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Are art prints profitable? If you play your cards right, they might be!
As an artist, you might have mastered brush techniques, composition, and color theory, but starting a business is a different ball game altogether. Selling art prints entails determining what type of art people are currently looking for, promoting your product, and selling it through a specific platform.
The process can be time-consuming, and your success is dependent on the dedication and the strategies used to sell your art prints. Besides, the taste for art changes more often than not, so you have to keep track of that as well.
Buying a top grade printer for art prints can help you get ahead of your game after you’ve learned your audience and their intent. There are various options like laser printer vs inkjet printer for art prints to consider and knowing the different forms of printmaking and understanding their subtleties and nuances is of paramount importance. If you do poster printing and designing or label prints and branding, research and practice will bring you closer to your goal and a successful practice.
And you are in the right place. Today, we will walk you through the various aspects of establishing yourself as a successful art entrepreneur. So without further ado, let’s dig in!
Current Trends
Let us understand what’s the current trend in the art business. In the wake of many events worldwide, there’s been an alteration in buying-spending patterns in the art industry. In 2017, economic and political uncertainty affected high-end spending, and people preferred purchasing artworks from dealers rather than at art auctions.
There’s been a 63% rise in sales for art dealers, while a 19% dip in sales in auction houses was observed. Due to changing spending habits, art galleries only display high-end art pieces to avoid market flooding and a possible price drop. And art collectors feel more confident with mid-market prices, hence going for a riskier approach of purchasing directly from artists.
Discretion, transparency, and trust are significant factors a buyer looks for in an artist’s reputation. Otherwise, you may have to put in a lot of effort to persuade potential buyers to buy it. So, considering the current art market trend, selling fine art prints has become much more difficult than ever.
If you want to be a successful art entrepreneur, you must maintain transparency with buyers and ensure they get good value for their money. When a buyer believes in you, he will tell others about you, making for effective word-of-mouth marketing. You can rapidly grow the customer base and make more money in your online art business.
What Types Of Art Prints Can You Sell?
As every savvy art collector should know, various kinds of art prints are available on the current market. These include but aren’t limited to woodcuts, wall art, etchings, lithographs, silkscreens, aqua points, drypoints, mezzotints, linocuts, and giclée prints. So, we will now talk about a few of them that have considerable historical significance.
1. Etchings
These art prints are known for highly nuanced contrasts that mainly use black and white color palettes. A technique used by Old Masters, this art form is still prevalent today. Etchings were made famous by Rembrandt, who was described by Morgan Museum & Library “as an artist well-known for his dramatic intensity, whose artworks touch humanity and penetrate psychology.”
Rembrandt’s technique involves covering a metal plate with wax and using a specially designed needle to draw an image on it by scratching. Next, the wax-coated plate is immersed in an acid mixture, which dissolves the metal part cut out by the needle. You must continue brushing the plate with a feather-like tool while submerged in acid so that bubbles do not interfere with the acid’s corrosive effects.
Then take out the plate, wipe off the wax, and inject ink into the grooves formed by the needle. Clear the remaining ink once the grooves are filled with ink. When pressed with an etching press, the image gets printed on dampened paper. Before pressing, place a paper on it and a protective cloth, as the heat might melt the ink.
Cut out the image from it, and you have your own etched drawing.
2. Screen Printing
Moving on to our next pick, we have Screen printing, another popular art form that dates further back to the Song Dynasty in ancient China. However, modern screen printing is inspired by a pop artist, Andy Warhol. To create screen printing, artists use a mesh to transfer ink onto a surface that’s made impermeable and doesn’t allow the mesh to oversaturate.
In this so-called “stencil-printing” method, a design is drawn on blank areas using a stencil on surfaces that are not impermeable. Furthermore, the ink is imposed into those designs using a squeegee or fill blade to make the design more detailed.
3. Lithography
Lithography was made famous by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the 19th century and influenced several artists in the 20th century. In this method, a stone is the primary printing tool used.
First, an artist prints something on the stone using a tusche, a grease-based medium. Then, the stone is dipped into a chemical solution for the image to attract ink, and the blank area attracts water and repels ink. The artist uses a solvent to fix the image, and water is used to dampen the surface.
