Selling Artwork

"The Shed at Stone Ridge"is VERY nice. Keep on keepin' on, Karl.

Zach how did you find your buyers? Any online marketplaces you would recommend?

xp ste

as far as i can tell, "sympathetic friends" is by far the most likely pool of people who might buy your work. from what i've heard from others, too, it's very common that your first buyers are people you know. and that can't last forever (or even 6 months, if you're trying to make a living). i'm still early on in this endeavor - started painting a couple years ago but only stepped it up big-time in march and april of this year, didn't move into my studio until late May. it's scary, trying to think of what happens when the sympathetic friends that can afford to buy something have all done it already. for now, i focus on how good it feels to finish up something and send it to a friend, especially pals i haven't seen in forever, or ilx pals i've never met. maybe some day i'll get to visit and see something i made up on the wall!

xp cow_art

thank you! an ilxor snagged that one! it was actually my first attempt with oil paint, that one, originally. it was a shed that i painted relatively conventionally, just outside the cabin i stayed at for a few weeks after my dad died. it was a decent first try, but i never really finished it and i really messed up the woods behind the shed. a few weeks ago i needed a canvas so i took that one, turned it upside-down and painted over it. it felt uniquely nice to do that and to improve it in some way. it makes me look at some of my other earlier tries, realizing i can just try again over it and change it so much! painting, i tell yeah what, lol

xp calstars

in short, instagram is how i'm doing it right now, even though i know that's not a permanent solution and there are tons of people who aren't on instagram, for good reason. i've done a couple sales, and am planning on doing my next one next week, last week of September

i was hoping you or someone else could tell me about that! so far, i have done everything via instagram and twitter. i like instagram, in particular, because i can post day to day, work in progress, in studio stuff via "Stories", which disappear after a day, and then post regular Posts with things once they are done. i don't have a large instagram following, mostly my friends and family. but for now, i think it's useful to show the day-to-day stuff because by the time i finish something and it's "for sale", maybe you get an idea of what went into, or how much i've been drinking that much, or what it looks like in relation to other things that are recently finished or just getting started. i hope it seems more "real" than a typical online transaction, and that even if people i don't know start following me, they could get to know me just a bit before buying something. i don't think it's important for everyone or even most people, but i almost always buy art from people i know, even if it's just a little bit from afar.

also heavily related -- soon after i started, i realized that i needed to make smaller pieces too, not just smaller paintings, but also quicker sketches, watercolors, pastels, etc. personally, my budget only allows me to spend about $50-75 on art a month, so i'm very much in the situation of my friends where i can't afford my large paintings or even come close. so on some nights i purposefully try to make something fast, all in one evening, so that when i do sales i can have a variety of prices.

prints, too. i had an interesting convo with a painter friend who is anti-print. she doesn't like them because she says a handful of people buy the prints and then no one ever buys the painting. i'm trying to figure this out now, but my current policy is that i won't make prints until the actual painting is out the door to someone. but that's also another way to have lower-priced items, i think.

re the anti-print friend

That seems a strange stance, surely the (assumingly much cheaper and more quantity) prints offer a way to broaden your audience. Seems like cutting off the nose etc.

Sounds like a good idea though to get the original out the door first, like you said. Would be interested to hear how you get on with it Karl.

Re: marketplaces, I wonder if etsy would be fruitful. Or do they just sell crafts and such

Just another poster chiming in to say wow & good luck, I also sold a handful of pieces to sympathetic friends and a couple on https://www.artfinder.com/ - maybe something worth looking at, 40% commission for the free plan might seem pretty steep but normal gallery commission is 50%! I never made a serious go of it, just sketching for fun and seeing if anything sold but it turns out a) not really and ii) the best stuff I didn't want to get rid off, there's one piece I still regret selling.

thanks ledge! there are a few places i can sell online that i'm thinking about. i'm still early on (early on where friends still feel sympathy for me, says my depressed morning mind), so i'm hoping i can still sell them to people i know for a bit longer. i have a couple larger ones that i like a lot, one of them is my favorite, and i'd like to send them to a friend so i can see them again someday. but at some point, i might list the ones that don't sell for way too much on a big website like artfinder (so after their commission i can get what i think i need), and if that doesn't work i'll paint over them and add an x-man or something on the front

my current living hell is this:

Parcels Shipping

IMPORTANT TIP for anyone buying a canvas that they ever intend to ship anywhere: do NOT buy splined canvases:

https://i.imgur.com/GTstFYF.jpg

if you go to Blick to buy a canvas, the sick joke is that the splined canvases are generally more expensive. it'll be under "Profesh" or "PREMIER" line. this is a sick joke. once the canvases are splined like this (canvas tucked way back into the nether region of hell between the stretcher bars), they are very difficult to take off the stretcher bars to roll for shipping. whenever possible, buy the traditional back-stapled canvases, or, if you have the space and time, stretch them yourself (which saves money).

i'm currently in hell because that big commission i sold, the 40x60" one - i can't ship it for less than $950 right now. if i start over from scratch and repackage it for the 3rd time, i might be able to get it right under the dimension limit for packages and get it down to the $250-300 range. if i could only take the fucking canvas off the stretcher bars, i could roll it up and ship it in a tube for $30. instead, i am now contacting the buyer to see if i can work up some plan to drive it out to them or have friends drive it out, have friends me in various cities across ohio and pennsylvania to transfer them to different cars, etc. it is hell, and so dumb. never buy splined canvases!! (unless it's for you and you just want to hang them up on your wall. if they're staying in your home, they are great)

i'm headed home to see my old friends today for the first time in forever. my only task this morning is to contact the buyer and somehow explain everything above without sounding like a gigantic fucking moron

also - sorry for multiple posts - one kind of fun thing is that when the fedex employee (who was awesome) told me that it was slightly too large to ship in a normal way at the store, and that i'd have to go home and create an account and then create a pickup order for an oversized item, which later led to the $950 quote, i got to say "i'm just going to burn this painting down!" really loudly and everyone was a bit startled in the store. but then i laughed and said "like a TRUE artist!" and everyone kind of got the joke i think. it felt really good to leave that fedex in a wave of laughter and companionship

since i speak relatively loudly and people were waiting in line behind me and it was a complicated issue, multiple started to get involved, workers and customers alike. we were all trying to figure out how to send this fucking thing. by the end we were all in solidarity, workers too, that fedex sucked, but that they all sucked, really

if you want to see how a true moron gets on irl via social media, i'm doing my monthly sale right now

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUd2kHwNl6l/

it is EXCRUCIATING