If you are here, you might be wondering how are some artists selling hundreds of their original artwork online? Well, I am here to tell you that is possible and I will show you how you can do it too!
Follow these four steps:
Digitise your art
Price your art
Print yourself or outsource
Set up your online shop
First things first. You will need a scanner or a camera. You can use your iPhone camera
or your Android camera because, most phone-cameras are now able to produce high-quality pictures. If you don't have a scanner, and you would like to bring your artwork into your computer, then you will need to take a picture of your artwork.
Good practices in taking photos:
Natural light is best. The room should have sufficient light.
Make use of a whiteboard to reflect light back on your artwork.
Use a software to edit your photo. I personally suggest a good software like Photoshop to remove the background of your artwork.
Tip to take home with you: Be authentic.
Your artwork must reflect your personality, what you like to paint, the styles you like to use, and the story behind your artwork. People love to relate and they will use their feelings to purchase your art.
Sizing your art:
You should pay attention to your resolution of your picture. Usually you can go up to 12,800 in DPI which means dots per inch. The more dots per inch you the higher quality you're going to get. If you are going to sell and sending to print, you should never go under 300 DPI. Therefore, 600 DPI is the ideal resolution.
If you are going to sell a repeating pattern, you should aim up to 12,00 in DPI just because the print can be super large.
How to save your art:
You can choose to save your art as a tiff file or as a JPEG. a tiff file will take a larger amount of space but is of higher quality, while a JPEG file takes less space ,and is good enough for art prints.
Price your art:
Purchasing art is a personal decision and, there is no hard and fast rules about pricing. The bigger the print the more people will be prepared to pay and the more it will cost you to reproduce. If you decide to ship your art yourself, an A4 sized print is recommended. It will be easier for you to send your art print in a flat envelope and it is much cheaper. Making bigger sizes will cost you more to send in a tube.
Print yourself or outsource:
As mentioned above, you may choose to print your art in the comfort of your home and post it to your customers. Another option for you will be a Print on Demand company.
With a Print on demand people will be able to buy your prints, and the company will print and sends them out for you. You decide how much profit you want to make from each print.
There are different Print on Demand companies such as, Printful, Printify, Gelato etc.
Set up your online shop:
Many artists choose to sell their art through Etsy or Creative Market, Made it. You may also opt to have your own website and sell your prints directly from your domain.
Believe in yourself, you can dot it!
