By Carolyn Edlund

Artists need a cohesive, signature body of work. Create a great collection for your targeted audience.

Artists often look for ways to increase business, such as better marketing techniques, creating more income streams, or licensing their work. Another major factor that can affect your bottom line is your product line – and thoughtful development of it.

As you consider how to grow your body of work, take a look at the big picture. Are you selling one-of-a-kind pieces only? Is your price spread limited, restricting your market? Do you want to break out this year, or even explode your business by tapping into ways of selling you haven’t tried before?

Courtesy Shawn Messenger

Many readers have their illustrations and artwork on products such as greeting cards, prints, handpainted clothing, and other retail items which can be produced in volume. If you can produce in multiples, such as pottery, jewelry, clothing or other handcrafted line, prints of your work, or using your art on self-produced products, you open yourself to the world of wholesaling. If this is your choice, make sure to crunch the numbers and price your work for profit at wholesale.

Selling wholesale not only creates a huge boost in volume, but helps stabilize your business as well. There is nothing like having orders from a repeat customer base of retailers to keep regular income flowing through the door of your studio year round.

In my own experience running a production ceramic studio for twenty years, I had about 150 retail stores at any given time as active wholesale customers. Although each account was different in the frequency and volume of their orders (and there was an expected turnover of about 20% each year), it brought enormous stability, which allowed me to hire assistants and make projections each year based on a known quantity.

An added bonus is that as you develop your own book of business, you will be able to show receivables and gain the credibility to successfully apply for a business loan to expand your operation if you wish. Bankers love hard numbers, and most businesses have this kind of data. You will too.

Back to focusing on developing your product line. Plan carefully so that as you ramp up to create a new, cohesive and exciting line for your business, you will be able to:

• Open new and broader markets for your work
• Spread your price points to appeal to more customers’ budgets
• Enhance your brand
• Increase repeat sales
• Put yourself in a position to cross-sell more of your line
• Rejuvenate your business by adding lots of exciting new items

As you consider new directions for your line, make sure you are designing what you enjoy doing and would be happy to stay with. After you come up with a core look for a collection, start branching off into more related products. Necklaces need earrings and bracelets to match – and pins, hair ornaments, even ankle bracelets. Tabletop items look great in groupings. Pottery is a natural for a collection. Working in themes  offers endless opportunities for collections.

If you design more than one collection, you may want to make one higher-end and one with lower prices, to catch a wider audience. Name your collections. Give them life, make them memorable. Go into your design process knowing who your target customer is, what they buy and why your work will appeal to them.

Courtesy Shawn Messenger

Now, let’s increase the ticket. Think pairs or sets. If you can sell several of a product rather than one because they are in a set, each sale jumps immensely. Artwork in themes should be created in series to be displayed together for a bigger ticket price. Why would you sell one kitchen-related print when you can create a set of four to be hung together? You can stress this point by not offering them as singles. And if you license your images, all the better. Art publishers love artwork in a tightly cohesive series. They know and value the power of collections.

Collections make a statement. They look good when displayed. They create a buzz. Rockstar designers know this. Start looking at the websites of artists and craftspeople you know who are successful. They all started with good ideas and expanded on their signature styles.

What designers do you know with a well-made, popular collection? What inspires you to create your own?

See more of Shawn Messenger's glass art by visiting her website at www.shawnmessenger.com

By Carolyn Edlund

Artists talk about the year just passed, and their resolutions for 2012.

Some took risks, or had tough learning experiences. They all grew in their businesses and their art. Here are their stories:

Jean Judd:

2011 has been a year of reviewing my true vision as an artist and making necessary adjustments. It has also been a year of growth for my art business as I have gained representation with new galleries due to my diligence in marketing myself via LinkedIn and other online venues.

Being added to several art consultants rosters will bring new commissions and sales for 2012. I already have several acceptances for juried fine art exhibitions across the US so 2012 will be a continuation of the progress made in 2011 getting my artwork out for collectors to see and purchase.

