The Starving Artist

Have you ever heard about the expression starving artist? Well there is a reason for that, it’s not the easiest game to get into. I always knew I would be an artist of some sorts, but what kind of artist who knew. I probably still don’t know if I am honest.

So let’s start from the beginning of my epiphany to be became a proper artist that sold work. My first ever art and craft show/event was the Loughborough Dog’s Trust Fun Day located in Wymswold July 2015. This was their first event since opening their new centre and it was promised to be a really fun day out with a number of attractions for adults and children. Obviously as based around the dog show which would have a number of competitions throughout the day. I was located in the craft tent run by the arts and craft company who have their own marquees and set them up in a number of locations throughout the year. I have one small tressal table and was located right on the far edge of the marquee where everyone was entering or exit. It was perfect.

Now bare-in-mind I had never done anything like this before I was pretty scared and had no idea what to expect, plus I didn’t have a lot to sell. It total I must have had about 6 or 7 drawings made into handmade greeting cards and prints and one original drawing which was a commission that I had recently completed. But once it was all laid out on the table I was rather chuffed with myself! I received a lot of attention, my work was completely different from anyone else in the tent plus I had the original drawing of a Dutch shepherd which showed what I could achieve on a larger scale.

Although I only made about £70 at this show I was really excited, I thought wow I can actually make some money from this! What shall I do next?

I did a further 4 shows in that year and all where successful… (In my eyes making more then what the table cost was success). Obviously I wasn't taking into consideration what the cards were costing to print, the prints, the cello wrapping, the food I was consuming and my time…. But hey I made something. Something is better than nothing right??

Well the answer is no. The more of these shows I did the more I realised I wasn’t making any money at all. I was just selling to produce more for the next show. I then did some research on how to set up a business and what to expect… I also dug out my GCSE Business studies books to give me a refresher. So it turns out no business really makes any real money until your about 2-3 years in… I was only 6 months so that’s okay. But I needed a plan. How can I make my thing (Drawing animals) make money?

The Big Plan was…

1.     Commissions – I would aim to do one commission a week. This would give a steady stream of income to pay for printing and events for the stalls in advance.

2.     Retail events – Continuing what I had already been doing, local arts and craft stalls with a maximum budget of £100 per event no matter how long the event was.

3.     Trade – Sell to local shops and galleries.

4.     Stock – BRING THE COST DOWN!!

So let’s start with COMMISSIONS… now we are in Christmas 2015 going into 2016. By this point I had completed 7 commissions comprising of a border terrier, turtle shell cat, a beautiful Head and shoulders portrait of a horse, a polo pony, a terrier that had sadly passed away, an Italian Spinone and a shooting card design. So I had a bit of experience but not an awful lot and I knew I had a long way to go to catch up with the big boys (Or girls… as I have found out the industry at the moment in full of young girls who are very talented!!) I needed to brush up my skills quickly and that could only be done with practice and doing more work. Problem is how do you get more work?? Well you know that social media site everyone uses near as damn it every minute of every day!? Well it is a huge advertising board! I set up a business page and started putting all my work on there… I linked it to Instagram and Twitter. Instagram is where I put all my progress pictures of my work and people love it! Make sure you add the right ##### though as this will make or break you! I will go into that in another blog post. So whenever I took a photo it would go straight onto all my other social media sites. These would then all become an online portfolio. Facebook also allows you to add events, photo albums and reviews if you have a business page.

I then started to add myself to other groups of Facebook that were aimed at doggie owners like Cocker Crazy and I love Shelties. I also added myself to crafting groups such as craft, craft and more craft, crafting network and handmade networking. Every so often when I had a progress shot of a current piece I was really proud of I would post it on the these groups and said something like “Hey everyone, just wanted to introduce my latest drawing of …… would love to know what you think??”. You would get a lot of comments saying wow, amazing, wish I could draw etc. etc but every so often you would get that question… hey do you do commissions?? HM!?

BOOM I’m in… and this was all free without having the spent a penny!!

Now that leads on nicely to pricing… up till now all the commissions I had been completing where for friends and family and I wasn't charging a lot maybe £50 - £70 but I was fully aware that I was barely getting minimum wage for the amount of time I was taking on them. So I made the leap and gave myself a price list which only had 3 Sizes available and I stuck to it. At least I would now be making minimum wage with the intention of upping it in 6 months. Now bare-in-mind I had done my research… I had looked at all the prices of the people I knew of that were doing the same thing (Who were better than me) and they charging anything up to 3 times more to 6!! Yes 6 times more then what I was charging, but they had experience on their side and a huge portfolio to show. So I stuck with my pricing and it worked I was getting the commissions slowly, maybe one or two a month at this point and I was happy with that.

RETAIL… now this I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing… a hell of a lot of guess work and luck! I literally went into a couple of local shops I liked and asked them if they would like to stock my cards. I was only offering cards as this point as it was something I could do fairly easily with little effort. After my first outing I walked about with 2 new stockists, I was chuffed!

Galleries were my next target… again I kept it local. This time I sent a friendly email to the gallery owner to introduce myself and attached some of my work as an attachment. He said come over and we will look over some of your work. So I did and he took on a few of my prints just 3 of each to start with and 2 originals. All on seller return. Seller return is where the gallery would only give you money for the item they have took on once the item is sold. They do hold the right to give you the item back if it doesn’t sell but also gives you the right to withdraw it whenever you like. The commission they take for this varies from 30% up to 50% so make sure you take this into consideration when working out the RRP or wholesale price (leave yourself some profit)

Stock. Well this is been the hardest part, it takes up a lot of time working out what you’re going to sell, how to produce it, where and for how much. Researching companies who produce the products you want is really important, ask them to send out a sample pack to show you the types of paper they do. This was the pleasant part… with my background in architecture and a heavily emphasis on the quality of the graphics and representation this part was easy. I had a clear idea about what I wanted to achieve with my greeting cards, I wanted a heavy weight card stock that was slightly textured and was an off white. I wanted these cards to feel like you were buying into a quality luxury product. The other big factor in choosing there company was do you make everything in England, I wanted to proudly show off the MADE IN ENGLAND flag! I then compared all the prices per unit… now this was just pure hard work… a lot of companies had minimum orders and I just didn’t have the money, this reduced my choices significantly I ended up paying upwards of 80p per card plus postage. This has been a long standing problem that I am still trying to resolve.

So with all of this in mind, it was never going to be a quick thing that made money quickly but I am now 18 months into owning my own businesses and I have learned a hell of a lot and still a starving artist but I am getting there… slowly. I will go into how I run my business now in more detail in another post but I think it is really important to understand where I started and how I developed in the first few months.

Feel free to add any comments bellow with any questions I will happily answer as many as I can!