Once done, an oil-based ink is applied to only the image using a roller, and the stone is placed on a lithographic press and covered with a board and damp paper. Pressure is applied using the stone on paper to print an image in reverse, and separate stones are used similarly to draw complex images.
4. Giclee Printing
This form of printing came into existence with the availability of advanced computer technologies for artists. Graham Nash was the first to use computer printers to print quality images and sell them to earn a fortune. However, in 1991, one of his employees used a method completely different, which he named “giclée”, which is derived from a French word gicleur, meaning nozzle.
Even today, giclée prints are made using archival papers, archival inks, and color quality control. These are inexpensive art alternatives for digital artists who want to make a digital reproduction of their original work while keeping the original one for themselves.
Which Printers Are Best For Making Art Prints?
Creating fine art, drawings, graphic designs, or any kind of artwork on your system can be fun, but they don’t come close to hand-drawn art pieces. Nevertheless, several art printers are available on the market, and selecting one that’s best for an art print is a challenging task.
Generally, there are two kinds of printers for the purpose, viz., laser and inkjet printers. Inkjet printers use ink droplets to create prints, while laser printers apply heat to melt a toner, which is further fused on the paper using rollers.
Between these two, inkjet printers do a much better job than laser printers in terms of print resolution and quality. Although they are much more expensive in the longer term, artists prefer them for getting a superior print.
Some of the best inkjet printers available on the market include the Canon PIXMA Pro-100 Wireless Inkjet Printer, Epson Expression ET-7750 EcoTank Printer, and Expression Photo HD XP-15000 Printer. You can choose any of them based on your personal preferences and requirements.
Not only printers, but the type of paper to be used is also crucial in getting quality art prints. Generally, artists prefer art papers made from cotton rag, matte, or canvas, which are manufactured by renowned printer manufacturing companies like Canon and Epson. But you can also opt for glossy photo papers for your art prints.
In terms of ink, if your goal is to get the maximum possible print life, it’s essential to use pigment inks. These are much more stable compared to dye colorants and don’t fade over time. Furthermore, pigment inks can handle damage well, especially in fine art and matte media.
How To Edit Your Digital Image Properly?
Once you’ve made your artwork digitally, the next step is to resize and crop the images and adjust the color and contrast to deliver depth to the picture. Applications like Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CC provide the best tools to edit, organize, and obtain better photo quality.
Adobe Photoshop is a complex yet powerful software that might take time for you to get familiar with. If you’re not used to working with Photoshop, we’d recommend taking up a short online course on educational platforms like Skillshare.
On that note, here are a few tips and tricks.
1. Scanning Artwork
If you’re drawing an art on a paper smaller than A4-size, it’s possible to scan your art. Most scanners work exceptionally well for graphite drawings, watercolor paintings, colored pencil drawings, and charcoal drawings.
Several quality scanners are available on the market, but it’s viable to opt for something like the Epson Perfection V600 Color Photo if you want exceptional results. Once you’ve made the necessary edits on the artwork, you can make copies of it and share them with friends.
2. Creating Prints
Once a digital image has been created, you have three available options for printing artwork.
Today, most artists make digital print reproductions of their original prints with affordable ink printers at home and sell them in craft shows, online art galleries, and small local businesses. If you can’t print digital pictures at home, you can outsource them to a local printing service. However, it can be more expensive if you create art prints daily.
That’s why artists often use a POD (Print-on-demand) service to print their art on tote bags, wall décor, phone cases, and canvas print. Some of the well-known services include Saatchi Art, Etsy shop, Fine Art America, Society6, and Zazzle.
One of the significant benefits of partnering with print-on-demand companies is it boosts your monthly income and increases your reach to a wider audience. Plus, it makes it easier for customers to buy the prints.
How Should You Sell Your Art Prints?
You can either sell the original art pieces directly or put them on display in art galleries. But which one is right for you? Let’s explore both options to help you understand better.
As an artist, you’re producing original art or reproducing your original into digital art, and selling it directly to customers or through a third party. With the popping of emerging creator tools every day, it’s much easier for artists to sell their art directly, rather than partnering with any third party.
You can select a sales channel based on the medium and style, where you can find the desired audience. This is probably the easiest method of selling art online and expanding your market to larger audiences. But it can be challenging to identify your desired audience and promote your artworks amongst them.
