How do I start selling my art? | 8 More Things I have Learned

About a year ago I made about post titled “Starting to Sell Your Art – Five Things I Have Learned”, this post has been written as a follow-up to that article.

1. Get after it.

From my experience this is probably the single most important piece of advice I could give, you have to get after it.  It is a mistake to passively sit by and wait for things to happen.  I believe much of what has brought me to the point I am at today has been driven by passion along with a willingness to do whatever it takes to get to where I want to be.  If you are a young artist reading this wondering how to start selling your artwork I recommend starting out with these thoughts:

First, create what you are passionate about with the best of your ability and don’t worry about what will sell and what will not.  I don’t like it when people say “hey if you paint this it will sell” what they don’t get is that I am not painting to sell, rather I happen to sell what I paint and I am very lucky to do so.  Also, if you are creating what you are passionate about, I am guessing that you are putting everything you have into your work.  This is key, take a huge amount of pride in what you create and do not cut corners on craftsmanship, people WILL respond to this. Whether or not this is a big demographic or small just depends on what you are creating.

Second, find the people who will appreciate your work and do whatever it takes to get it in front of their eyes and subsequently on their walls.  Whether this is through local coffee shops, galleries, retail shops, online via Facebook or other websites, find a way to make it happen and yes this takes lots and lots and lots of work usually coupled with lots and lots and lots of rejection.

2. Sell your work for as cheap as you can for as long as you can.

Many will disagree with this point for a lot of different reasons.  I get push back all the time that my prices are too “low” and I am “under selling” or “under valuing” myself.  There is certainly some truth to their concerns but I choose to disagree with them and let me tell you why.

Back in 2007 when I was trying to figure out which way was up, I read a blog article that argued this very same notion.  For whatever reason it struck a cord with me and through the years to come I have stuck by it with success.  In, 2008 alone I sold over 200 pieces (originals and prints) by the time I graduated law school in 2010 I had sold over 400 worldwide.  Already in 2012, I have sold 104 pieces.  I share these numbers to emphasize that this equals a LOT of art in a LOT of places.  I look at is as planting seeds while investing in my future.  At this point in my career I do not focus on building an inventory rather I sell everything and have continued to price so my work to do so.  Personally, I see more value in becoming more prolific with artwork everywhere rather than having a huge inventory of paintings in my studio sitting at prices that it will take months, even years to sell at.   I could go on and on with more detailed explanations and examples about how moving a lot of work has helped but I think I will save that for a separate post in the future.

3. Believe in Yourself

When I first started putting my art out into the world I couldn’t help but have this vulnerable feeling and I still get it sometimes.  This is natural and often reinforced by the rejection that young artists often get.  Also, there are so many talented artists out there, it is hard not to compare, be envious of others skills and just think that there is no way that I can compete at their level.  To think like this is a mistake, we all start somewhere.  It is those who persevere that succeed and I believe what drives this perseverance for me has to be an underlying belief in myself.  When this belief is honest, it shows and I guarantee that people will see and buy into it.  Once they have bought into it, they will more than likely become a loyal follower and perhaps even a future investor.

4. Network With Everyone

This is pretty self-explanatory but almost every door that has opened in my career has been because I knew someone or knew someone who knew someone. You know how it works.   I would encourage you to purposefully put yourself in positions to network.  For example, in 2010, I donated a lot of pieces to charitable causes and with that came many events, banquets and dinners to attend.  I went to them all in a tie, with a smile, and with business cards in my pockets.  Even today some of my most loyal collectors were people I met at these events.  I don’t think there are enough artists out there who leverage this kind of exposure and really these types of events are just one example of the type of networking I do.

Put yourself in positions to meet new people and be sure to leave a positive lasting impression. Again my philosophy about selling art has to do with planting seeds and it is hard to plant seeds if you are not standing in the field.

5. Organization and Planning Promotes Discipline and Efficiency

Before I was painting full time I did not think about this notion very much.  I just painted when I could paint and that was that.  However now that I make my own schedule there is no one over my head telling me what to do and when to do it.   Awesome, but without discipline this can result in a lot of wasted time and an inefficient work schedule.  I am not going to share a lot of my secrets in this post about how exactly I am staying organized but I will tell you that I devote a lot of time to making sure that I understand all aspects of my business to the point that through monthly forecasting I know what I need to get done on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to keep chasing this dream.  It is not by luck that my lights are still on.

6. Build an Email List

This is a mistake that I had made because only recently have I started doing this.  Much of my early success can be directly attributed to Facebook as I invested a lot of time building my business page.  This is all well and good but like any other social media platform I fear that it will too fade away.  Maybe this is far down the road, maybe not.  However, whenever Facebook fades away all of my time and resources I have invested in building a following there will end with it as well.  The nice thing about building a solid email list is that even though people’s emails may change with time the odds of everyone on your list changing all at once is probably not that great.  Thus it allows for a more stable platform to reach out to investors and others interested in following your career and work.  Again, I wish I would have started this years ago.

7. Listen to others but don’t ignore the feeling in your gut

This idea touches a lot of different areas but I am sure most artists can think of situations where someone is feeding them some solicited advice or many times unsolicited advice, whether it is in the form of a critique, pricing, where to show, etc..  People have opinions about everything and in my experience when these people offer their thoughts it often comes with little thought of their own as to how these ideas will be received.  When this advice is coming from someone who is farther in their career I have a tendency to give their advice some pretty good weight as they have obviously done something right to get to where they are.  However, if you reference my point #2 above I continue to go against the advice of others as at one point is just didn’t “feel” right but now I can back up that “feeling” with metric driven data and facts that supports my position.  In sum, I believe it is very important to continue to learn from those around you but make sure that you do so while staying true to yourself.

