowledge of Materials:
It almosts goes without saying that artists must be familiar with a variety of materials that can go into a project, and knows how to most effectively use them. Not only will this help develop more techniques and skills in deploying techniques, but it will help you become more creative. As you study a live scene or a photograph (drawing) you will develop designs, effects and creativity from what you believe is possible. By staying ahead in your knowledge of materials and new products, you will keep your creativity fresh and really embellish the work you offer your audience.
6. Passion:
I can’t say enough about the importance for an artist to be passionate about their work. You want your passion to penetrate your practices of art because you love the work and feel that driving need to create. When you’re passionate about your work, your paintings show your passion and the audience feels the passion when they view it.
7. Savvy Technical Ability:
Art is loaded with A great artist is technically savvy and can employ computer applications into their work.
8. Sketching Skills: A great artist has great sketching skills and can use those skills to lay out the basics of an upcoming project, either for their own reference or to show the project to others. Doing beautiful drawings is not the objective. But sketching is where your mind let’s loose and allows you to quickly compose one idea after another. You wrestle out design issues, passion, impact, message, movement, color. It’s like an artists business plan. A business plan is essentially a blueprint that helps a company determine to operate their company in the upcoming year to make their goals. An artists sketch shows how you’re going to accomplish a specific painting you have in your mind and become successful with it. Sketch like you paint. Don’t worry about whether or not your drawing skills are great. Just pick up a pencil and sketch like you paint. Work out the design problems in your sketch. When you go to canvas, your painting will be so much easier to create.
9. Strong Business Sense:
It’s a fact of life. If you’re going to make your living as an artist, you must have excellent business skills to market yourself and your work to the public. And here’s the biggest advice in this area I can share. In order for art to be sold, it must first be seen. So get out. Get yourself seen. Get your work seen. Learn how other artists sell themselves and their work and try these approaches for yourself. Ask your audience how they would like to buy art. Again, your customers will teach you more than you realize.
10. Vision:
The greatest disservice some TV artists have done is to just give the impression that an artist sits down at a blank canvas, immediately begin painting with no idea of where they’re going and creates a stunning masterpiece.
That concept is hog-wash.
Vision is hard work.
You take the time to quiet your mind and to force yourself to solely focus on the product you’re about to paint. Review your sketches in detail. And think. Meditate. Thank about the people you’re painting this painting for. How do you want them to react? Visualize the reaction in your mind’s eye. See the looks on their face. See them take the painting home, hang it, how they talk to immediate family members when they first show the painting. Visualize what the audience will say when they have guests and show off this masterpiece. Feel the appreciation you want others to have in this painting.
Keep visualizing until you feel really great about what you see in your mind’s eye. Then attack your painting with the passion you felt in your visualixation. A great artist always has a strong sense of vision and can easily picture the end result at the outset of a project.
Keep painting.