I had the opportunity to catch up on some business reading today and good thing! I read an interesting article by a successful online blogger, Daniel Scocco and I know you will want to hear about it. You ask, “what could I possibly learn from an online blogger?”—A lot!

As art marketers we can learn a lot from the “stars” of the bloggersphere. Experts like Daniel, have been exploring how to generate top results with Google, with the ultimate goal of reaching that precious Page One on the search directories. They know that shoppers will visit page one in the Google search directory, and (often) never get past page two.

Daniel’s article about “building today, profiting tomorrow”, drives home the need to get your website, or art blog built and online as soon as possible. He reminds us that Google can recognize the age of a website, and that Google will give priority listing to older websites becasue it sees them as being a greater authority in their niche.

Artist websites are niche sites. Niche websites rely on search engine results and are very dependent on pleasing Google. Here’s what I mean:

You might paint or photograph a specific body of work or genre, such a vineyards. In order for art buyers to find your work they will type in the word “wine art” into their search criteria. In order for this potential art buyer to find your site, you will need to be on page one in order to have your website seen.

In the search “wine paintings” there were 4,580,000 matches. Raked in the top 10 (at the top of page 2) are Canadian artists, Leanne Laine and Linda Paul. Usually these ladies are on page one, but today they are out ranked by 3 main competitors (art.com/artistrising.com—big multinational poster dealer, Thomas Arvid—wildly famous wine art painter, and the highly popular “dailypainters” blog. Elimate these 3 biggies and Leanne and Linda’s site would be likely be top one and two on Google, out of over 4 million!!!! WOW!

Over a year ago, I asked Linda Paul and spoke with Leanne’s husband Stephen (who has been responsible for marketing her work online since 2003) about how they achieved such high rankings. Both emphasized that they have had their websites up and running for almost a decade and that they dedicate a lot of time to optimizing their sites for search engines, including regular blog entries and product updates.

Both of these artists are working a full-time career and profiting from their art online. Hundreds of international art buyers shopping for “wine art” online find them first on the Google list and make purchases or place commissions.

As little as ten years ago, there were no blogs and artist websites were expensive to create ad host. These two artists made the leap into the online sales realm at this time and are reaping the profits today. To add more credibility to their ranking “due to age”, neither of these artists used the words “wine art” in their url (back then people didn’t know how valuable that would be, so they used their own names).

So that’s my big point for today, build your artist website/blog today and profit tomorrow. Because age matters so much with Google, your longterm art business success will be dramatically affected by what you do today—you just can’t afford to wait!

Get started building your Google ranking, build your weblog this week by completing these four easy steps:

1. Register a url

2. Buy a website hosting package

3. Install Wordpress and find a free template.

4. Start your weblog right away by making your first post, with an image f your art.

If you’d rather keep painting or making photographs, hire a web designer or ask a friend to do this important job for you.

Ten years from now there will be hundreds of millions of artist websites, stake out your place now, just like the pioneers did ten years ago.

Related Posts:

Flickr is the webs most powerful tool for photo sharing. But for artists Flickr is so much more.

Flickr makes image cataloguing easy and provides a unique way of marketing artwork to a massive audience—all for FREE!

In this post, I’m going to share my research about Flickr and explain why you should add Flickr to your art marketing arsenal.

Why Artists Should Be Using Flickr

1. Easily Catalogue and Store Your Images at Flickr

Since it’s inception in 2004, painters and photo-based fine artists have taken advantage of uploading, cataloging and sharing their images at Flickr. Why? Because it is easy, free and fun.

• A Flickr gallery can be set up in as little as 10 minutes. A free membership gets you up to 100MB worth of photos per month, or two 90 second videos (think demos, studio tours…). This is more than enough to build a smart gallery of artwork.

• A Pro Flickr account can be purchased for $24.95USD. This gets you unlimited uploads (from anywhere) making it a great back-up to your archives. Once you upload your images you can sort your artworks by sets and galleries; tag them with keywords/dates/locations and your cataloging is complete. This price betters almost any other alternative for image hosting or online gallery.

