Category: Sales

Use Print on Demand with your inventory of paintings

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Sell Your Paintings or Give Them as Gifts

Or when you sell a painting that many people have expressed interest in, so you know is one that you could have sold many times over? Apart from continuing that theme in your work as well as trying to sell the original paintings you have, there are many things you can do on a smaller, more economical scale to create opportunities to sell and promote your work. You may have an inventory of paintings that you don’t know what to do with, but you know that many of your close friends and family would love but can’t afford to buy (and you can’t afford to give them away). You can use that inventory to save yourself some costs on holiday, birthday, or special-event gift-giving, and simultaneously create a revenue source and marketing tool for future use. You need to spend some money to have these special items made, but it would be money you would spend on gifts, anyway, and eventually, you should recoup more than you originally invested.

With many Print on Demand services readily available, there are endless opportunities to create gift items using an image of your work. It is up to you how many of these you want to use before you feel you are crossing the line from professionalism to kitsch but here are a few good ideas for what you can do with your paintings that the people nearest and dearest to you will absolutely love, and that will make those who don’t yet know you and your work glad to have made your acquaintance!

Take a peek at a few of the gifts I’ve made available.

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/karlene-ellsworth/shop

These additional products can make fabulous gifts.

Notecards and Greeting Cards

Notecards of your artwork can be a great source of extra income and a good way to promote yourself as an artist as well as making nice gifts. They can be sold individually or packaged as an assortment. Although much of modern communication is done by email, there is something about a handwritten notecard that is still valued and is even that much more special when the image is of an original work of art by an artist known personally to the sender or recipient. Notecards make a particularly meaningful gift to someone who has purchased an original painting from you to let them know how much you appreciate their business and support.

Calendars

Although many people use their mobile phones and computers for their daily calendars, the printed calendar with images is still a popular item to have readily accessible in the home or office and is a common marketing tool for many nonprofit organizations. Also, calendars of images of paintings of famous artists make popular gifts, so why not a calendar of your own paintings?

If you are making a limited set for the family, you can also add important dates—birthdays, anniversaries, etc. as helpful reminders of meaningful events.

Specialty Items

From Print on Demand to sites such as Zazzle.com, the merchandising opportunities are vast. You can make as few or as many of an item as you want, so you can tailor your gifts to the recipient—a t-shirt for your nephew, a tote bag for your mom, magnets for hostess gifts and thank you gifts.

Giclee Prints

A giclee print is a special high-quality type of inkjet print in which the inks are made from pigments rather than dyes. The prints are made on an archival surface such as an acid-free paper or canvas from a high-quality reproduction of your original image by scanning or digital photograph. You can make the reproduction any size you want. When printed on canvas, giclee prints can often look very much like the original painting. You can print these out in a limited edition, in which case you need to number them, or you can just print them out as demand arises.

You can take your work or images to a local printing shop that does giclee printing where you can establish regular business, or order prints online at any of a number of places likeiPrintfromHome.com, Fine Art America, or Fine Print Imaging, to name just a few, or invest in your own giclee printer if you have the space and want to get into the requirements and particularities of printing.

Catalog Your Artwork

Make a book or catalog of your paintings to give to relatives, friends, and collectors, as well as to have available to sell. You can make it as basic or as complete as you want, depending on your purposes. It can be a retrospective for your family, friends, and posterity, including paintings from the beginning of your career, or it might include just your newest paintings from the last year to show galleries and collectors. Include a biography and an introduction by someone who knows your work well. Also, make sure your images are of high quality and that you have reviewed the manuscript thoroughly for grammar and spelling errors since you are solely responsible for the content.

Many artists use Blurb.com, Lulu.com, or Bookbaby.com to self publish a book of their artwork.

Copyright Considerations

According to the Art Law Journal, as the creator of the original work, the artist has the exclusive right to reproduce, modify, and distribute copies of the original work of art “in any fixed form, a digital copy or a printed one.”

I’ve written more about how I post my art in these to Posts from February 2019.

Protecting your art on your website 

and  Consider Adding Watermarks To Your Images

Consider Adding Watermarks To Your Images

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sm jasmine blossoms

A watermark is a logo or name that is placed on top of an image. Watermarks credit you as the artist of your image and it is very difficult for anyone to remove/change this. The one most used is the copyright notice, best known as the C symbol (©), plus the year the work was published, or the abbreviation Copr.

You should also include the year of completion as well as your name in the watermark. It looks like the image above.

 

Protecting Your Art On Your Website

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There’s no doubt that posting your work online can be risky. At the same time, in this increasingly digital art world, online exposure is often critical to an artist’s success. While nothing is foolproof, there are some measures you can take to help protect your art on the web.

