How to sell your art

how to sell vector art online

2009-05-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

There are several on-line stock art sites that you can join for free to sell your vector art. I have illustrations that have passed the submission process for three of them. Some are easier to get accepted by than others.
The most friendly and accepting site is Cutcaster. This site has both photography and vector art and as far as stock houses go, the price is pretty good. They describe themselves as a community-based creative exchange for buyers and sellers. They sell in dollars rather than credits, you set the price or use their algorithm pricing. I really have only good things to say about this site.
Another option is Vector Stock, they are more particular but pay less. They have an ok on the friendly scale. I feel they are a no nonsense site and they only have vector art. People who go to their site want what they have. That's good news for vector artists as the clients don't get distracted by 50 million photographs that sell for less.
Of course you may have already come across istockphoto in your quest to sell vector art. They appear to be very big and getting bigger as they merged with Getty Images according to their users forum. They are a stock photo house that has an illustrator's catagory for vector art. They are very particular about the art they accept, although when you peruse the imagery it looks like they will take just about anything and maybe they do, but it has to be formatted correctly and error free. The pay is in credits that translate to dollars in your bank account and the rate is pretty good. They have tons of educational articles and tips for beginners that you will discover.
Some illustration discussions I have read put stock illustration sites down because they don't pay well enough. And they may very well be right. Or they might be wrong. The world is about accessibility these days. Lower prices allow your work to be more accessible to more people. It is getting easier and easier for anyone to build a website or blog. And all that writing is visually very dull without illustrations of some kind. Time will tell if these sites degrade the illustration culture or help to sustain it.
Here are the links:
http://www.cutcaster.com/
http://www.vectorstock.com/
http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php

The Best Size for a Digital Art File

2009-04-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Why worry about the size of your artwork? Many document and art programs have simple ways to reduce picture sizes so getting your art smaller is not a problem. But if you are going to send your artwork to a gallery for review there a few things to consider.
Working with jpegs of your art and simple photo editing program is sufficient for this process. You might want to consider an art program like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop if you want to do more complex manipulation. But there may be no need if you normally work with real paints and brushes rather than virtual ones.
If the artwork is to be viewed as a whole it should be in the range of what fits the width of a computer screen without having to be enlarged. The goal for this would be about 800-1000 pixels wide. A smaller file will look pixelly if enlarged to fill a screen.
For detail shots of the art work use the cropping tool. Rather than sending a huge file of the entire painting or drawing, crop a section that looks interesting and save it at a fairly large size, a width of 640pixels is considered a large web picture but won't totally fill the screen.
Next if you want to send a preview of your art in an email use a pixel width of about 314 or less. This is considered large for an email but won't fill the screen and you may have a better chance of not getting blocked because of it's reasonable size.
Recently the favicon has become popular. Those are the tiny logos next to site names in your favorites list. The size for that is really small, in some cases only 16x16 pixels total is all you need.
Here are some standard sizes in pixels:
Large document 1024x1024
Small Document 800x800
Web large 640x640 (see the cowgirl at the bottom of the blog)
web small 448x448
email large 314x314
email small 160x160
favicon 32x32 or 16x16

Saxifrage 320x320 pixels

2009-04-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

How to Sell Your Art Using a Gallery

2009-04-26T16:45:00.001-07:00

Many artists have talent coming out their ears but are weak at marketing their skills. I have sold my arts and crafts in several venues over the years and I am happy to share all I know with other artists. I will start with the most tried and true method.
Use a gallery to sell your art. Normally a gallery will want to see a pretty strong portfolio of work before they will take you on. It shows them your creative abilities and your stamina if your portfolio is strong and has a good number of pieces. Always sandwich weaker pieces between stronger ones. Have the strongest peices be the first and last thing the gallery owner or curator sees.
If you have a digital portfolio you can apply to galleries outside of you area. A digital portfolio is simply photographs of you work that are accessible via the internet. You can create you own blog or online web page to hold some of the images without having much technical ability. This is the best way because you can update the pictures easily and quickly. Another option is simply to put your files on a CD and mail them to the gallery. You can aslo build a more elaborate website with a site building program and publish it to the internet under your own domain name.