A lot of artists also prefer featuring their artwork in a reputed online gallery. Although it may charge a hefty fee from you, it already has access to the necessary audiences for promoting your art. Plus, it has the right professionals and resources to help exhibit, promote, handle, and ship artwork.
Is It Legal To Sell Art Prints?
Technically yes, as long as you’re selling your own work. In the USA, artists have complete freedom to approach their buyers directly on any platform or sell their artwork through an intermediary, like an art dealer, auction, or gallery.
However, the concern arises when you’re selling prints on behalf of others. There can be two situations here; first, you’ve the permission to do so, and second, you are just reproducing the original art without adequate owner permission.
In case of the latter, you’re essentially infringing a copyright, which is considered to be a severe crime in the US.
If anyone is found guilty of a copyright infringement, they must pay statutory or actual damages, which is not less than $750 and a maximum of $30,000 per work infringed. Furthermore, if you’re guilty of a “willful infringement,” the court can order you to pay a maximum of $150,000 per work infringed.
What Are Different Forms Of Art Plagiarism?
Being an artist, you also need to stay protected from copyright and plagiarism issues, as others can copy your artwork and sell them to buyers. It might result in significant losses, and your dream of becoming an art entrepreneur might not see its end. Hence, you should be aware of these issues when trying to sell art online.
Art plagiarism takes both offline and online forms, but digital arts are more prone to plagiarism. Theft and tracing are two forms of art plagiarism. Art theft is when someone steals an artwork and publishes it as their own. It isn’t just stealing other people’s work, but changing it to look different, which is also considered an act of plagiarism.
On the other hand, tracing involves reproducing the original artwork with little or no change at all. Similar to art theft, tracers tend to make small changes like color enhancements, altering details, flipping the traced details, or changing the original hues to make it different.
How To Avoid Plagiarism?
So, what should you do to avoid art plagiarism?
If you see an appealing art and want to use it, don’t just copy it blatantly but instead take ideas from it. In other words, use it as a pattern or guide to create your own. Also, don’t just try to take inspiration from a single art piece. It’s always recommended to combine ideas from several sources to create a masterpiece that you can claim to be yours and sell it.
You may use other people’s art creations, but while doing so, make sure to acknowledge the name of the original publisher or owner. It’s probably the easiest and safest way to avoid plagiarism.
We’d strongly recommend embracing your artistic skills and abilities. Trust us, when you create your own masterpiece and receive recognition for it, it makes for an enriching experience!
How Should Art Prints Be Valued?
Pricing your artworks is an important aspect that determines whether you’re earning profits or not. It can be challenging as it doesn’t fit into any typical pricing strategy.
If you’re a little-known beginner looking to sell your first piece of art, it’s essential to follow a simple formula. Add up your time, material costs, labor costs, other expenses, and your profit margin. In this technique, allocate yourself an hourly wage. Many budding artists tend to undervalue their work and time, thereby incurring losses.
There’s no guarantee that this formula excels as the value of art doesn’t depend on labor or material costs. Famous artists charge more for an art piece almost similar to one created by a new artist.
So, you can also browse the art print market to get an idea about how other artists (both beginner and professional) value their artworks. And you can then set the retail price of your art accordingly.
It’s always a better option to sell artworks by yourself and not through a gallery, as they take up almost half of the selling price. We’d recommend communicating with gallerists who have the right expertise in pricing and valuing art, and set a price which is on par with the market. You can then sell the artworks directly.
Also, you can set up a website or sell your art on a social media platform. The availability of affordable products is, in fact, driving the increasing popularity of e-commerce stores over physical ones. So, buyers expect to get the artworks at much lower prices online. They may not even be concerned about the authenticity of a product sometimes, as long as it fits their budget!
However, as your market reputation grows, you can raise the price of the art prints.
How To Build Your Brand?
As an artist, your brand will continue to evolve if you can identify potential customers and appeal to them through the artworks. Your chosen medium and style define you as an artist, and the artwork may appeal to buyers with similar interests. And when this happens, you need to decide how to start earning from the paintings.
Moreover, art can sometimes be an emotional and personal purchase, and the story in it can play a significant role in influencing someone to purchase it. And online business assets like site design and packaging should complement your artworks.