Annie Strack:

This past year has been pretty good, and I’ve had a slight increase in sales over the previous year. Every year I add a few more goals to my list, in addition to ones that carry over from previous years. For instance, one of my annual goals is to add another gallery, and I try to find at least one new one every year. I usually lose one every year, too, due to closing or performance issues; so it’s actually very hard to gain ground on this one. Other goals that get repeated every year are things like booking workshops, writing magazine articles, entering juried shows, earning Signature Memberships, teaching classes, etc.

This year, the extra goals on my list include joining more artist societies near my new home, more plein air painting, expanding my online sales, and producing a new DVD. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s on top of everything else I already have on my list that gets repeated each year, so it’s enough!

Destry Sparks:

I definitely want to spend more time making art in 2012 than worrying about art business. In 2011 I had the busiest exhibition schedule of my career with five solo shows spread over four states. I met several benchmarks such as showing at a large public university in a large city via the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It was also a big step to show my work for the first time in the leading art markets of Miami and New York. Meeting many of my online contacts in person was a great experience as well which has led to other opportunities in the pipeline. But promoting shows back to back while dealing with the logistics of organizing so many large solo exhibitions was a real wake up call.

Managing life beyond art plus all of that has left me just plain worn out. I haven’t produced much work at all this year, which has been frustrating. I’ve learned my lesson though. From now on, the core of my energy will go towards time in the studio. As artists if we lose sight of that, we run the risk of leaving out the joy of discovering the full potential of our creative path. I’ve already started some new work.  I’m really excited to ring in 2012 with momentum!

Kelly Heck:

This past year has helped me figure out the direction I want to head with both my art and my business. It has included gaining the courage to turn down areas of work I no longer wish to provide, rekindling a passion for areas I thought I would no longer pursue and struggling with time management.

This January 2012 I hang my solo show at The Delaplaine in Frederick, MD. I’m excited to share my new body of work, Beautiful Silence, which features winter landscapes in and around Carroll County, Maryland. The reception is February 4^th, 2012. I hope to build print sales through my online store. And just like in this previous year, I would like to hang my work in at least a handful of shows, not limited local venues.

This new year should also include some site updates for myself and to feature other artists on my site, an idea I pushed last year but that lost momentum. Over the past three years, I’ve improved my skills in business, marketing and relationship building – not to mention I’m more and more excited by my designs and I can manage my own website! And the drive to do more and get better just keeps on coming!

Ted Meyer:

In 2012 I will continue making art about medicine and health, but with a stronger focus on internal and emotional issues in addition to my interest in the body. This past year I continued with my “Scarred for Life” project, in which I make body prints from people’s scars and collect their stories of trauma and healing. I shot a television pilot about this process, and how the experience serves as a cathartic expression for many of my subjects, a cap to their “story.”

I also started a new series of paintings in which I embed photos and documents from my parents and grandparents into the compositions. I recently visited my brother, who has a serious longterm illness, and got some of his creative notebooks from his youth as a folk singer. I’m starting to collage these fragments into new paintings about him, exploring the effects and his suffering of dementia and Parkinsons. It’s possible I’ll also mix human ashes (my mom’s) into these paintings. Finally, I started a business called ArtandMed.com last year, and in 2012 I’ll continue to present lectures to health providers and patient groups about art and medicine.

Giesla Hoelscher:

My hopes for 2011 were big. At the end of 2010, my boyfriend and I began subleasing a retail space that we turned into an art gallery/portrait studio. I was really excited that it would allow me to reduce the number of art fairs that I was doing, help my boyfriend build his new photography business, bring in new customers and start moving in a new direction.

Long story short, after a long winter that came with huge snow plowing bills, light rail construction in the area that kept people away, crime on the rise in the neighborhood, and not being able to keep regular hours because of my schedule, I came to the conclusion that getting into a retail space was a huge burden that came with a big lesson. I realized that I was continuing to fall back on the safe decisions of more of the same (though it took on a different form) to avoid the big scary decisions I needed to make to make significant changes to my business. I spent the year spinning my wheels instead of making much progress.

In January, I’m taking a four day mini-retreat to a family cabin to get away and focus on what I really want for my 10th year in business. For 2012 my biggest hope is that I can find a wayto  travel more so I can create new artwork which will in turn expand my licensing opportunities. I’d also like to take a bigger step towards doing more corporate art. My resolutions are to ditch the toxic part-time job, stop resisting the really big changes that will take me out of my comfort zone, as well as stop putting off the little things that could make a big difference down the line.