* TIP: If you are uploading high res images (anything over 2 MB can be easily reproduced without your permission), be sure to limit your download preferences accordingly or embed a copyright watermark.

2. Use Flickr to Reach Potential Art Buyers

In 2009, Flickr boasted that its inventory contained over 4 billion images, that’s over 1 billion per year! It’s no wonder that thousands of visitors (Flickr members) take pleasure in touring the Flickr image bank. They select “favorites” and curate (by building/collecting) Flickr “theme galleries”. They do this by searching keywords, colour, locations, themes and so forth.

These image-enthusiasts can share their favourites and galleries with friends, join Flickr groups, add their galleries to Groups of galleries. Flickr has a community of people, who love to look at the world through imagery!

As a visual artist, this means your artwork could end up in hundreds of personal galleries and become favourites to thousands of people worldwide. This kind of popularity could easily lead to commissions and can point potential buyers to your website.

3. Market Your Art with Flickr

It’s Social Media Friendly

I love that Flickr is supported by Wordpress. We feed our Flickr gallery right into the Fidelis Collection, this keeps things fresh and new images can be included daily. Same applies to Facebook, making our Flickr galleries available to all our friends, colleagues, and Fans. Using Flickr to cross-market between all our social media platforms is a real asset.

Keywording and Tagging is a Snap

Flickr was designed to organize images by way of “tags”. To fully utilize Flickr upload your artwork images, tag them with keywords or phrases, descriptive copy, pricing and be sure to geo-tag them to a specific location (if applicable).

Protect and Promote Your Imagery

Flickr encourages you to specify your copyright designation, such as “All Rights Reserved”. Other options include entering your images into the Creative Commons (CC), which allows for limited, restricted use of your art/images. Read the fine print on the CC to be sure you are making the correct designation. If your photography includes models or people, without model releases use “All Rights Reserved”. This will keep your art/photograph from being used without your knowledge or without compensation.

4. Other Great Ways Artists Can Use Flickr

• Research other artists and artworks. Search by themes, colour, genre or location.

• Add a bio page to your Flickr Gallery, include links to your website, dealer and pricing.

• Join a Flickr art community. Build relationships with other artists in your home town or internationally.

• Upload videos of you “at work” in your studio, exhibition, or on location working.

• Use the Flickr iphone app to upload your photographic images from anywhere. Because sometimes the best images come from the only camera you have with you—your phone.

Modern artist websites, blogs and image libraries MUST offer the ability to have their artwork interact with their audience in order to be successful. Flickr offers this and so much more for professional artists. Take the Flickr Tour and tell me what you think?

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Follow the Fidelis Art Collections on Flickr!

Read this related post:

“My Favourite Things About Flickr” from www.digital-photography-school.com. Author, Jennifer Jacobs makes some other great points about why Flickr is a great choice for photographers.

Explore Fidelis by visiting the Studio, read recent posts at the Community Blog or browse our Art Collections and see what’s new for your walls or what other artists are creating.

Fidelis Printmaking Studio

Learn about how we’re working with artists to create fine art reproductions using our archival inkjet process. Explore how technology can help you create original artworks or editions of your painted or photo-based works. Read about colour calibration, new media, and innovative finishing and mounting options.

You’ll also find our easy-to-use tools for project estimating and Photoshop techniques you can apply to your digital images to achieve amazing results.

Fidelis Art Community

Chalk full of useful articles for “Art Marketers”—all aimed to help you with promoting, exhibiting, selling and profiting from your art. Comment on posts, join the Art Community and share your ideas and exhibition news with our readers and the international art community.

Browse and Shop Fidelis Art Collections

Here you’ll discover a library of self-published art by local and international artists, together with our Fidelis Art Collections featuring original, limited edition and reproduction artworks from established professional and emerging artists.

I’ve been working up several bigger articles that I know you’ll find interesting. Next week, I’m going to share with you my thoughts about marketing art using Flickr and how artists can benefit from the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” theory of creating passive income. I’m also building an art blog for a friend and have discovered some great resources for free blog templates—perfect for artists and photographers— that I know will inspire you to build your blog!

And a reminder, if you have an up-incoming exhibition or art show, please let us know so that we can promote it on our Fidelis Art Community page. Your feedback, comments and contributions are always welcome!

Wishing you a fabulous weekend!

Karen

Discovering that you have written-over an archived file or learning that the storage media has corrupted your back-up, will not only make you sick to your stomach (and bring few tears to your eyes), it could mean serious financial losses to your art business.

In this post we’re going to talk about how you can be more technically responsible for your digital image files and share how we archive our digital data at Fidelis Art Prints. We’ll also point you to two great articles that talk about image archiving and how to choose the right storage media.

Working with a Service Provider

High resolution scanning often requires sending your artwork to a service provider with the image-capture set-up to produce high quality (and huge, 300MB+) digital files. Some providers offer to keep your files (which makes sense for ordering in the future) but it is good practice to ask for a copy of your file. Provide your service provider with a shuttle-drive or ask for CD/DVD. Then re-save the file in at least two places (one in your studio and one off-site) for the long term.

* TIP: I have heard stories about service bureaus who will not give you your digital file—this is outrageous! If you are working with a new service provider, ask before you place your scan order about their policy. If they will not give you a copy of your scan, take your work elsewhere.

Commercial insurance for “loss of digital data” is crazy expensive, meaning most commercial labs, service bureaus and businesses do not have insurance for your files. We suggest to our clients that they keep a copy of their digital file at home or in their safety deposit box. Although, our Liability Policy releases us of legal responsibility to archive our client files, we manually back up to two separate external hard drives on-site (for redundancy purposes) and one hard drive off-site for key client projects. We do this because some projects take several months to complete and for client ordering convenience. On several occasions we have “saved-the-day” by having a copy of a client file, when they have found their digital archive damaged, lost or stolen.

External Hard Drives

We use external drives for our digital back up—recommending a external LaCie HD over other less expensive drives like Western Digital or Iomega. No matter what brand name you choose, make sure that the HD has an ON/OFF switch. If not, it will stay on 24/7/365 and be a risk of burning out. If you have one that doesn’t turn off, always unmount it then unplug it after every back-up. This is good practice if your home or computer is not protected from power surges.

More about Image Archiving and Backing up Your Files

Here is a great post by Natalie Johnson at www.digital-photography-school.com about backing up your digital data and saving your files.

Backing Up and Saving Your Images

I can’t stress enough about the importance of backing up your digital art files. If you have any questions about this topic please call our studio or email our technical staff today—don’t put it off. Help other readers by asking your question in the comments, we promise to get it answered right away.

Related Posts:

Why You Should Invest in High Quality Scans of Your Original Art

The Not-So-Traditional Canvas: See How Top Artists Are Making Money Selling Canvas Editions

How to Find an Art Publisher

Marketing Your Art Collection in Hard Times

Thanks for reading “Digital back up: How to choose the right back up for your digital art files”. If you enjoyed this post be sure to subscribe to future posts by using our RSS feed to Email!

When someone sees or buys your artwork, it’s important they tell their friends, share how excited they are about your artwork and in turn tell another art enthusiast about you, who tells another potential art buyer about you, etc. etc. (you get the picture). Marketing Strategist, David Meerman Scott calls this “buzz” about your art, “Marketing Rave”.

This post is about getting buzz for your art. We’re going to discuss what every artist needs to know about web-style press releases (PR’s).

I’m going to share with you how to create “Rave” using a method discussed in David Meerman Scott’s great free ebook called “The New Rules of PR” (David is also the author of the best seller, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR“). David’s strategy on using press releases to create marketing “Rave” is well worth adopting for your art business—and it’s not that difficult.

Why do artists need press releases? PR’s will help you:

• Find potential new customers

• Build a following for your art

• Generate sales of your art

How do “The New Rules of PR” work?

The “New Rules of PR” state that we need to stop doing press releases the old way (which was to wait for an exciting piece of news, spend endless hours writing a provocative news release, send our release to the media and “hope” they pick it up (in other words publish it).

The ebook “The New Rules of PR” explains how you can control the news cycle by self-publishing, web-style press releases.

Here’s how it’s done.

1. Write a news story about your art business. Keep your news releases regular, 1-2 per month. Don’t wait for the big story, write about everything you are doing:

• When you finish a new painting Write a press release.

• Exhibiting at a new venue Write a press release.

• Sell an artwork to a high profile corporation Write a press release.

• Donate a piece of artwork Write a press release.

• Trips and travel associated to your art business Write a press release.

2. Focus on keywords and phrases that your readers might use for searching art online. Be sure to include these in your content. Use images of your art (1-3) and try to create content that is entertaining and informative.

3. Choose a news wire service that works for you and your product. This service can be a pay per service or you can purchase a yearly subscription. Here are four new wire services, compare and find one that fits your need.

Businesswire.com

PRNewswire.com (free for non-profits)

PRWeb.com

Marketwire.com

4. Publish your press release on your website and blog. Provide a predominant place for them to be archived. Keep them on your site for as long as they are relevant—in some cases years. Art buyers like to see a history or your successes.

5. Create an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed from your Press Release section. This will allow readers to be informed when you post a future releases.

6. Add Links in your press release. Your press release is an electronic document, which will allow you to add hot hyperlinks that will push readers to your website. Customize landing pages with announcements, special invitations to shows, and links to other sites where you might be exhibiting your work online for purchase. This can be done easily in Word, look under the “Insert” pull down menu for  “Hyperlink”.  Learn more about hyperlinks.

Note: David Meerman Scott suggests that inbound and outbound links from your press release to your website (or visa versa), will help increase the page ranking of your site with Google. This is a good thing.

Still need more convincing…..

6 More Reasons to Publish Press Releases

1. Use press releases to reach/speak with art buyers directly.

2. Use press releases to reach millions of internet users looking for art.

3. Use links in a press release to drive buyers to your gallery, dealer or your online store.

4. Press releases are easy to create

5. The publishing process is (almost) free

6. A press release will bring potential customers to your website or artist’s blog.

This new news cycle could be the lift your art business needs to generate more traffic to your website and art blog. I encourage you to read “The New Rules of PR” by David Meerman Scott for his more detailed approach. Then get started creating and self-publishing your press releases.

Start building world-wide “Rave” about your art and let us know how this information may have changed your art business.

Last year we were asked more than a dozen times to donate artwork for a good cause. Are the number of “asks” getting greater every year?

I’ve been involved with various art fundraisers since the early 90’s and learned that when smartly executed, good money can be raised by auctioning quality art. The thing is, art auctions have become so successfully popular that artists are being bombarded with requests to donate.

What will you say this year when you are asked to donate your art for a good cause?

My short answer—yes. Why. . . because it’s a good cause, but mostly because it’s good business. In this post, learn how donating your art to fundraising auctions provides great marketing opportunities.

I’m of the position that artist’s should always donate.

If donating an original painting is not possible for you (because you have be working with a small inventory) consider donating editions such as a giclée or a valuable Artist’s Proof from your limited edition.

I hear some artists don’t like that art auctions may attract new collectors looking for deals. Let’s explore that . . . I’m thinking that’s not such a bad thing. Building “collectors” of your art has to start somewhere. When I was in my 30’s, my friends shopped for their first art pieces at art fundraisers. We had great taste in art, but we were young professionals on a limited budget. Today, these friends (now established at their six figure jobs) are avid collectors of high priced, quality art. Hook young collectors and they’ll follow you their whole art-buying life.

I have also attended auctions where the art sold over the suggested market price. This is always great for the artist and can create a real buzz around your work!

Publicity is hard to come by. Take advantage of every opportunity to exhibit and talk about your art.

I’m not suggesting that you donate to every event. I am recommending that you make donating to art auctions part of your marketing plan.

Donate art wisely by following these simple steps:

1. Do your research about each cause and where the money is going.

2. Budget to donate to 2-3 events a year.

3. Rotate between arts groups, causes, non-profits and geographic regions—spread your art around for maximum exposure.

Tip: Donate your best work. Some artists choose to donate artwork they can’t sell, “something laying around collecting dust”. Don’t make this mistake.You WILL benefit from exhibiting your best work, because it will attract the most attention. And size matters—bigger is better, provided the size doesn’t push the price too high.

7 Smart Business Tips for Donating Your Art

1/ Ask who will be the likely attendees? Choose a piece that suits and that can be priced according to the demographic.

2/ Make sure your name is added to the promotional material as a sponsor (if possible), including a link to your website.

3/ Be sure to attend the event, ask if you can volunteer.

4/ Set a minimum price for your artwork. This will keep your dealer and your other collectors happy.

5/ Publicize your involvement on your blog, Facebook page and website.

6/ Ask your publisher and framer to help you out with your artwork costs

7/ Invite someone you know would like to buy your art, but can’t afford your gallery prices—bring your buyer!

If you are involved in planning an art auction you might like to read my post 4 Profitable Fundrasing Ideas Using Art. The ideas shared in this post are built from events I have been involved with that have proved profitable.

What will say next time you are asked to donate your art??

Share with our readers your option about donating your art for fundraising, by commenting below!

Let’s face it, meeting people in person is still the best form of marketing. For artist’s it’s the perfect opportunity to share your art business and get someone excited about making an appointment for a showing, getting linked to your blog or direct them to your website. Don’t get caught scribbling your contact information on a napkin! Show your prospective clients and customers that you are “all about art”. Take the opportunity to be creative and leave them with an impression they can’t forget.

If you are like me, most business cards I collect end up in my desk drawer (never to be seen again). Prevent this from happening to your business card by creating a creative and clever card that will get left in plain sight (posted to a fridge or tacked to the wall—best case scenerio); create something that will remind your prospective customer of you.

Here are 10 creative business card ideas for fine artists, that are sure to catch their attention

Add some sparkle and texture to your business cards. Embellish your cards with paint, fabric, metal or trinket. This personalized touch will cost your some manual labour, but the results are amazing and will make every card “an original”.

Artist, Claire Wellesley-Smith’s card holds 4 ingredients to good business card design: Simple, Modern, Tasteful and Cost Effective. Deliver your business message with one or two colours of ink, neatly spaced type and clear contact information.

Shape and size will help your card stand out in the pile. Once considered a “European size”, we’re seeing this narrow profile more often because of its modern, sleek look. The designer of the square card (next below) calls it a “cocktail size”—maybe because it looks like a mini drink coaster? I like it either way and the metallic ink, spot varnish on black is fantastic, if you have the budget.

Add continuity to your brand by using your signature (or mark) on your business card. Many artworks are recognized by the artists signature. If you have a unique “mark” this is the perfect opportunity to build your brand. The second photo shows the artist’s own Chinese mark, seen as a die-cut. Expensive, but it packs a punch.

Show off a small artwork, create a card without a computer. Easily done with pen and ink, create an artwork including the text, at scale (2×3 ratio for the average size card) and have it scanned by your printer into a vector graphic.

Tip: If you are creating your artwork proportionally larger, be sure to test the reduction of your text to be sure it is readable once reduced. This technique also works best for line art (not as well for art with greys), use a single colour for economy. If you have an artwork that is multi-colour, ask for a high-res scan at 300dpi and budget the extra costs for printing full colour or shop for a deal with an online printer.

The double-duty business card. Do you like the idea of having your business card and portfolio with you all the time, everywhere you go? Print your best images on the reverse sides of your business cards. The idea of printing several different business cards at one time use to be very expensive, but no so today. Try printing some Moo-mini’s Moo.com. Moo mini’s are a narrower profile (than what you see below), but equally effective. Priced at 100 cards for $19.99 it’s a smoke’in-hot deal.

Classic White is always a good choice. Show your professionalism by creating a card with stylized lettering on white. Clean and classic white cards are always well received. Choose a beautiful heavy weight paper stock (eg. 160lb card stock) for the added touch.

And finally carry your business cards with you everywhere! Your business card is your easiest form of marketing. Be sure your family and friends have a good supply too. Give them out freely to everyone who expresses an interest in your work.