Before starting to build a brand to sell your artworks, it’s important to ask yourself some questions like:
-
- Creating and selling artwork under a pseudonym, own name, or brand name?
- Story behind your brand?
- Value, mission, or vision of the brand?
- Ways to communicate with your audience?
- Need for branding assets?
Answering these questions allows you to create a set of guidelines that will guide the majority of your future decisions regarding website design, branding, essential marketing strategy, and so on. If you plan to grow the business further, these guidelines will help establish and maintain brand consistency, whether you’re working with partners or employees.
Here are a few steps that you can follow to create a strong brand presence:
A. Determine Your Core Competency
Take some time to brainstorm ideas regarding what’s the best you can offer to your customers. The art print market is very dynamic, where preferences and choices of people tend to change rapidly.
Creating your art forms following people’s preferences seems fair only if you’re a professional. However, if you’re new to a market, determine what you’re good at and target a group that prefers that particular art form. This way, you can make any identity for your unique brand and style.
B. Build A Key Phrase Around Your Core Competency
There might be several ways to describe yourself along with unique abilities, but remember a short and concise key phrase reaches your target audience more effectively. So, start working on that.
Don’t use ambiguous statements like “the low priced leader”; look for those used by other successful artists and take inspiration from them. Following their journey, success, and failures will help you develop a theme that sets you apart from others.
C. Draft A Logo Or Symbol
In some situations, having a visual identity or symbol can make your branding process more successful, but they aren’t an absolute necessity. Nevertheless, if you feel like having a logo to reinforce your USP, consider creating or adapting one.
By “adapting one”, we mean using logos that are created simply by using a unique font. Just make sure that your message is clearly communicated to your target audiences.
Where To Sell Your Art Prints?
In terms of location, there are several options available where you can sell your art prints. Moreover, you can sell your art in different forms like merchandise, calendars, shirts, otters, framed prints, postcards, or greeting cards.
Once you’ve decided how you’ll sell the print, the next step is to determine where to sell them. Some of the places you can sell your arts include art shows, craft shows, open studio events, online, and local small businesses.
A. Craft Shows, Art Shows, And Fairs
In the age of e-commerce, most people order their products online, and there’s a massive opportunity for independent artists to sell their artworks on the online fine art marketplace. However, it takes considerable time to rank in search engines and build an online network.
Start with attending small and local craft shows. With a large volume of people attending those fairs, it’s possible to generate fame much more quickly than online. Over time, as you gather more customers, you can opt to promote the products online.
To sell your products at fairs, you must communicate with the target audience and build trust and quality relationships with them. When they become your loyal customers, start selling your original art to them online and ask them to promote the artworks amongst their family and friends.
B. Open Studio Events
Open studio events are a great way to establish recognition locally and sell your artworks for the next few years. Aside from that, offering giclée products online are a great way to generate additional income. Several people can’t afford original paintings and invest in reproductions that come at low prices.
An art collector and an art lover might purchase both original and reproductions for themselves or gift them to their family and friends.
C. Local Gift Shops
Being a budding entrepreneur, it’s important to take every opportunity available to you. If you live in a small city or town with local gift shops that sell paintings of local artists, meet up with the manager or owner.
Compared to the online marketplace, it’s easier to build your name in the local market. Many people prefer local artists over artworks of people they’ve never met. And this can turn out to be a good selling point for local businesses.
D. Print-On-Demand
Several artists take the help of Print on demand sites like Saatchi Art, Zazzle, and Society6. These sites perform transactions with buyers on your behalf, ship the product, and fulfill their orders.
However, there’s not much profit involved in selling your artwork through these websites, as they take most of the profit.
E. Greeting Cards
Although greeting cards have lost popularity over the years, people still look to purchase ones made by their favorite artists or ones that are handmade. And there are a few options to sell your art as greeting cards.
The first way involves drawing a custom art on greeting cards, while another way involves using POD services to sell your home printed cards to customers.
F. Website
If you wish to sell your artwork as a long-term business, owning a curated website with an online gallery is the way to go. The primary benefit of having a website is that you have total control over how it looks and feels. You can choose between selling the original paintings or selling fine art reproductions and promoting the art events you’re interested in.
However, the downside to this is the more designed you want your website to be, the greater the investments it requires. Plus, bringing traffic to your website can take a lot of time.