8. Luck favors those who are prepared.

These ideas are quite well know but I totally buy into them.  I believe hard work makes luck and luck favors those who are prepared.

Make your own luck.

Justin Joins Twinrocker

Here is the email I sent out to Twinrocker’s customer list introducing myself:

Good Afternoon,

My name is Justin Vining, I am very excited to be writing you today to announce that I have recently joined the team at Twinrocker as their Marketing Manager.

I was first introduced to Twinrocker almost 10 years ago as an undergrad student studying art education at Purdue University. I was in a printmaking course and took one of the tours that Twinrocker offers. I subsequently invested in some of their papers, fell in love with them, and all of my orders since, I have picked up in person at the Twinrocker Paper Mill in Brookston from Gail and Fran.

To very quickly catch you up to speed, in the years since Purdue, I taught elementary art for three years (loved it). I left my job there to attend law school with my younger brother. In law school I found my artistic voice selling over 400 pieces worldwide (many on Twinrocker papers). Post law-school, I passed the Indiana Bar Exam, but I have continued to focus my efforts as a full-time professional artist working out of my studio in Broad Ripple, Indiana.

Much of my modest success can be directly attributed to social media marketing. I was very lucky to have good mentors in law school who helped teach me the business side of creating. My primary focus with Twinrocker will be to help develop their online presence through the various social media channels. We have many different ways with which we are going to develop this presence but one of the primary ways is to highlight and share artist’s work who are currently using Twinrocker products. If you do not mind having your work shared through Twinrocker’s social media channels please email me at justin@twinrocker.com.

I am very honored to have this opportunity and I firmly believe that once you create with Twinrocker products you will never want to use anything else.

If you are on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, please find us online at these links:

http://www.facebook.com/Twinrocker
http://www.twitter.com/TwinrockerPaper
http://www.pinterest.com/Twinrocker

If you would like to learn more about me, you can find me at:

http://www.justinvining.com

I hope you have a great day and feel free to reach out to me anytime,

Justin Vining

Urbanscapes – Solo Exhibit in Upland Brewing’s Propaganda Room

HUGE thank you’s to Upland Brewing, Projekt Media, RNG Unlimited, The Indiana Recycling Coalition and everyone else who helped make this event a success!  Also as a side note, in the first interview of the video please forgive my sleepy appearance as I had been awake for days at that point making sure everything was completed in time.  All but two of the pieces in this show were created between January 5, 2012 and February 2, 2012.  When committing to this show in early December, I knew it would be a ton of work putting together a solid body of work in such a short amount of time.  However, as I am fully vested in my career as professional artist I do not fear the hard work that it takes to survive.  A month of 16 hours days with brush in hand never occurred to me as over committing.  What I didn’t expect was since I was painting all cityscapes, the complexity of each individual piece demanded more time with precision brushes in hand (i.e. tons of buildings per image vs. my typical landscape painting with three buildings at most).  It was about two weeks before the opening that I really started to realize what I had just jumped into, needless to say that last week before the show I formed a schedule to where I stayed awake every other night all night painting straight into the next day with the last two days before the set up I would just make a big push to finish it all.  That plan worked, when we hung the show I still had two paintings unfinished but talked Upland into locking me into the Propaganda room and continued to work until I finished the last two pieces around three in the morning the day of my opening. Again, a huge thank to everyone who helped make this event happen, it was a blast!!

The main wall of Upland’s Propaganda Room in the Murphy Arts Center

The Family during the event

WFYI Interview about My Solo Show with Upland Brewing

Recently I was invited to be interviewed on WFYI’s radio show “The Art of the Matter” by host Travis DiNicola to discuss my upcoming solo show with Upland Brewing titled “Urbanscapes”.  I have uploaded the audio from that interview to YouTube which follows.

The audio from the interview.

Jason Cooper, with Upland Brewing and WFYI host Travis DiNicola getting ready to start.

Travis, and I post interview.

End of the Year Update

 

Good Evening, 

It is that time of year again for my annual end of the year update.  This year I find myself sitting 16 stories above the Atlantic Ocean in Miami getting ready to start a commissioned piece for some very good friends of mine.  I’m soo excited to be down here as South Florida is such a beautiful place!

Last year when I posted my end of the year update, one of my old friends from Purdue commented with a fitting quote by Mark Twain stating:  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”  Well, in 2011 I threw off the bowlines, caught a breeze, and have set sail.

2011 was a solid year in terms of both development and cultivating the business aspect of creating.  On the development side, I believe I have improved my ability to create what I am calling more “visually complex” images while maintaining my more simplistic style.  On the business side, I have continued to have good fortune with sales up 27% in the months of November and December.  I also showed quite a bit in both public and private venues in late 2011 and have already booked three solo shows in early 2012 one of which will be Super Bowl weekend in Indianapolis!   So psyched!

So what will 2012 bring? I could start to list many things already in the works, but the one thing I want to continue to focus on is improvement.  In 2012 I want to continue to push myself to improve my raw ability to create stunningly beautiful artwork.  Really, everything else is secondary.  I love to create.

Thank you for your continued support, without it I would not be able to chase this dream.

Have a beautiful evening,

justin

 

Here is a visual recap of my 2011: