Author Topic: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.  (Read 1443 times)

conthecoloradoclimber

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My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« on: February 05, 2021, 01:37:50 PM »
Along with my full time one of the ways I have been making money is as an artist. I do only paintings of Animals, People, and Pets. In the of December I did around $2000 doing mostly commissions of people's dogs. In January I generated around $4000 in revenue selling paintings mostly from my Kickstarter campaign called the Pet's Animals and Elders Project. You can see it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/477498951/the-pets-animals-and-elders-project?ref=316cc7  I have some very large paintings that I think I sell for around $1000 each that I have been reaching out to restaurants and galleries all over town. I would love and ideas or suggestions about how to scale this. You can see an attached image of some of my artwork.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2021, 01:39:28 PM by conthecoloradoclimber »

KarefulKactus15

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Re: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2021, 05:52:53 AM »
Post count is kinda low for me to be clicking links.

Grats if something is working for you!
« Last Edit: February 06, 2021, 02:55:04 PM by Kroaler »

Metalcat

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Re: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2021, 08:47:40 AM »
Scaling artwork is very, very difficult, because the work takes as long as the work takes and the materials aren't cheap, especially with oils. What was the overhead on those sales? The hourly rate?

You only have so many hours a day that you can paint, and you can only get so fast while still doing a decent job. So there are a lot of limiting factors on the production side. There's also a ceiling as to how much you can charge unless you're looking at professional level, art-world work, which is a whole other industry.

So I'm not sure exactly what kind of scaling advice you're looking for.

cool7hand

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Re: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2021, 10:07:35 AM »
Nice work! Do good work, build your reputation via word of mouth, network with local artists and art galleries, and increase your pricing as demand increases. Maybe journal about your efforts to help keep yourself honest and on task. There's nothing like hard work and drive to advance success. Good luck and keep us posted!

Dancin'Dog

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Re: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2021, 11:27:19 AM »
You should be thrilled with the level of success that you've had so far.  Keep doing whatever you've been doing for a year or two and see where it goes. 


"Don't quit your day job" until you know you can make it on painting alone.  Also, keep in mind that it's "fun" now, but when it becomes a "job" that will most likely change. 


Congrats! 

Steeze

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Re: My Oil Painting Artist Business Is Starting To Take Off.
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2021, 11:40:32 AM »
A guy I hung out with in college is a trained artist and while he sold a few oil paintings his bread and butter was selling screen printed on canvas pieces and t-shirts. Mostly because he can produce 100 copies in a day if he had to.

Maybe he spends 200 hours on a piece - then photographs it, touches it up digitally, then screen prints it on all different size canvases at different price points.

In some cases he would draw on vellum and then create screens directly and never do anything digitally.