Only Publish Small, Low-Resolution Images

A small, low-resolution image simply isn’t worth stealing for most people. However, before you run off to resize all of your images to thumbnails, make sure you do not save them over your high-res images.Once you save an image as small and low-res, you cannot get that file to ever be high resolution again. For all you hold dear, save the web-ready version as a separate file.

Windows or Mac, you can use almost any image-editing software to resize images. From Photoshop to Paint, the process is universally pretty similar. You’ll usually find the “Resize” option under the “Edit” toolbar. Converting to lower resolution can be a little trickier.

FASO Promotion – Print on Demand

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I’m excited to share with you a promotion that fineartAmerica is offering  this month. When you buy any one of the gift items with my art image, you will get a gift certificate on checkout for $100 worth of wine from Naked Wines of Napa California.

These products make fabulous gifts.Take a peek at just a few of the many gifts available.

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/karlene-ellsworth.html

This link spells out the details of the promotion.

https://fineartamerica.com/winepromotion.html

How to Protect your Art

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Always Sign Your Name On Your Work

This is the first step in protecting your art against copyright violation. Adapt the habit of signing all your works, preferably with the year of completion. You must always sign your artwork once it is finished. You could do it discreetly in a corner, or make you signature a part of the artwork. You can also sign the back of the artwork.You must always sign your artwork once it is finished. You could do it discreetly in a corner, or make you signature a part of the artwork. You can also sign the back of the artwork.

Register your work

If you are a well known artist this can be done online with the US Copyright Office of the U.S. Library of Congress. You fill out forms and pay a fee and it takes some time.

Keep Digital Records Of Your Work

A picture is worth a thousand words. Having a digital library of your artwork will save you a lot of hassle in the event of copyright infringement, as you can present this record in court. The great thing about photographs is that their metadata often stores the date that the pictures were taken. A professional photographer can also be used to ensure that two people have evidence to support any copyright infringement cases.

So what is copyright? And why is it important to me?

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One NY city gallery wrote about this back in 2017

For the art world, the internet is a lot like the American frontier: full of opportunity and promise – but also a place to be wary. Today, with just a few clicks, you can share your art with a worldwide audience, meet and acquire new collectors and fans, raise money for your art projects, and make life-long friends. However, along with this convenience comes a whole new wave of dangers and drawbacks, sometimes leaving artists exposed and vulnerable.

For many artists out there, the largest looming nightmare is copyright infringement. Art is your craft and your livelihood, and it is a personal investment of your time, money, effort, and soul. Moreover, it is your intellectual property. Protecting your art needs to be a priority. There are a number of ways to help you do this, and we’ve laid them out for you in a quick, simple guide

In layman’s terms, intellectual property is your right to protect your original work while a copyright is established when an original work is created tangibly (not just conceptually). However, unregistered work can often be hard to prove as your own, which is why it is important to keep digital or physical records. If you ever need to take a case to court, think about how well you can demonstrate that you are the creator of the artwork in question.

This is the first step in protecting your art against copyright violation. Adapt the habit of signing all your works, preferably with the year of completion. You must always sign your artwork once it is finished. You could do it discreetly in a corner, or make you signature a part of the artwork. You can also sign the back of the artwork.You must always sign your artwork once it is finished. You could do it discreetly in a corner, or make you signature a part of the artwork. You can also sign the back of the artwork.

Register your work

If you are a well known artist this can be done online with the US Copyright Office of the U.S. Library of Congress. You fill out forms and pay a fee and it takes some time.

Keep Digital Records Of Your Work

A picture is worth a thousand words. Having a digital library of your artwork will save you a lot of hassle in the event of copyright infringement, as you can present this record in court. The great thing about photographs is that their metadata often stores the date that the pictures were taken. A professional photographer can also be used to ensure that two people have evidence to support any copyright infringement cases.

Print on Demand

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You may want to consider this relatively new way of getting paid for your artwork.

Pixels.com is one of the distribution channels. This is the way they describe what they offer:

Welcome to the largest, fastest-growing art and photography community in the world.  Pixels is the premier online marketplace for buying and selling original art, prints, home decor, apparel, and more. With just a few clicks, you can open an account, upload your images, select the products that you want to sell, set your prices, and begin selling your art to the millions of buyers all over the world.

It can be very appealing since it is not necessary to concern yourself with packaging,  insuring and shipping the artwork.

FineArtAmerica has another site like this where you can offer all sorts of products, even coffee mugs, each of which uses images of you art.

You upload photos, set the markup and they do the rest!

These make fabulous gifts. Take a peek at pixels.com/art/karlene+ellsworth