So, we’d recommend you build your market first, learn more about digital marketing, and build a personalized website. When you have a large collection of artworks, you can add different categories to help buyers find what they’re looking for.
Pros And Cons Of Selling Art Prints Online
Pros
A. Expand Your Reach
When it comes to selling your artworks online, the world is your oyster, and the internet brings the various countries and states closer. You can reach an entirely different audience who prefers the kind of art prints you’re good at.
Not only you but the buyers are also benefited through the access to online art prints. People who aren’t comfortable entering large galleries and gazing at artworks can do so sitting in the comfort of their homes. Plus, they can create their own art collection.
At the online marketplace, you have the opportunity to connect to a group of buyers that previously remained untapped.
B. Supplement Your Income
Let’s face it-making a living out of your art prints is not an easy task, and even some veteran artists struggle to maintain consistency every month.
Compared to art galleries, it’s beneficial to sell artworks on your website or through online stores. For one, the commission of an online store is nearly 5-10%, which is less than a physical store. Websites can charge a lesser percentage due to their lower overhead costs.
Nevertheless, if you intend to sell your digital prints through galleries, do not undersell them. It’s crucial to establish a quality relationship with those who help sell your art.
Cons
A. No Personal Connections
As mentioned earlier, art can be an emotional purchase sometimes, and if you can connect with buyers personally, it’s possible to sell more art at a time. Establishing relationships with buyers has the potential to turn them into fine art collectors and repeat buyers.
But when selling on the online marketplace, there’s no opportunity for you to build personal connections with buyers. The website usually handles all transactions involved and, in some cases, even the shipping. And there’s limited or no interaction between you and the buyer.
Requires A Lot Of Effort
There’s a lot of struggle just to identify the right group and reach them. In order to become successful art entrepreneurs, make sure to search for the best online marketplace. If you don’t have a dedicated team to solve customer queries, there’s the added job of keeping the website up-to-date with correct information.
Apart from that, it’s essential that your sales page features your premium art prints. You can even add a description page that highlights the potential significance or back story of a particular art. It will allow buyers to connect emotionally with it, which is often lacking when selling online.
Moreover, you must use some good and trending keywords to help buyers to find you easily. Long story short, establishing an online presence and expanding your customer base can be a tedious process, and if it isn’t carried out with the required diligence, your online art business might fail.
The question still remains: should you be selling your art prints online? Even with its potential drawbacks, the online marketplace remains a wonderful way to increase your exposure, save time and money on marketing, and earn some extra bucks.
How Would You Market Your Art Store?
Marketing your art store is another big step towards making profits from your art prints. There are numerous paths you can take, which we will discuss in this section.
A. Enter Art Competitions
Entering competitions is a great way for an artist to gain exposure. If you manage to win it, you’ll be able to grab the attention of thousands of art fans who’re following the competition. Along with that, having an award under your belt might serve as a stepping stone to building your reputation.
Even if you don’t win the competition, entering it might help market your art. Many art competitions put the limelight on runner-ups, honorable mentions, or some limited edition prints that are worth checking out.
B. Let Someone Else To Market For You
Selling artworks on your own website requires a daily hustle, and it’s crucial to promote your latest work on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You also need to maintain a newsletter or create a blog to inform people and to keep the potential buyers interested. In fact, many artists post their artworks online on a regular basis and become recognized names.
Managing all these tasks along with creating art can be a hectic task for artists. Plus, marketing is not everyone’s cup of team and requires specific skills and abilities to do it in a diligent manner. And you can always outsource these tasks to an agency or an expert professional so that you don’t lose focus.
Some of the biggest art galleries spend millions of dollars to generate traffic but they promote, and sell artworks of numerous artists. Nevertheless, having a successful site or an individual who promotes your work to potential buyers without requiring much of your effort is always better.
C. Offline Art Promotion: Hosting Your Own Art Shows
While online art promotion is very effective, you can also gain great exposure through real-life promotions, considering you’re doing it right. People who’ll interact with your work in the real world are more likely to remember it longer than something they’ve come across online.
Organizing your own art shows is a quality way to market your art prints, and it might be much easier than anticipated. Here are some tips to help you conduct your art shows smoothly.