Pam Utton:

December 25th marks my second year of selling pet portraits on Facebook. I have continued to work with watercolor and acrylic on a daily basis. When not busy with pet portraits I would paint different subjects such as flowers and carousels which are located in three small local galleries. Painting every day is not a chore for me and my love for my art and for animals brings me much support from a vast network of people. It is important to me to share my natural talent with others and to give back as often as I can. My fan page grew to over 7,000 and my sales are steady.

For 2012 my goal is to learn how to create portraits with graphite and color pencil in addition to my paintings. Many people seem to be drawn to the simple elegance of graphite. So, my first free portrait for 2012 is going to be a 8×10 graphite drawing. Fans are eager to see my work progress and they encourage me to continue.

What’s Your Story and Your Vision for the New Year?

By Carolyn Edlund

This year’s countdown of the ten most read and shared articles on Artsy Shark.

10. Making Art and Making a Living - Do you have to support yourself through your art to be an “artist?” Or does the financial pressure hurt your creative growth and your sanity?

9. “You’ll Never Make a Living as an Artist” - Are you surrounding yourself with supporters, or naysayers? Who is holding you back? Your family, your friends? Or is it you?

8. Matching Artists with Corporate Buyers - Joyce Creighton’s fascinating story of how she is connecting artists whose work is appropriate for corporate settings with clients looking for their work.

7. How to Make Your Customers Fall in Love with You - Want more business and repeat customers? That’s right – spread the love.

6. Do You Want to be a Childrens Book Illustrator? - Cherish Flieder discusses the steps in childrens book illustration, and how to get started in the business.

5. Creative Marketing for Artists - Think outside the box when it comes to promoting your work. Here’s some examples of how other artists did it.

4. 6 Ways to Improve Your Greeting Card Sales - Is your line balanced? Is it big enough? How often should you update? The basics on what you must do to have a successful greeting card business.

3. What’s Wrong with Your Art Website? – Artsy Shark asked the experts for their pet peeves when visiting art websites. Are you guilty of any of these sins?

2. A Guide to Pricing Your Artwork – Professor, TED speaker and entrepreneur Karen Atkinson gives great advice for artists on this perplexing but essential topic.

1. Are Your Prices Unrealistic? – Are your prices too high? Too low? How your competition affects your perspective. Lots of comments and opinions about pricing.

Guest blogger John R. Math is a consultant and expert in the field of art marketing. He is also the owner of www.lightspacetime.com online art gallery, which holds monthly themed art competitions. The winners are promoted with a group exhibition in the following month.

If an artist wants to be considered and known as a “serious” artist, it will be necessary for them to compete against other artists in juried art competitions and art shows.  In order to help build and develop their artistic resume,’ artists will find it necessary to enter juried art competitions on a regular basis. By entering and being accepted into juried art competitions, this then becomes a “third party” endorsement of the artist’s skill and artistic talents.

It is through juried art competitions and juried art shows that an artist’s career and professional development will progress. By successfully participating in these events over time, the artist will then be taken more seriously by art galleries, art buyers and art reps. It is a progression and a process that takes time for an artist to learn and adapt to, in order to succeed.

This article will hopefully make the artist who is new to art competitions, aware of some major areas as to why their art is rejected when entering a juried show. Many times it is not the quality of the art that is being rejected but rather it something else that the artist did or did not pay enough attention to in the competition’s prospectus, rules and underlying theme. Here are some points to consider and to be aware of when entering art juried art competitions:

1. Apply only to competitions that truly fit with your art

Artists will sometimes miss what the organization is really after in terms of the theme or the parameters of the competition. For instance, an artist who submits their Black and White photography into a competition with a theme about “Bold or Bright Colors” will get rejected. I know there are people reading this who are saying “but black and white are colors too!” Yes they are, but black and white are not in keeping with the spirit of the theme and scope of the show.