Keep them free from dog-earing by storing them in a nice case or envelope in your bag. Make sure you don’t leave home without—a nifty keyring holder is this artists great idea!

There are no hard-fast rules when describing your digital prints and reproductions. However, the jury is still out on whether or not the high-end art buyers & collectors will accept trade names, like “giclée” for inkjet art prints. Choose carefully how you define and describe your art print—and match your marketing accordingly.

In this post I’ll share with you how Fidelis tackles the “is it a giclée?” name-game and how we have decided to describe our Collection artworks. Also included are some samples of how other artists are describing their art printed using the archival inkjet process.

Backgrounder:

Inkjet printing machines were first used for press proofing in the off-set printing industry (brochures, magazines, flyers, etc). These early inkjet prints were not archival because they were only meant to last a few days.

Due to their fine ink streams and continuous-tones, art-printing pioneers decided that inkjet printers (known at the time as the “Iris”) would be great for printing (reproducing) artworks in limited quantities. As digital technology improved so did the quality of print that came from an inkjet printer.

How great for artists—a new way to make art, create reproductions, produce artworks with unique effects and results, tap into unlimited passive income was now available! This was an exciting time for the fine art business—a new method for printing art was born and it would change the way art would be printed in the future.

However, with this new printmaking technique the art community was faced with a need to “title the process”. They found their answer with the originators of the technology (see below) and the term giclée was coined.

What is a giclée? (Sourced from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Giclée (pronounced “zhee-clay” from French) is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word “giclée” is derived from the French language word “le gicleur” meaning “nozzle”, or more specifically “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray”. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial “Iris proofs” from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

In the early 90’s, art groups, curators and dealers didn’t think the trade name giclée would stick. Some groups had concerns about the integrity of each reproduction, especially the higher priced artworks that were deemed original prints (in the case of photographs) and small numbers of limited editions. I remember hearing the words “how could they charge that much for an inkjet print?”—coming from a local art professional.

I believe that the negative reception wasn’t directed at the word “giclée”, but at the whole process of digitally created artworks. This technology revolutionized fine art printing overnight and the industry just wasn’t prepared, they needed a term that would signify that these prints were archival, an original or a reproduction.

Some concern was justified. Early ink sets proved to be less than archival, third party papers and generic ink sets were appearing out of everywhere; and every shop and artist that owned an inkjet printer claimed they could print fine art. This was a new market and everyone from HP, Kodak, Epson and Canon wanted their share of printer sales and the $$$$ consumables—it was exciting and scary at the same time.

Coming from the photo lab business (with a large clientele of fine artists) we experienced this all first hand. We jumped in! We had technology hurdles and learned quickly that becoming a respected printmaker of fine art was no easy task—in fact we continue to work everyday at building our brand, perfecting our craft and ensuring the archival qualities of the artworks we create for our clients.

Almost 20 years later . . . .

The professional art selling and buying community has warmed to digitally created artworks. Galleries specializing in fine art photography seem to have a better grasp on the various technologies given 90% of all photographers print digitally. And traditional galleries are catching up, out of the necessity to offer their customers more economical options during tough economic times.

The term giclée is still used to differentiate a digital inkjet print from other traditional prints (c-prints, lithographs, serigraphs, etc.) however, in my observation the term is more commonly used to describe art reproductions. (Not to be confused with a poster print. A giclée reproduction is described as a high quality print that is a generation away from the original and created without artist involvement in the printmaking process.)

At Fidelis, we reserve the term giclée for our décor art editions developed for the retail sector and usually priced under $500. Buyers of decor art have become familiar with this term and use it when searching online. This made using the term a necessity from a marketing stand-point.

Some artists/art sellers choose to give their prints their own term, staying away from using “digital” or “giclée” altogether. The Ansel Adams.com website describes their artworks as “Archival Replica”, noting each Archival Replica is “made using the very latest digital technologies, that they are individually produced and inspected and matched to a master proof.”

When you are selling your art you should disclose how your artwork was created/printed, the archival properties of your ink and media and how many are in the edition.

