The Psychology of Selling Art

WE LIKE TO CREATE

 

 

 

We are artists so we like to create. Accountants like numbers so they do the math. Our British Monarch, well she likes Queening, and hoovering, I have no idea but I wouldn't like to handle her schedule.

 

Lovely lady, I have met her Daughter HRH Princess Ann a few times, fantastic person, and spooky at the same time because she knew exactly who I was when we met on both occasions, yet she doesn't follow me on Facebook or Twitter, but such is the planning whenever you meet the Royals. Both are remarkable women though.

 

I create, so I am definitely not some business guru, I've just made plenty of mistakes on the way and life doesn't have an undo button. Sometimes I made the same mistake over and over again, like it was Groundhog Day. I'm my own worst critic, constantly beating myself up to do better, and always setting myself unrealistic goals. Sound familiar?

 

Artists are quite probably the people who put themselves through this the most. There has been so much research carried out on why this happens. I read recently that there are many interesting personal dynamics particular to creative-minded people but the most outstanding is this:  some of the most objectively untalented are the most boastful and proud, and some of the most gifted are the most cripplingly self-conscious and uncertain. But what we once chalked up to delusion and madness we’re now finding is the result of a particular neurological hardwiring. I’ll stop right there because the mere mention of neurological hard-wiring is a little too deep for me.

 

In short, fish don't realise they are swimming in water.

 

There seem to be about a billion different explanations, but I'm even less of a psychologist than I am a business guru. Like I said, I just made plenty of mistakes. I am cripplingly self-conscious and whatever the latter theory suggests, I am not most gifted; but I am extremely adventurous.

 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART

 

 

I am sure that the psychology of art is much better being discussed by experts in the field of psychology, so today I offer only snippets of learning that I have stumbled upon during my entire life-to-date. There does however seem to be something in this psychology stuff that triggers when we see a piece of art.

 

I started to think about what people like from art. I sort of know what I like but even my tastes have changed through the years. I once loved the works of Turner because my parents had a reproduction of one of his works hanging in the lounge for years. I also once loved Kinkade but for a while I fell out of love with his works and I am not too sure why, I learned how to produce light from studying his works.

 

I seem to go through phases. My current phase includes Banksy but it’s waning a little, and it includes Peter Max because I love his use of colour and he has always been a staple for me, Matisse because well, Matisse; and I am finding either love or at least a much deeper respect for Picasso’s works than I ever have done before. I aspire to be Picasso, except alive. 

 

Whenever I visit local galleries I am intrigued by the broad range of people who also visit. These aren’t the people who have studied art for years, they have an appreciation for art that isn’t mass produced, and it is always interesting to see who is buying what. Occasionally I become more fascinated by people watching than I do in the art on display.

 

There are few things I frequently notice when I am visiting galleries. One is that art rarely sells itself, and I notice that gallery staff are very switched on when it comes to assessing a buyer’s motivation, then the best gallery staff seem to be able to help to establish a connection between the buyer and the art.

 

The second thing I notice is that I have a feeling that the buying process occurs in the mind of the buyer rather than any outside intervention.  It is triggered by a desire to own a piece of art that stands out to them.

 

I notice that gallery staff often let a sale go in the short-term if the gap between the buyer and the work is too great. The most successful galleries I visit, as in those I constantly see active buyers inside, are the galleries that do not try the hard sell approach.

 

If they know a buyer isn’t connecting they don’t even attempt to sell them the work. This makes sense because nobody likes to be sold to, it takes away the decision from the buyers to make the purchase on their own terms.

 

I also notice that works often hung slightly higher so that the viewer has to raise their head even only slightly seem to attract more attention than works hung lower on the wall. I did a little online research and I think the consensus supports this theory. This is a similar principle to supermarkets from what I can see. Supermarkets will display their most profitable products at eye level, lower profits sit on the bottom or higher shelves.

 

So is there any way artists not represented by galleries can influence the buying decisions of art buyers?

