How to Talk About and Sell Your Art

 

Art is such a personal experience for many. Many artists, myself included, sometime find it difficult to talk about and explain the meanings and themes within their artworks. But, as artists we have to speak about our art in order to sell and promote them. Art buyers generally will not buy anything they do not understand.

 

So, in order to market and sell our artworks, we have to explain them in the best way we know how.

How does an artist explain to others what their art is all about? We will discuss how to do this effectively, thus increasing your chances of a successful sell.

 

How to Effectively Talk About Art

 

• Write down what your art is about

  
  In order to articulate what to explain to others, artists should first write about it. Include your processes while creating, influences, techniques, primary themes, your mediums, and whatever else you may think of that pertains to your art. Getting this all on paper will help you focus on what points you want to emphasize for presenting art to others.
  

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About Us

 

My name is Graham Matthews and I am the owner of Artpromotivate. I am 42, recently married, with 2 step kids.

Art has been a passion of mine all my life. I have created art in some form for as long as I can remember.  

In 1996 I decided to apply for art school. I spent 4 years at the Fine Arts division of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. I learned a lot there, both about art techniques and developing my personal creativity.

It was what I didn’t learn that now astounds me. I came out of art school with little knowledge of the gallery system. I knew little to nothing about art promotion. So, I had to learn all these things on my own.

 

 

 

But, I had a student loan to pay, and mounting bills. I have have had to work at several non-art related jobs in order to support myself and pay off my loans. I worked as a logger, boat fibreglassing, fish plant worker, and various labour jobs over the years. Some of these left me very little time, if any, to create. Painting is actually the last thing on my mind after a long day of labour work. I just want to rest. But, I have always found time to create, whether it be in my sketchbooks, or on the weekends.

Currently (for the past 7 years), I have a seasonal job in a local fish plant. The plant is only open during the summer months (April – October), allowing me plenty of time to produce and promote art in the winter. Although I am grateful for this, my dream is to be a full time, self-supporting artist.

To that end, I have been taking a very active role in the local and online art community. I am using all the methods I have learned to promote my own art, and sharing them with you at Artpromotivate.

The articles are about things I have learned over the years, through experience.

Feel free to leave comments, and if you do not want to miss any updates please subscribe.

If you need help with anything at all, I will be very happy to help.

Thank-you!

Graham Matthews

 

You may find me at these online web profiles:

Twitter 
Google+
Facebook 
Linkedin 
Pinterest
Fine Art America
Graham Matthews Art

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Featured Artist - Davide Barbanera

 

Our first artist spot-lite features a visual artist  from Italy, Davide Barbanera. It has been a pleasure to view Davide’s artworks, and to learn about what inspires him.

Please read on to hear his story and see some of his amazing creations.

 

Davide Barbanera - Abstract and Geometric Minimalism

 

Please tell our art-blog visitors a little about yourself

I love always to synthetize my story with this Phrase by Aristotle: " To exercise freely one's own talent: here the happiness "

 

 

 

What was your first contact with art as a child?

My first experience on art is when I was Child
in the school playing with some pastels

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Be a Part of the Artist Spotlight at Artpromotivate!

 

Would you like your art featured at ArtProMotivate?

This page is for artists to submit their information for the Artist Spotlite.

If you would like to be a featured in this section, please review the following details and guidelines and answer the artist interview questions fully.

Your Art Featured at ArtProMotivate!

 

• Each artist spotlite will feature a different inspiring artist. Both established artists, and interesting upcoming emerging artists will be featured. We know how difficult it can be for some artists to get their artworks noticed, so the emphasis will be on these.
  
  
• Get insights into what your fellow artists are up to with their art. Each artist will have to fill out a form and submit it to us. If you take the time and effort to fill out the form FULLY, more than likely you will be selected for an artist spotlight at some point.
  
  We will feature all submissions received that meet up to our simple standards below! 

 

Guidelines for Visual Artist Spotlight

• Try to answer all the questions if you can. The questions are laid out in typical artist artist interview format.
  
  
• Your answers along with the images you send will be featured in an article on this blog.
  
  
• You will receive a free permanent link to the site you mention in the “website box”.
  
  
• If artists include their Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ links, these will also be included.
  
  
• Please answer all interview questions in your OWN WORDS. We will not be publishing material that is copy and pasted or appears on another website!
  
  
• Try to answer all questions in at least two or three sentences… It will increase your chances of being accepted!
  
• PLEASE BE PATIENT! If you would like to know the status of your submission, please contact me at gmatthews9 @ gmail.com (without the spaces) 
  

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10 Emerging Artists Resolutions 2012

 

What resolutions for New Years will you be making for 2012? For most, resolutions are broken within a few hours. 

There are many resolutions which emerging artists can make.

Some of the ones I have listed below can be beneficial to both emerging and established artists.

 

So, read through the list below, pick one for now, and dedicate yourself to keeping it.

Then, bookmark this page and return here when the time is right - to make another resolution for your art.

