Friday 27th September 2013How to Digitise Your Artwork
Once you've decided to start selling your artwork online, it's important to make sure that the sales images you use on your Gallereo page show off your work properly. If you work in a digital medium, this is as simple as exporting some watermarked images from your favourite image editing program. If you work in a physical media, though, you'll need to find a good way to create digital images that show off your work to best effect. While it can take a bit of practice to get the hang of it, we've got some great tips to help make sure your images look as good as the reality.
First of all, it's important to consider how you're going to create your sales images. If you work in a medium such as watercolours, you may be able to get away with using a flatbed scanner to create your images, although this can become a bit problematic if you work format larger than the scanning bed. While it would be possible to stitch multiple scans together in Photoshop, this can be difficult for those not intimately familiar with digital image editing.
The most flexible option is to use a digital camera, but it comes along with its own set of challenges. If you're photographing a flat canvas, it's important to align the plane of your canvas with the image sensor of your camera to avoid the 'keystone effect' which can distort your images. This can be adjusted later in Photoshop, but the more accurate your initial photograph is, the less time you'll have to spend editing and the better your final result will be.. Alternatively, you could take several shots 'in situ', showing the piece standing on your easel or hung on a wall, and use that as your sales image along with several close-ups to show details. Personal preference comes into play here, but be sure to consider all the options to ensure you're showing your work in the best possible light.
If you're working in a 3D medium such as sculpture or installation-style art, take several different images and close-ups to get a sense of the piece as a whole. You may want to consider building a lightbox to create the 'professional product shot' style that you seen in most product shots, although again, an in situ style shoot may help your customers imagine the piece in their own home more easily.
Finally, the most critical element to your sales images is also the biggest headache - ensuring colour accuracy. Those of you who don't work digitally may not be aware, but colours are not always faithfully reproduced during the image-creation process from camera to website. The last thing you want is disappointed customers who bought your work expecting different colours, so it's worth the expense to buy a colorimeter. A colorimeter is a device containing a simple camera lens that attaches to your computer and your monitor. It comes with a program that displays various colours on your monitor screen, measures the output, and then adjusts your computer colour settings to make sure they are accurate. For the serious artist, they're an absolutely indispensable tool.
Posted on September 27th 2013 on 02:07pm
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Tuesday 24th September 2013Using Social Networking to Drive Your Art Sales
The power of social media is something that we've touched on briefly during our last few posts, but it's time to take a closer look at some of the ways it can benefit your art career the most. Having an active social media presence is no longer an option, either for successfully established artists or for newly-developing talents - but if you don't use it the right way, you may as well just be wasting your time.
One of the most important aspects to your social media efforts is to carefully target who you interact with. Actively seek out groups and pages that are dedicated to critiques, art-sharing and art collecting. Start posting in these groups, and make your posts informative and helpful - that way, when the time comes for you to share your own newest work, people will recognise your name and already have accepted you into the community.
The other crucial element is to create a Facebook page dedicated to your own work. Think of it as an extension of your Gallereo page, one that allows you to quickly and easily get in touch with your fans, letting you inform them of new work that you've posted, any new shows that you've got upcoming, and any sort of sales or promotions you want to offer on your work. Gallereo integrates easily with your social media page, making it even easier for you to share updates with your fans. This is where the real benefits from social media begin to affect the number of pieces you sell.
To make your page truly effective, however, you need to develop a fan base that truly admires and appreciates your work. These people will become your own personal "artwork evangelists" - they will share your work with their friends, who will hopefully share it with their friends, etc until you become an Internet phenomenon. As Kevin Kelly puts it, they're going to become your '1000 true fans'. His hypothesis is that once your community of 'artwork evangelists' reaches the 1000 mark, you'll really start seeing the benefits that social media sharing can offer you, and your career will start taking off. He was referring to a brand, of course, but when you're an artist, you - and your signature style - become your brand. To make sure you keep your fanbase actively interested, be sure to post other interesting things above and beyond your own artwork. This will ensure that your fans regularly come back to your page, which will make them more ready to appreciate and share your artwork when you add it into the mixture of posts you make. Try to post at least once every day to your page, but don't overdo it - people will pull away if they feel they are getting 'spammed' with posts from your page.
Optionally, you can also sign up for a Twitter account, and link it to your Facebook account to increase your pool of potential viewers for each new piece of work you post. Now that Twitter has begun to incorporate image-based tweets, it's a much more viable tool for artists than it originally was. Regardless of this, though, Facebook is still the undisputed champion for artists when it comes to useful social media.
