About six years ago I was given a great tip for transferring drawings you do on tracing paper or light weight paper such as Bank. This cheap light box is very cheap – in fact it is so inexpensive it is free!
After to you complete your sketch, you tape your drawing to a clear glass window or doorway. I prefer to use a southern facing window (in the southern hemisphere where I live) as it faces away from the sun. It would be the reverse if you live in the northern hemisphere. I found if I used a window that faced directly into the sun; it was a bit hard on the eyes so I don’t recommend it.
Figure 1: Cheap light box – Tape tracing to transparent glass window or outer doorway
On top of the drawing you tape a sheet of 300 gsm, watercolor paper and you should be able to see through to the drawing underneath well enough to trace over it.
Figure 2: Tape watercolor paper over tracing
You may need to add a little pressure to the paper to see the tracing underneath easily.
Figure 3: You may need to add light pressure on the paper to see through to tracing easily
I use this technique if I feel I will be doing a lot of erasing on my initial drawing before I get it right. It lets me work on the tougher tracing paper and also it obviously does not damage the watercolor paper through excessive erasing.
It also means that if I then go ahead and mess up my watercolor painting – hey it happens to everyone, it does not take me long to re transfer the drawing to a new sheet and I hence save myself a lot of redrawing time. This also lets me be a lot more relaxed with my painting, especially if the drawing required a few hours of work, as it does not take very long to retransfer the sketch.
In my studio I have an A3 light box but this technique can be used for any size depending on your window!
I used to rub graphite on the back of a sheet to create graphite paper, but this cheap light box is a much cleaner and easier technique.
OK, so now we have collected all this information about our painting, where it will hopefully be sold and how it is to be promoted (usually along with a lot of other competing works). So what price do we set for our artwork for sale?
I have heard advice like you take the cost of the frame and triple it, or you measure the outside dimensions of the frame in inches and sell it for that price in dollars. All of these solutions are not very useful if you intend to be successfully selling paintings for a very long time. If you had some Picasso artwork for sale you can quickly see how inappropriate this formula would be.
For a start the cost of your frames will hopefully go up at a slower rate than your artwork. So why fix your pricing to someone else’s product – your framer! And the size of your work may not relate to how much work you have put into it.
“Artwork for Sale”
Selling paintings for beginner artists
Artwork for sale – sold!
Now the way to set a price for your work is to appraise it truthfully as to its quality, compare it to similar work that has sold before, in the area you will be selling it in. When you first start, as you will not be known for your work, you may need to set a lower price than you would like, but you can easily adjust your prices, once your sales begin. I keep a record of every painting I sell, along with its price, place, who bought it (if I can find out), its subject and size along with any other information I think may be of use in the future e.g. why was it bought, by a collector, for a gift, for decoration or because the person really connected with the painting? I sell a lot of paintings of Venice to people who have been there but did not pick up a souvenir painting while they were visiting. I also have sold a lot of paintings to people who have purchased my watercolor paintings from me before.
Remember, people will not pay you what you think or would like your painting to be worth. They will pay you what they think it is worth to them. Their idea of what it is worth is based on their desire for the painting (how have they connected to it), what price have they seen on your sold pieces before, what prices similar works by other artists have sold for, and how much money do they have?
This last one is quite pertinent. If your local or national economy is having a hard time, unfortunately, art and painting are one of the early things people cut out of their budgets. So don’t expect the price of your work will only continue to go up. You can keep your work going up or at least staying the same if you are ready to sell less, or sell better paintings for the old price or if you do more promotion to a wider audience (this is where the internet can help). Otherwise you may need to bring your prices down in tough times and take them up in the good. This is what retailers and real estate agents do! The same applies to artwork for sale.
If you do your homework as above, and set realistic prices you are in a very good state to sell your work. In time, from your records of your own sales you will have a better idea of what price to put on your work.
My own policy is to leave my customers feeling like they got a good deal. Don’t be greedy but don’t give your work away. I have known artists who have sold their work for little more than the price of a frame. This surely cannot leave you with a good feeling. Remember “Artwork for sale” should mean you are “selling” something for a profit!
Another of my own policies revolves around the idea that, to the viewer, your work is only as good as the last painting they have seen. For this reason do not try to sell every painting you do. Only show the very best you are able to produce. In time your paintings will improve and as you keep on exhibiting only your best, people will come to have a high opinion of it and be willing to pay more for it. I have seen work of fellow artists stagnate or even go backwards because they have tried to sell everything they have painted – even artwork not up to their current higher standard. Don’t do it! When you think of “Artwork for sale” think my very best “Artwork for sale.”
Selling paintings for established artists
As an established selling artist, you should have plenty of records showing what prices paintings of particular sizes sell for and where. This information has become the main tool I now use for pricing my work. My prices are now set against artwork I have already sold and rarely based on what other people are selling their artwork for. But it does take some time and quite a few sales to get to this stage.