 

10 Artist New Years Resolutions for 2012

 

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How to Protect Your Art From Online Theft

 

Yesterday I told you all about my experience finding out my art was stolen, and placed onto other websites, without any credit to me.

I went through a step by step tutorial and tips on how to use Google Search  to look for other places where your art is posted online.

 

You may go here to find this useful tutorial:

How to Check if Your Art is Copied or Stolen With Google Image Search

 

 

Well, after that, I decided to go through some measures to help protect my art. These are some things you can do to deter people from stealing your artworks.

 

7 Useful Methods to Stop Copy Theft of Art

 

Before I begin, I should say that there are no ways that I know of that will absolutely protect you from people taking your art.

Online thieves always find tricks to by-pass the following methods. But, after using some of these techniques, you can certainly feel much safer about promoting and marketing art online, and feel confident that most likely your art will not be taken.

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How to Check if Your Art is Copied or Stolen Online With Google Image Search

 

As most online artists may realize, uploading images of artworks carries a real risk.

They can be easily copied or stolen if artists do not do some anti-theft measures.

I recently found out I had some images of my painting Entwined stolen, without any credit whatsoever to me.

 

I will show you how I did it, and give some simple tips on how you can protect your art from online art theft right now.

 

 

 

Did you know Google image search has the capability of scanning your images, just like a finger-print reader? It scans the actual image and finds any identical copies throughout the internet.

Using this technology, artists can use an image of their artwork to determine if one identical to it appears on other websites.

 

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Reciprocal Link Exchange with This Art Promotion Blog?

 

Would you like a reciprocal link exchange with ArtProMotivate  - a blog about art promotion and helping artists from everywhere promote their artworks online and offline.

The Advantages of a Reciprocal Link Exchange

Link-exchanges builds backlinks to your art website or blog. The more backlinks, the better, since your site will be found more by art buyers, other artists, and people interested in art.

 

When a link exchange is performed, people may also visit your artist website from another. This allows you to reach a much wider audience for your art, and is highly recommended for online art promotion.

 

For example, say John Doe who had an art-blog named John Doe Art, contacted us and wanted to exchange links. He would place our link for ArtProMotivate on his site, and we would place his link for John Doe Art on ours. Then visitors to his blog may go to our art blog through his link, and vice versa. In this way, both will benefit.  

 

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Easy Facebook Fan-Pages Setup

 

Pages for Facebook is great way for artists to gain an online presence through a network of 500 million users, and beyond.

If you are an artist who wants to promote art online, or even just to display it, Facebook pages are a solid choice. Having an artist fan page will keep your art separate from your personal profile, since people can choose to “like” you without becoming a friend.

The Benefits of Facebook Fan-Pages for Artists

 

• It helps to bring more exposure for your art, getting it out there for more people to see.
  
  
• Having a Facebook page will make you appear more professional and established in the public eye.
  
  
• You can easily post updates on the wall. These may included gallery showings, new artworks, art awards, and anything else that you may want to let your followers about.
  
  
• The events feature can be used to create excitement and build-up for an art gallery show, or presentation of your artworks.
  
  
• Having a page is a good way of getting more people to your website or blog. Do this by having a link to your site on the fan-page, and having a link to your page on your site. A badge can be placed on your art site or blog, serving this purpose. Then, visitors to your site can “like” your page without even going there.
  
  
• “Insights” gives various reports and information about the visitors to your art page, and how they are interacting with it.  Knowing the types of people that are commenting and sharing will help to realize and focus on these certain groups, to promote your art.

 

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Facebook Timeline for Art Marketing

Facebook Timeline will be released for all Facebook members very soon. I’ve found that there are many dislikes for the new layout.

The changes are drastic! The whole layout is changed, along with the way people use it.

I personally like the changes, but they may not be for everyone. 
 

In regards to artists online, the most important thing they can have is a method of presenting their art to others… and if setup correctly, Facebook Timeline can help to serve that purpose!

 

I already discussed how artists can use Facebook pages to display and promote artworks, and build relationships with artists and buyers.

 

Go here if you are interested in learning more about Facebook Pages for art:

 

How to Setup Your Facebook Artist Fanpage

How to Create Welcome for Facebook Page

How to Get Likes for Facebook Pages

 

Promote Art With Facebook Timeline

 

Artworks in the Timeline Cover

The Timeline Cover can be changed to any image of your choosing. I chose one of my colorful paintings for mine, but may go back later and change it. If proficient with Photoshop, you can create something visually stunning.

There are a few places online where Timelines can be designed already. My favourite of these is Cover Canvas.

The main feature I like about Cover Canvas is that it allows me to combine a bunch of my artworks, in a layout of my own choosing, along with my name.

So designed properly, the cover can be a great introduction image to all the photographs of your drawings, paintings, etc. in your activity log… which I will talk about next.

 

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How to Setup Feedburner on an Artblog

 

In case you didn’t notice, I use Feedburner here for anyone who wants to subscribe. Feedburner makes it very easy for visitors to subscribe and stay up to date with this art blog. I find it helps tremendously in gathering readers, along with promoting my art online.