Posted on September 24th 2013 on 01:41pm
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Friday 20th September 2013Top Tips for Selling Your Artwork Online
Now that you've had a chance to go over our 'first steps' for artists working in the digital age, it's time to really dig down deep and highlight some of the best strategies you can use to make your artistic career a success. Once you've set up your Gallereo page, there are a number of things you can do to optimise it and ensure that your fans and potential customers can find your work. Let's look at some of the most helpful and effective tips!
One of the most important things - and one of the most regularly neglected things - that you can do is to ensure that your artwork is accompanied by good text descriptions. A good many art buyers will find your work through search engines like Google and Yahoo, so the more text you have on your pages, the more likely they are to find you. However, remember that it's important to use phrases and keywords in your descriptions that potential customers will actually be using in their search queries. Don't just talk about the intent behind the piece. Be descriptive about your general style, any famous artists who influenced the piece, and if it's a one-of-a-kind work, be sure to make it clear that the piece is still for sale. We'll go more in-depth into SEO for artists in another post, so be sure to stay tuned for that.
Social media is a buzzword that is thrown around a great deal these days, but with good reason: it really does work when it comes to promoting yourself and your work. We briefly discussed the value of social in our 'first steps' post, but it's important to take social media seriously. It gives you a way to keep your name and your work in the forefront of art buyers minds, and lets you instantly reach out to your fanbase when you've completed a new piece of work. Additionally, it allows you to get in touch with other artists, groups and collectives who can be extremely valuable assets when it comes to critiques, ideas and inspiration, not to mention group shows and other sales boosts. This is even more beneficial if you're not located in a big city with a thriving art scene, as you can reach out to other artists no matter where they are in the world.
Finally, it's important to remember that things might start off slower than you would hope. Selling artwork is never easy at the best of times, and it can take a while to gain popularity. While it's a great goal to have your work 'go viral' and become extremely widely shared and well-known, it can take time to accomplish this. It's important not to let the initial stages of selling online discourage you, as it can take sometimes take months to start seeing results from your self-promotion efforts. But if you stick with it, and follow our tips and tricks, you can almost be sure that you'll start gaining the reputation and sales that will make your art career a success.
Posted on September 20th 2013 on 03:36pm
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Tuesday 17th September 2013The First Steps for Artists in the Digital Age
As an artist, one of the most important things you can do once you’ve created your masterpiece is to get it into the public eye. While the traditional art gallery can be a useful tool if you're lucky enough to know the right people, the Internet has opened up huge new areas of opportunity for artists, no matter who you know or what media you work with. We’ll take you through some of the quick and easy ways you can start to promote your work online and start gaining the recognition – and sales – that you deserve.
First and foremost, the most important element is to start developing a presence on the web. Gallereo offers a simple way for artists to showcase their work online, without having to learn how to create websites. This allows you to point potential fans - and potential customers - to a website that showcases your work in a beautiful gallery template, and even makes selling your work online simple and painless.
If you work in any kind of digital media, it will be fairly simple to upload your work. If you work in any of the traditional physical media, however, it's important to make sure that you take high-quality photographs of your work for uploading to your gallery. Pay close attention to how the colours are represented, and consider taking multiple photographs of a single piece to show detail. If you work in sculpture or installation pieces, be sure to show multiple angles to really capture the feel of the work. (Sculptors and jewellers! Stay tuned for our upcoming post on how to construct a simple lightbox using materials from you've got around the house, and turn your sale photographs into works of art in their own right!)
Once you've got your Gallereo page set up, the next crucial step is to start creating some buzz for yourself and your artwork. Social networks are one of the most useful tools for creating buzz, and Facebook makes the process simple, especially if you already have a personal Facebook account. Simply create a new page dedicated to your artwork, upload a few pictures of your work, and link the page to your Gallereo account. Start reaching out to other artists online, and start cross-promoting each others work - you'll be amazed how quickly you can build up a dedicated following of fans. There are many opportunities to receive free Facebook ad credits to help bring fans to your page, and Google Adwords also regularly offers free advertising credits which you can use to send art buyers directly to your Gallereo page.
As with most types of sales, the key steps to success are showcasing your work and making sure people can find you easily. With a bit of careful attention to detail (and some shameless self-promotion!), you can rapidly turn your artwork into a viable career. Many artists, paradoxically, are a bit shy when they first start showing off their work, but it's important to get over this and really show off your talent - so get yourself out there and enjoy it!
Posted on September 17th 2013 on 02:33pm
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