Now, if you are one of the lucky (hard-working) few who become very popular (their work is in great demand) and if you cannot paint enough to supply that demand, then you are able to raise your prices accordingly. This is how it works in other industries such as real estate. “Artwork for sale” also conforms to the laws of supply and demand. The higher the demand and rarity the higher the price!
I hope this article has been of some use to you with your efforts to sell your own artwork.
Promotion as it applies to the sale of watercolor paintings
How to promote your artwork is very important. The more people that know about it the more likely you will find a customer for it.
When you first start out to sell paintings, you don’t often have much of a promotion budget if any. However it is good to know how well an exhibition you have entered is promoted as this will give an indication of how many people will attend. If it is the first time you are entering a show, ask fellow artists who have exhibited there or the show organizers, for an idea of how many people usually attend and how many paintings usually sell along with a average price. There is no use finding out that they sell lots of paintings, if they mainly sell at the $50 price point!
Other ways to promote you work is through word of mouth, let you friends and associates know about your upcoming exhibitions, even if it is a group one.
You can often donate a painting to your local art group for a raffle, and apart from making you feel good, you often get a lot of free publicity from doing this.
The internet is also useful as a promotional medium. If you have a web site (and you should – see my article on web sites for artists and why to have one) make sure you have a notice on the home page of any of your upcoming exhibitions.
Other things you can try are notices to local community papers, letter box drops, notifications to local art societies, people who have already bought your work (these are very special customers as they are most likely to buy more – I even have some that boast how many of my paintings they have bought).
Remember too, that your past customers are always promoting your work. The more work you have sold in a location, the more word of mouth promotion you will be receiving. After I had been selling for a few years I started to get people coming up to me at exhibitions and saying how they had seen (and hopefully admired) my work at a friend’s or colleague’s home. For this reasons I always prefer my paintings to go to homes that really want them, so I never try to hard sell my work! The reason for this is that if a painting is loved by someone they will tell everyone about it. The opposite of this however, is if they don’t like it, they may say bad things about it which is not good!
Now we have done our homework, with the first three of the four P’s of marketing we can look at a price for our painting.
Where to sell paintings, is also an important question. You can sell them from your studio or home, through a gallery, at an exhibition; you could also sell them on-line, either through your own web site or another on line gallery site. Hey even eBay (though I don’t expect very high prices on that channel).
If you are going to sell through a gallery or exhibition, you have to know its location as painting prices or what people a prepared to pay for a painting will vary from suburb to suburb. A lot depends on the financial demographic of a particular location when deciding on a final price.
If you are fortunate enough to have a gallery that sells your work talk with its proprietor as he or she will a lot of useful experience at selling paintings and you should discuss pricing with them before finalizing a price for your artwork. If they have been in business for a long time then they must know how to set art! Their advice on how to sell your paintings should be well considered.
Place is also important when you consider your competition, yes, just like in selling a car or TV set, competition exists in the art world. Art, painting, creativity, originality are not excluded from competition if you want to sell paintings.
So who is your competition, well it is the other artists who are selling in the same area or location as yourself. I suggest you visit a number of galleries and exhibitions in the location you will be trying to sell in and see what similar work to yours is selling for. You also have to take into account the reputation of the other artists. An artist’s who has been selling for a long time with a good reputation will be able to fetch a higher price for his paintings. Sometimes, other artists sell comparable work to yours at a price lower than you would like. In this case you either have to reduce you price, or paint an even better painting or else your work with be less likely to sell.
When I first started selling my paintings I made it a habit to visit all the local exhibitions on their closing day. I would purchase a calendar and walk around the show marking which works had sold (they were the ones with a red dot placed on them), for how much, and a comparison with my work. This helped me to set painting prices which were more realistic.
The next item we will look at is Promotion as it applies to the sale of watercolor artwork.
Product refers to your painting or work of art. Some typical questions are how big is it, what medium is it painted in, is it original artwork or is it a print, the subject matter, how good is the framing, is it framed or unframed, the materials you used e.g. artists quality or student quality material. It also refers to who you are as an artist. The more well know you are, and the more demand there is for your paintings then the higher you are able to charge for them.
One point on the subject of framing; do not try to save money by using old or poor quality frames. It says something about your work and a good frame will help sell it. I would be lying if I said people just buy a painting and not the frame and have had times where people has said they would buy a particular painting with a particular frame. Luckily this is not often the case but it happens.
As you start selling your work the cost of the frame should not go up in price as fast as the price of your artwork, so in time the percentage cost of the frame in your sale price will go down. Also if you use good quality but generic frames you will be able to reuse the frame with another painting if the original one does not sell. They don’t all sell, so don’t sweat on it – paint many more and move on. For me if a painting has not sold within about two years I take it out and reuse the frame. I don’t through the painting away but just store it for the future, or show it to certain customers unframed.
By the way, I have a personal policy of never framing watercolor paintings I would not like to see on my own wall. This has served me well over the years. I have found that as long as I paint a subject that appeals to me, I only have to find a way to show it to someone with similar tastes to mine, and with the right (not too high or low) price I can sell it.
Let us now look at Place as it applies to the selling of a watercolor painting or other artwork.