I will show you how to setup Feedburner on your own Blogger accounts, and explain some features you can use to gather more subscribers… with very little effort!

I use Feedburner for several reasons:

• I can keep track of my subscribers, seeing how many I have at a certain point in time.
  
• To make my feed available to virtually anyone, through services such as Newsgator and Bloglines.
  
• I set it so that it automatically pings a bunch of services, without any effort from myself whatsoever - every single time I create an art blog post.
  
• If I want to point my feed subscribers to a separate blog (in the event that I switch blogs), I can.
  
• There are several other perks to Feedburner which I use, and will explain to all of you below.
  

 

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How to Blog About Your Art

 

Last time I showed you all how to set up a blog for your art on Blogger.

If you are interested in this you can find it here…

How to Set Up a Blogger Blog for Art

 

For myself, blogging about art has been a very rewarding experience. Through it, I give my readers insights into my thought process when producing artworks, helping them easily understand the points I am trying to express. (Graham Matthews Art)

Below, I have seven ways you can use to create quality, attractive art blog posts. These are things that will help to engage your readers, make them interested in what you have to say, and entice them to come back and read more of your writings.

 

7 Ways to Create Captivating Artblog Posts

 

Ask yourself “Who is my audience?”

“Who am I trying to reach with my posts?” What you write about and how you present it will be different depending on if you are just writing for yourself, other artists, art buyers, or as a way of presenting your art to the world as a whole.

 

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How to Set up a Blogger Blog for Art

 

One can find many sites online to create free art blogs. Just doing a search on Google will yield several results. When choosing one, the best option is to go for what is most popular. The leaders of the pack seem to be Wordpress and Google owned Blogger. A great debate rages across some forums over which one is better and easier to setup for a beginner blogger.

 

 

As for myself, I prefer blogger for my art for several reasons. I will outline those in another article, but for now I will tell you that the main things I like about it is:

• flexibility
• the loads of options,
• and ease of use

When I first created my first blog a few years back, I was a complete newbie, but had no trouble diving right into the blogsphere. It just was so easy to setup, and with time I learned all the excellent features it had to offer.

I will show you how you can do that right now by giving a step by step tutorial on creating an artblog.

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How to Get Likes for Facebook Pages

Are you an artist who wants to create a Facebook page to promote art? Do you already have a page on Facebook, but are struggling to get fans and “likes”.

As many of you may already know, getting people to your profile or page to view artwork that you have created is not an easy task. There can be quite an amount of work involved if you do not know where to look.

I have here a few tactics I use to draw visitors to my Facebook art page, and some methods I use to entice them to “like'” the page.

 

Great Tips to Obtaining Likes for Facebook Pages

 

Share your page with your Facebook friends

Share your page with all your friends on Facebook. Also, send an email to contacts right from your Facebook artist page. This can be done when you first create the page, and will help to garnish a few likes right away.

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Artist Tips - Getting Organized Online With Notepad

If you are like me, your computer sometimes gets a little cluttered, and it’s sometimes hard to find things. There is a little simple program in Windows that can be very handy, and a real time saver. That program is NOTEPAD! It will help you organize your computer!

 

I use notepad very often for various things online, mainly as a means of saving things for later. Here are some uses of notepad that I use for getting organized to promote my art online.

 

Before you use notepad for the things I will be telling you, you have to know how to “copy” and “paste”. I’m sure most of you already know this, but just in case, I will explain it. In windows, after you have selected some text, you can right-click, and select “copy”. This saves the selection to the clipboard. Then, open your notepad and right-click again, selecting “paste”, and your text appears there.

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New Resource for Artists

ArtProMotivate – Art Promotion Art Motivation

Welcome to my new art-blog! I’ve been planning this blog for awhile now, finally writing my first official post today. As you can see, I already included a couple short posts linking to articles on my art-blog at Graham Matthews Art. I even started writing some posts about promoting art on Facebook and Google+ at that blog, in anticipation of setting up this one. I will be reposting some of those here soon, adding new insights.

 

I feel I have much to contribute to other artists trying to get seen on the net. When I first started online, for the most part I learned everything myself. There was just so much to learn. It was sometimes very overwhelming!

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Comments or Suggestions?

We would love to hear from you!

We value your feedback! Please send us your comments and suggestions.


Please contact us if:

1. You would like to be featured on this art promotion website? We have an artist spotlight whereby artists may fill out a few questions. If you would like your work featured, please visit this page: Artist Spotlight  
   
   
   
2. If you would like to have a reciprocal link exchange.
   
   Full details at: Reciprocal Link With this Art Promotion Blog
   
   
3. If you would like to contribute an original article to this blog as a guest-post. You will be compensated by means of a link to your artblog/website at the end of your post. Please read all the details here: Guest Posting
   
   
4. Do you have any suggestions for us to write about here at Artpromotivate? If there is something that you would like to see here, please let us know by contacting us. 

We would love to hear from you Please send us your comments and suggestions.
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