10 Secrets Every New Artist Should Know

10 Secrets Every New Artist Should Know
Being a professional artist is as much about tenacity as it is about talent. Just because you have the creative ability to mold perception and shape moods using color, light, and sound, doesn’t mean you have what it takes to make it as an artist. In fact, being creative and being talented is rarely very lucrative.

It takes a lot of concentrated energy, impressive levels of ability and commitment, and a combination of luck, timing, and business savvy to succeed as an artist. It’s definitely not easy, but neither is it impossible — especially if you know what to expect when you are first starting your career.

#1 Freelance Regularly
Sure, you’d prefer to have one steady, high-paying job as an animator, illustrator, or designer. Who wouldn’t? It’d be great to receive bimonthly paychecks from your company, have health insurance and paid vacation days. Unfortunately, there are a lot more people like you vying for that steady job than there are jobs like that available.

Instead of waiting around for the perfect opportunity to fall out of the sky, you need to create your own opportunities. How do you do this? Simple. Freelance as much as you can. Expand your body of work and your network of professional relationships. Work with start-ups, do little one-off corporate projects, take month-long contract gigs. You never know which of the many pots on the fire is going to boil first. If you’ve gotten your work exposed to a lot of people, you’ll have much better odds of getting hired when one of these projects takes off. After all, you’ll already be a known and respected commodity.

#2 Volunteer: Serve Others While Serving Yourself
Sometimes we do freelance work for free: it’s called volunteering. Sure, you can look at it as working for free… or, you can look at it as networking. Try thinking about it like this: if you are a talented artist and you aren’t getting paid for that talent, one of the reasons may be lack of exposure. It’s as simple as that — not enough people have seen your work! By volunteering, you get to look like a benevolent human being AND you get to showcase your skills to a potentially large and appreciative audience. You never know when one of the many people associated with your volunteer project will offer you a job — or an introduction — that can help out your career.

#3 Illustrate Your Point
No matter what kind of artist you are, it pays to be able to do a quick sketch to visually articulate your point. Think of it as professional Pictionary. If somebody asks you for an example of a concept or a campaign and hands you a piece of paper and a pen, you should be able to take that notepad and draw your idea with confidence. Not an illustrator? It doesn’t matter. Even if you’re a computer animator, a fashion designer, or a sculptor, having a basic ability to make quick visual illustrations of your ideas will give you the credibility and edge you need in presentations. Anyone can give an “elevator pitch”, but only a few can describe that pitch with a pen as fluently as they can with a paragraph.

#4 Give Yourself a Hot Brand
Marketing is important, especially in a crowded field like art. There are millions of people that claim to be artists; they all have portfolios and big aspirations. What they don’t all have is a clear brand. Evaluate your skills, evaluate your specialty, and make a branding decision.

Are you a photographer? Great. What kind? Editorial, travel, wedding, fashion, food? Focus your brand. (As a photographer we shouldn’t even have to tell you this.!) Focus your skills through the right lens and get the best shot at success. Once you know what your brand is, use it. Promote it, build it, strengthen it, network with it, attend conventions with it, SEO it. Make your brand unique, compelling, and impactful by focusing on a skill and cultivating it. You’ll increase relevancy, opportunity, and ultimately brand value.

#5 Show Off Your Professional Portfolio Online and Off
Every serious artist needs a serious portfolio. If you want people to consider you a professional, you will need to compile and design a professional portfolio both on the web and in a traditional “book.”

Your book should be in a nice presentation case. Remember, the feel and texture of the case itself as well as the sheen on the sleeves that hold your work will all be evaluated (even if unconsciously) by the people to whom you present your work.

Online, your portfolio needs to be professionally designed by a web designer; it should be clearly organized and easy to navigate. An artist with a badly designed online portfolio will not look professional, no matter how good his or her work is. Make sure to link to your experience and education in a resume section, showcase your clients and expertise. If you work in various media, you should have a painting channel, an illustration channel, a photography channel, each segmented to highlight your top work in each section.

#6 Contracts Can Make the Difference
As you look for the perfect artistic career, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of piecemeal contract and freelance work for extra cash. When you work on a project-by-project basis, you need to get paid promptly so that you can pay for things you might need. To make sure you always make rent, you need a solid contract.