For our monthly competitions we plainly state that we only want two-dimensional art for our shows and we still receive pictures of sculpture, jewelry and crafts or even videos! Many times the work is fantastic, but again it is not what we want and the artist has wasted their time and money by placing their art into a competition that just is not suited for what they create.

2, Submit the best representation of the actual art

What does this mean? Every month we receive entries whereby the artist has taken a picture of their art with a “point and shoot” camera. The art was not level, the camera is not perpendicular to the art, the image is under/over exposed, the background is showing, the picture frame is in the image, there are hot spots on the art and pictures are taken with reflections in the frame. It may be obvious that the art has the potential to be good, or even exceptional, but we really cannot tell based on what was submitted.

The artist should either learn to take the images the right way (and there is a ton of information on the internet how to do this), hire a professional to do this or take their art and have a professional scan the art. I would learn how to do this the right way as the last two suggestions are very expensive.

3. Follow the organizations rules, event and prospectus instructions completely

This means that in order to have your application and submissions handled and administered properly, read the application thoroughly and follow their instructions. It also, means that the application should be filled out entirely, with the correct amount of images and the image files labeled properly, according to the organizations specifications.

In many instances, files are not labeled at all. This may set the artist up for not getting their art viewed at all, as there is then the possibility that the files could get lost. For instance, for our monthly competitions we want the files labeled in the following manner: Artist Last Name, Entry Number, Competition Name, and Title of the art. It would look like this: Smith_1_Abstract_Title.jpg. This would allow us, at any time to locate and identify this entry. This is very important to an organization. This procedure is a simple right click on the image file and a “rename” like any other document. Take the time to do this whenever you enter an art competition.

Learn how to resize your image files according to the instructions provided for that competition. Besides an expensive program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, there are two other free programs Pixlr and Gimp that are more than adequate for this purpose. Just take a few copies of images that are not important to you and begin to experiment on how these programs work. The easier of the two programs is the Pixlr program. (See #5 below as it Relates to This Subject)

4. Try to submit and present art that relates

By this we mean that the art that you are entering should show a complete grasp and mastery with that particular media. As an artist, you may work within several different styles and media. Stay with one media for your entries as this is demonstrating to the judge that you do have a cohesive body of work. Your show’s entries should also relate in terms of media, color and style, all within the scope or the theme of that particular competition.

5. Choose the order of the images submitted carefully

Initially, competition judges and juries will view your images (projected together) from left to right and top to bottom. However, after this initial view they will come back to that group of images from bottom to top and from right to left (the opposite direction). This is where you want to have your strongest and best work, at bottom or the end of the group of images submitted (as this is where you want to draw the judges attention). This is also why you want to learn and master the labeling your image files properly, because you then control the order of the files, rather than by some digital random basis. (See #3 above as it Relates to This Subject)

If you are serious about being a “serious” artist, follow these tips and suggestions. After the art show opens, always try to view the art that got accepted into that show and then be as objective as possible with yourself (or have an knowledgeable art friend assist you) as to the possible reasons why your work was not accepted. It may not have been the quality of your art, but it may have been one of the other reasons, as stated above. Work on these tips and incorporate them into future submissions and your chances will go up dramatically for being accepted into your next juried art competition.

John R. Math, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery

Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery conducts monthly themed art competitions and art exhibitions for new and emerging artists on a worldwide basis.

By Carolyn Edlund

Today I leave for a week’s vacation, away from computers, email and social media.

This is my creative rejuvenation.

While I’m away, I’m leaving you some links to past articles and interviews on Artsy Shark.

These are about inspiration, overcoming rejection and accepting yourself as an artist.

. . . for your creative rejuvenation!

Break Free From Worry/Interview with Karol Ward

Helping Artists Find Balance/Interview with Max Shapey

Explode the Myths and Build Your Art Muscle/Guest post by Aletta DeWal

How to Move Through Rejection/Interview with Cynthia Morris

Artists, Sensitivity and Confidence/Interview with Douglas Eby

You’ll Never Make a Living as an Artist/Carolyn Edlund

How Being an Outsider Can Make You a Better Artist/Interview with David Couper

Am I an Artist?/Guest post by Judith Zausner

Your Creative Flow/Interview with Tory Hughes