1. Use high quality paper and card stock for your art buyer samples.
2. Buy a higher quality inkjet printer than the standard “free with computer purchase”. Or invest in one of the new lower cost color laser printers for your samples and handouts.
3. Research digital cameras before purchase and buy a tripod and camera case for it.
4. Buy several large storage cards and an external hard drive as well as make either CD or DVD backups of your artwork. You NEVER know when you might have a computer meltdown and need those backups. Computer meltdowns do not schedule a convenient for you time – they happen usually when it is quite inconvenient in fact.
5. Reference Photos – I take a lot of landscape reference photos with my digital camera. I look for shapes, composition or mood reminders. I do not paint color or shadows from digital photos any more than I do from printed reference photos.
6. Asking Yourself Questions
Ask yourself and then find out the answers to those marketing questions before submission of expensive slides or professionally printed gallery proofs. For example, there are many different styles of scenics or landscapes. Do the art buyers want photo-realism, surreal-realism or something else entirely? Do they want mountains, lakes, sunsets or seashores? Do they want pastel colors, children’s primaries, traditional holiday themes or paradox seasonal themes?
Knowing or estimating the answer to these questions before submission can save money, time and heartbreak. If my realistic landscape painting looks like an abstract blob as a CD cover, I will know if I did my homework first by sizing it and then looking at a printed sample so I won’t submit it for that but I could submit it for poster licensing and distribution. If I write a query letter to an art director, I can include a sample of my art style(s) instead of sending unrequested submission slides that may never be returned to me. Even if I never receive a reply to the query letter, the art sample has a chance of being kept and being in the right place at the right time somewhere in the future for you.
How would four paintings together look reduced to one postcard or a greeting card? Do they hold their impact individually and as a whole together? Do they grab attention while still showing details?
Create some sample cards, then talk to family, friends and local business people such as the bank teller, grocery clerk or dry cleaner. Give them your card and ask for their opinions. Market your paintings locally while testing how a product licenser might perceive the card. If local in person reactions are enthusiastic, bulk order high quality color postcards from a printer using your digital photos. If their reactions are lukewarm or negative, create new sample cards and keep trying until you find a combination that are received well.
Posted under General Interest
This post was written by Barbara Burns on February 4, 2008