Keep your contract straightforward, simple, and professional. Make it clear that your contract is legally binding and that payment is due within 30 days of the receipt of the invoice. Stipulate that additional penalties will accrue at X% on top of the original fee if payment is tardy beyond the 30-day mark. In most instances you can accomplish everything you need to in a short form contract. For more information on contracts for artistscheck this out.

#7 Know Your Value
Art is subjective. One man’s paint splatter is another man’s masterpiece. When you are trying to decide how much to charge for your work, you need to take a lot of things into account.

First, think about the time it takes you to do something. If a piece takes you 60 hours to complete and you only charge $500 dollars for it that means you are working for about $8 an hour. That’s not a great salary for a professional artist, unless of course you are a “Sandwich Artist.”.

Second, consider the cost of your supplies. If you spend $200 on materials for that 60-hour piece, and charge $500 dollars, you are only making $300 on the piece – which means you’re actually making about $5 an hour.

Third, factor in the intangibles of your work that give it value. You didn’t start making art today; you’ve practiced, studied, trained, experimented, and improved for years. Factor those years of preparation into your final price. Even if you can make something in an hour, it doesn’t mean it’s less valuable because it would take a non-professional many more hours to approximate the same thing. After all, your years of practice prepared you to create quality work quickly. You should be compensated for that foresight and training.

Fourthly, value creates value. If you charge more money for something, people will assume it is worth more money. If you make an amazing sculpture and sell it for one dollar, people will think that there must be something wrong with it. They will devalue it, even though their initial impression was that it was a lovely and valuable piece of art. There is a point where you can charge too much for your work, but charging more than you think it’s worth might actually help you sell more of it, make more money, and establish a perceived value that wasn’t there before.

#8 The Client Will Annoy You

The problem with art is that everyone assumes that they are good at it. Nuclear engineers never face this problem. If a nuclear engineer gets hired to work on a problem, they are never second-guessed about tweaking their quantum physics formulas. Why? Because the person who hired them knows they don’t know how to perform nuclear engineering, that’s why they hired a scientist.

Art is not like this. Art is more democratic—and democracies make mistakes. Everyone thinks they have a hidden talent for art, a great eye, or a subtle genius for color theory. At the very least they will assume that “they know what they like” (even if their taste is atrocious). Because of this common misconception, yourclient will give you advice and feedback that will annoy you. And it should annoy you, because in most cases, it will be wrong. After all, your client lacks the talent and vision to create design for him or herself. Don’t worry; this won’t stop them from piping in with ill formed opinions. He or she will try to put their touch on your design by having you add space where it isn’t needed, or mix colors that clash.

Unfortunately, until you are an established artist, you are going to have to either concede to your client’s wishes and get paid, or stay righteous and poor. The sooner you deal with this, the sooner you’ll get paid.

#9 Being an Artist Doesn’t Mean You Get to Be Irresponsible
Until you’ve made it big, your quirks and whims won’t be seen as endearing or delightfully Warholian. If you’re serious about making art your business then go ahead and put aside romantic visions of an artistic lifestyle that focuses on glamour and doesn’t put much stock in the details.

As an aspiring artist you’ll need to hustle, and you’ll need to sell yourself. You’ll need to network; you’ll need to market your skills and your portfolio. You’ll need to answer phone calls, and, just as importantly, return those calls you missed. Just because you are talented doesn’t mean you are going to make it as an artist. A combination of talent and tenacity is required to showcase your work and get it the recognition that it very well may deserve.

#10 Confidence is Required
If a stranger asks you, “What do you do?” And your response sounds something like, “Umm. Well, I um … I don’t know. Well … I want to be an artist, but I’m not really an artist, I mean I’m not that good, and I certainly don’t get paid for it, but I sure like art.”

You are not doing a good job of being an artist. No matter how amazing your artwork is, if you can’t project an aura of confidence and professionalism it is going to take a series of miracles for anyone to ever get the chance to see and appreciate your work. Yes, the universe is unfair, there are some artists with little talent beyond self-promotion that are famous. Do they deserve to be famous? Not really, but the point is that confidence and self-promotion can be as important, if not more important, than talent.

The majority of successful professional artists exhibit a combination of confidence and talent. They recognize an opportunity and they know how to present themselves and their work to seize that opportunity. If you don’t think your art is good enough to talk about, stop now, because nobody else will either.