Today, I’d like to share comments on marketing art. This post combines a couple of questions I received, so let’s take them one at a time.
Marketing Art
Question #1
Have you ever felt overwhelmed at the thought of marketing?
Absolutely! When I first began trying to sell portraits back in the late ’70s, marketing was a necessary evil. Of course I was young, I didn’t know anything, and I was filled with enthusiasm, so it didn’t matter as much.
For example, when I first began, I thought marketing meant making the best art I could and getting it in front of people. If they saw it, they would buy it.
It didn’t take very long to get past the naivety and realize marketing was hard work requiring persistence as well as enthusiasm.
Things really haven’t changed very much. My product line has changed from horse portraits to blog posts, tutorials, and a magazine with the occasional portrait thrown in for good measure. But I still have to market.
And the number of ways to market doesn’t help much. It still sometimes overwhelms me.
Question #2
Have you ever felt like maybe your work wasn’t good enough to sell?
To be perfectly frank, I have NEVER felt like my artwork was good enough to sell. That is no doubt a personal problem, but it is one that has plagued me all my life.
The fact is that when I was producing 12 to 14 portraits a year, I reached the point at which the client decided when a portrait was good enough. The reason? I am my own worst critic and I could always see the things I could have done differently, and the mistakes I’d made. My philosophy at the time could be summed up with the following sentence.
If it’s good enough for the client, it’s good enough.
I know. Pitiful, isn’t it.
Having said that, I will also tell you that absence really does make the heart grow fonder, at least where much of my artwork is concerned. There are still some pieces that make me cringe when I see photographs of them, but for the most part, when I browse the photo album of finished paintings, I like them better than I did when I finished them.
Yes, there are still problem areas with most of them, but I’m now able to see the positives about them, too. I can look at the portraits from 2000 and see that they’re better overall than the portraits from 1990. The 1990 portraits are better on the whole than the 1980 portraits and so on.
In other words, I was improving. I was always improving whether I liked individual pieces or not.
So if you take anything at all from this question and my answer, it should be this.
Don’t be too critical of your work when you finish it.
Don’t base your thoughts on progress on individual pieces.
If you can’t keep the original artwork, then photograph it and review your past work as a body of work every now and again. That’s the best way to get past the idea of being critical (even hyper-critical) of each piece as you finish it.
There’s More to Marketing Art than Liking Your Work
A lot more. We could discuss marketing art in all its forms for weeks and never exhaust the topic.
But these two questions have to do more with attitude and outlook than with actual marketing. They are important to answer for yourself before you can effectively market your art.
As I mentioned above, I still struggle with the idea that my art is good enough. You may have the same struggle.
And if marketing itself overwhelms you, know that you’re not alone in this either.
But both can be overcome if you take things slow and keep your inner critic reined in!
This post is part of a series in which readers ask questions about my life as an artist, and I answer them. Most of the posts this month will concern one of these questions. If you have a question you’d like to ask, please ask it. It’s never too late to get your burning questions answered!
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