 

I certainly think that an element of psychology can be used. There are milliseconds when the brain starts to process information and David Forbes made it his career to understand the subconscious motivations behind consumer behaviour. In his book, The Science of Why: Decoding Human Motivation and Transforming Marketing Strategy, Forbes provides strategies so marketers can do a better job of reaching their target customers.

 

Forbes determined that when someone sees an image for the first time, he discovered that a person's brain activity could be segmented on a millisecond by millisecond basis.

 

During the first 50-150 milliseconds, the brain works to recognise what exactly it is looking at. At 600 to 700 milliseconds, brain activity is centred in the limbic system which is associated with our emotions. At the 800 to 850 millisecond mark, brain activity in the pre frontal lobes indicates that a person is consciously thinking about the image. Now I am getting all deep, it’s not me, it was written in his book.

 

That’s not a lot of time to make an impression, but unscientifically even on social-media, I actually timed how long I was on Facebook during a single session, how many images I scrolled past before going on to read a post, and I realised I was very quickly dismissing images if:

 

• They didn’t interest me

• They didn’t grab my attention

• And it also depended on who posted them and;

• How many times I had seen the image before, or they had been cross-posted between different groups.

 

In one fifteen minute session, I had over a hundred posts show up in my timeline, scrolling through the hundred posts, I literally only stopped to love, like, and wow a post only 4 times. That meant that I had 96 posts that I either ignored (sorry!), or that I would try and remember to come back too at a later time when I wasn’t rushed.

 

I tried it again when I had more time, I had fewer posts in my timeline and spent much more time commenting, liking, wowing, and loving. In a 30-minute session I looked at fifteen new posts, and liked, loved, or wowed, and in one case clicked on angry, 9 times.

 

So I think there are two things here:

 

• The number of cross posts being made was fewer and I hadn’t seen any of the 15 previously

• I spent more time on each because I not only had the luxury of twice the time, there were 85 fewer posts in my feed

 

For a few months I also changed the times I posted my something different on Sunday posts which I write every Sunday in my Artists Exchange Facebook group. I noticed that if I posted at 2pm (GMT) on a Sunday afternoon, the post got more views, more likes, and more comments. If I posted any earlier, I would get fewer likes, fewer comments, and rarely a share.

 

Obviously 2pm (GMT) on a Sunday is a sweet-spot. More people are online because those who live in time zones minus GMT are awake and active, those in +GMT time zones are nearing the end of the day, and in the UK I supposed that people could be less busy and they become more active on Facebook at 2pm. This makes sense especially in the UK winter when it’s an easier choice to stay in front of the fire, drink hot chocolate, and have a look on Facebook. I may have just identified my favourite Sunday afternoon winter activity.

 

So I take from Forbes writings, and from my unscientific experiment that the brain really does process information and especially images very quickly, but it also depends on how much information it has to process, and how much time a person has to process that information, and the time the information is presented. 

 

What I think I have taken from this is that to create the best impression there are certain things you need to check before you post an image with artwork for sale on social-media.

 

• Time of day – Is everyone awake and engaged?

• Cross posting fills up people’s timelines – do we need to stagger cross posting so that the image shows up at intervals rather than all at once?

• How many people are posting and therefore competing for the viewer’s brain to process an image at the same time?

• Whether or not the images or posts grab my attention within these few milliseconds.

 

Back to galleries, the successful ones I visit actually have fewer pieces on display. They’re not cluttered, and this is possibly tied to a concept that supermarkets now routinely exhibit. In 2015, UK retailer Tesco reduced its number of products available from 90,000 to 60,000.  

 

At one time the retailer offered a bewildering choice of 28-different tomato ketchups of all things, whilst in Aldi, they offered only one, and in one size. Tesco offered 224 kinds of air-freshener, in Aldi, only 12.

 

What the supermarkets were finding was that too much choice resulted in customers making long drawn out buying decisions which meant that some didn’t buy at all, it was like a paralysis of choice.