Tip #1
Think of a theme that encompasses the entire show. While it’s not important, a theme provides a sense of focus to an art show and helps decide if there are other artists you can feature.
Tip #2
You can make it a group show and invite more budding art entrepreneurs to display their art prints. More the number of artists, more marketing for the show! Every artist attending the event can spread the word through their personal contacts, which can, in turn, provide more exposure.
Tip #3
Don’t stick to the venues that commonly host these shows, as these might be a bit on the expensive side. Nevertheless, renting a formal gallery is a great option if it fits your budget. But any area that’s accessible and open could work, like music halls, restaurants, and hotel lobbies.
You might get other opportunities for public art installations, but make sure to get requisite permits from the local city hall.
Tip #4
A high-quality show poster is also a great way to market your art show and capture the client’s attention. Several reputed agencies make appealing posters at affordable prices. You can opt for these or design your own poster by taking ideas from the internet.
D. Networking
Networking is the most important skill to master when it comes to art promotions. Here are some ways to build relationships within the art world:
1. Attend Art Fairs And Exhibitions
Art exhibitions and fairs provide you with the opportunity to meet professional artists, art lovers, agents, and gallery owners. Establishing contacts is extremely important to becoming a successful art entrepreneur. People you meet can provide access to exposure opportunities like art galleries that are currently accepting submissions, and help market your art on their social feeds. Along with that, they can suggest popular artists you can collaborate with.
Make sure to carry business cards and hand out to anyone you meet, and ask them to tell others about you. This might seem like a small thing, but a simple word of mouth can do wonders for artist promotion.
2. Join Artist Organizations
Apart from offering numerous networking opportunities, artist organizations provide requisite resources, workshops, artist promotion, and more. You will find many of these based in a particular state or city, so you can look for any local organization to join.
3. Involve In Local Initiatives
Working with other artists and helping them also goes a long way in art marketing. Some community-based marketing ideas include volunteering to teach at community centers, providing artwork for charity auctions, and participating in community art projects.
E. Collaborate On An Art Project
Many artists have a similar question: how can I get my art out there if I don’t have any connections? In this regard, searching for artists to collaborate with can be a great promotion strategy.
When you involve other artists with you, it means more people get to know about the collaborative work. You can reach a wider network with the help of fellow artists and get to establish your own network in the process.
Aside from that, you can work with companies looking to design their new poster or banner, or a band that needs cover art for their next album.
How Would You Package And Ship Your Art?
When delivering an art, you must pay attention to the smallest of the details, be it your packaging or shipping. Many people purchase art prints as gifting items, so to have them delivered undamaged is the least your customers can expect. Hence, it’s important to pack them carefully by following the necessary guidelines provided by US Packing regulations for ensuring safe and sound delivery.
Here are some ideas about how to pack and ship your art for optimum safety.
A. DIY Shipping Art
If you’re delivering original art, canvas prints, or a limited edition print by yourself, take extra care while packing rather than partnering with a logistics company. It’s best to ship large posters and prints in cardboard mailing tubes and smaller ones in mailing envelopes made of rigid cardboard.
And use clear cellophane sleeves or glassine (a grease and water-resistant paper) to wrap your print.
B. Shipping Oversized And Expensive Original Artwork
When selling online, oversized artworks can become extremely difficult to ship safely. It’ll be better to contact the shipping company for the purpose, as it will have specially designed materials like boxes and cardboard corners for delivering these art prints.
C. Shipping Directly With POD
Although you can pack the product by yourself and save some bucks, it’s always a better option to handover the job to a professional. If you’re selling reproductions, merch, and open edition prints only, all of the tasks, including packing, shipping, and transactions, can be managed by a print-on-demand company. And due to greater partnerships and volumes, they can provide you with low shipping rates.
Are Art Prints Profitable Final Words
For most artists, the best way to sell prints is through whatever space that’s available to them. It can be done online, in a spare bedroom or garage, in a guest room, or anywhere else they deem fit.
The most important part of establishing any business is reaching the right audience. So, make sure to market your products well. Apart from that, the customers expect to receive value from your services.
It’s therefore essential to communicate with customers, provide adequate solutions to their queries, and offer complete value for money.
On that note, we will wrap up. See you next time. Till then, goodbye and take care!