If you are calling your art an “original print”, indicate how you where involved with the process, if it was hand-embellished, the more detail that places YOU closer to the printmaking process, the better your buyer will appreciate and understand your artwork.

Here are some of the shorter terms we’ve see artists use to describe their archival inkjet prints. The logic here is to describe “what makes up the print, the archival ingredients”. These short terms are also used on the title cards next to the artworks on display, sometimes noting that a longer explanation is available on request.

“pigment on archival paper (or canvas)”

“archival inkjet”

“digital archival print”

I’d like to note, that this article is formed from my opinions about the term giclée and the industry. While I always do my best to provide you with firm answers to questions, experts in the fine art community (curators of museums and art galleries) have still not agreed to an “official” term for archival inkjet art print or digital prints. This may take another 20 years to clarify.

I’ll leave you with these 5 tips for describing your digital art:

1. Whatever you decide to call or label your art, always tell the truth.

2. Do your research. Learn as much about your printmaking technology as possible.

3. Choose a reputable printmaker or print your art yourself using archival inks and media.

4. Choose a term that your market will understand. If there isn’t a term out there, create your own term and educate your audience using your marketing channels.

5. Be able to communicate your printmaking process effectively to your dealer and buyers. The more they understand, the more likely they will make a purchase.

And finally (this really isn’t a tip), your art is not worth more or less because it was printed digitally. Price your pieces fairly and always act with integrity in your business dealings. Ultimately, your art will sell because someone loves it—not how it was printed.

Share with our other readers:

“What do you call your digital art print/reproduction?”

“Is the term giclée good or bad for the art industry?”

Let us know by commenting.

If you are in the middle of planning your show outdoors, here’s a list of tips I’ve collected from seasoned veterans on how they survived “untimely” shifts in weather from Mother Nature.

For weather specifically, here are some ways that you can prepare:

1. Arrive early to get a parking spot as close to your tent (booth location) as possible.

2. Borrow or rent a moving dolly to get your items to and from your vehicle.

3. Buy a commercial canopy that is meant for repeated use over a long period of time. Commercial canopies are more expensive, but far more durable, and have more wind and water protection. Some have waterproofing, and all have replaceable parts. We found a self-expanding canopy at Costco for $200 CAD. It takes two people to expand, but it was very fast and withstood a lot of wind.

4. Carry an extra tarp or two for a quick fix to cover merchandise, fixtures, or even the tent in a bad weather situation. For the best prices and variety of colours on tarps, shop wholesalers, surplus and liquidation retailers.

5. Keep lots of water and a cooler on hand for cold drinks, and a chilled washcloth or towel for hot, humid days. Use a roll-away cooler, and stock plenty for you and your guests.

6. Use bungee cords and zip ties to secure your tent or other items to your tent.

7. Make sure to stake your tent to the ground if you are on soft ground or it is windy. Buy or make four weights for the tent legs, and bungee cord them in place. This will help your tent from sailing off in a high wind. Sand bags can be made on the cheap. We have special weight bags for our studio tripods. They are great for indoors and outdoors.

8. Keep a plastic Rubbermaid(s) for items that cannot get wet or dirty. Include a container big enough to protect your art if possible. Indoor or outdoor, you can never have too many oversize bags, always stock a full box of XL garbage bags for packaging and protecting.

9. Have a plan of action for when the bad weather hits, because it will. Know who does what.

10. Bring extra clothes or layer your clothes (including shoes) for changes in temperature and comfort.

Summer and (for those of you in milder climates) fall are great times to display and sell your art outdoors. Don’t be shy to include demonstrations or offer a short workshop in your booth. Art enthusiasts are everywhere, and would prefer to be wandering outside over hiding inside this summer.

Being a from Canada, I am always happy to promote another Canadian blog. Please visit the Snapshot Travel Blog to learn more about the Port Credit Outdoor Art Show in Ontario, Canada (shown in this posts photo).

If you have any tips about exhibiting art outdoors, we’d love to hear them. Please share them with our other readers by commenting. Thanks!

K.

For more art exhibition tips get your free copy of the “Artist’s Exhibition Guide”. Click HERE and  join our Fidelis Art Community.