 

I remembered a paper I had read some years ago and managed to find it online, Personality Processes and Individual Differences from Sheena S. Iyengar of Columbia University, and Mark R. Lepper of Stanford University. You can see it here. 

 

They set up a jam tasting booth is an upmarket grocery store in Menlo Park, California. For fifty percent of the time they displayed 24-varieties of jam, and the other half of the time they displayed only six.

 

They looked at two things, how many people stopped and looked at the jam, and how many went on to buy the jam.

 

When displaying the 24 jams, 60% of the people stopped, and only 3% of those people went on to buy a jar. However, when they only displayed six types of jam, fewer people stopped (40%) but 30% of that 40% made a purchase. In summary, people were six times more likely to buy when they encountered fewer options.

 

The problem is that we are talking about art and not jam, but you have a portfolio of literally hundreds of works and you absolutely need a large portfolio, but it comes down to how you present it. Don't worry, I have a plan!

 

The plan involves limiting initial choice, and valuing your work, because there is a psychological link to value too. Too see how this is done, visit one of the higher end galleries. I have previously written about pricing your art, this week I have completely offered a few new points of view.

 

So, let’s talk about that limitation of choice I mentioned.

 

OVERWHELMING CHOICE

 

 

Those galleries I visit who have many active customers all seem to have one thing in common. They are all well organised, uncluttered, and the lighting and walls are just right. The lighting shows off the works beautifully, and the walls are light in colour. But it is not just this that make them so appealing, it is that they only have a limited number of works on display.

 

More than a few years ago I exhibited at an art fair and displayed lots and lots of my works. In fact I had to hire a transit van to get the works to the fair and it was crammed to the roof. It took me almost an entire day to hang everything, and I realised once I had, that it looked far too cluttered.

 

On the first day of the fair I didn’t sell a single piece of my art at all. On the second day I sold twelve pieces. The difference was that I had spent most of the previous night taking works down. I limited the number of pieces on display, and as they sold I replaced them with something new.

 

If too much was on offer, visitors were paralysed by the amount of choice, and just like the jams, I got fewer visitors on day two but I also got actual sales. I have a feeling this could convert to online art galleries too.

 

Whenever I see an artist’s webpage one of the things I look out for is how they are laid out. I am currently working on my Pixels site layout to reorganise my artwork so forgive me if this looks like I am ignoring my own advice for a moment, I’m working on it!

 

The problem is that all of my artwork is shown across a number of pages, with the newest appearing at the top. Because I like to vary my artistic style occasionally this can look a little disorganised, so I am going to be setting up categories of art. I am working through what those categories need to be, then I will make the changes.

 

Unless the visitor to your site is a real fan of all of your work, most won’t want to trawl through hundreds of works. They might be a fan of your abstracts, or particular themes, if they are all mixed together you will be overwhelming the viewer’s senses.

 

Sometimes I see websites where the artist has posted everything they have ever painted. That might be because they wanted to quickly build up an online portfolio, but when you visit a gallery to view say a Peter Max, not everyone of Peter’s works will be hanging on the walls.

 

Online, this presents the viewer with a view of works which were created when you were starting out, right next to paintings you created yesterday which are more often than not, more artistically aesthetic.

 

So grouping your older works in other categories such as ‘early works’, ‘early abstracts’ etc. seems a much better approach. But do not underestimate the time this will take you to do across your online shops.

 

I have been thinking about my new categories for months and only plan to make a start online in the next week or so, and when I know I will have some time when I am not required to be working the day job, or won’t have lots of distractions. As I plan to also meet with a gallery who will be taking my work next week, I also need to consider how much time I need to do this, because it is vital that I get the online stores looking something like and I know I shouldn't underestimate the time I'll need to do it. 

 

Some of my earlier works will be moved in to very specific categories. Some of the work that you will have seen on my Pixels site was created years ago, some of it is still relevant to my artistic style, some pieces are not. I either need to actually reduce the number of pieces, or at least tuck them in to categories which make sense. I really want viewers to be able to see my latest works because at this moment in time, they are the most important to me.

 

Your artist website shouldn’t focus too much on the fact that you are the most productive artist ever. Sometimes you drown out your best-selling works and suddenly they stop selling. Bring those works back to the top once in a while to remind people they are still there, and repost old social-media posts so that new followers and friends can see what you did before they followed you, but make sure that they stand up against the quality of work you are producing today.

 

In part this was one of the reasons I removed my old gallery pages from this website, preferring to link to my Fine Art America store so that people could not only see my work as they once did in the gallery pages, but also because they could actually buy the work directly from Fine Art America. It also maintained the freshness because as soon as I upload something new to FAA, it automatically replicates on this site too. Thank you FAA!

 

As I said earlier, too much choice can be a bad thing, equally it can be a good thing. In a recent study by Stanford GSB Marketing Professor, Itamar Simonson, he found that it really depends on where people are in the buying process, and their decision-making timeline.

 

He found that a large selection is likely to be attractive when a person is considering whether to buy or not to buy at all. However, if a person begins at the point where they have chosen their favourite from an assortment of options, and only then decides to buy, that very same larger selection makes the task of deciding harder and lowers the likelihood of them actually buying anything at all.

 

So I think from this that there is a definitive psychological trigger that we can apply when displaying our art either online, or in a gallery.

 

If you plan to exhibit at a specialist art fair I think it is safe to say that you don’t want to hang up everything you have. Take a look at the number of views you have online against each piece of artwork, include your best-selling works, and leave out the rest, or maybe have one or two of those others but don’t put them centre stage. You are showing the breadth of your portfolio at the same time as focussing on the important works. You can easily introduce those older or different works by doing this. 

 

You offered a wide choice online, albeit in categories, but when people visit an art fair it is a fair bet that they are coming along to buy art.

 

There are two decisions a buyer must make after they decide that they like your work. Firstly, whether or not they should buy your art, and secondly which piece of art will they buy? Every buying decision is primarily two decisions, but which is decided on first makes all the difference.

 

If your first is to buy, then having a larger range makes sense, but if the first decision is which piece of art should you choose, having a larger range makes that decision much harder. Essentially you need to know at this point where your buyers are in that process.

 

Galleries will be deciding on what to hang based on the art meeting a specific criteria. Who is currently selling, who will be the next big collectible artist, what will be the next big style, or they will choose the safe options which include work they know will sell because it already does. 

This is essentially what many online art sites will be doing too. The most successful will only be featuring a certain number of artists so as to limit the range they need to carry, and they will be selecting works which look good in their gallery.

 

Essentially you need to curate your own work or even better ask a few friends to curate the work you should display for you. Otherwise the pieces you are most emotionally attached to will always hang on the wall, the pieces you don’t like will never get seen, but these might just be the pieces others become emotionally attached to.

 

By setting up categories you can still offer a choice, maybe add sub-categories, but not too many because whenever I want to view a piece of art, I want to be able to find it. Categories break that choice down in to manageable chunks so that the viewer can not only find the relevant work, they can then process the images in their brains much quicker. If you have to pick an artwork for the category to be displayed under, that’s something else you need to consider.

 

When people see categories online and those categories are depicted by images, they will be processing those images too. Take a look at the most successful Pinterest boards from those who have many followers, these people are influencers and they built up those followers by managing to grab people’s attention enough for people to follow that specific board. In summary, the most successful boards have a great front image which invite the viewer to take a look.

 

Alternatively you could upload a piece of cover art for your folders and use that instead of any particular image, or create a collage of a couple of your best images specifically for use with folders and categories.  For this you might want to get creative with some on-trend typography, but remember to keep it consistent, and never ever use Comic Sans, unless you are selling comic art. Scrub that, never use Comic Sans at all, ever.

 

So in determining that you have a buyer who has made the decision to buy, one of the other factors you will need to consider is how you price your art.

 

ART PRICING

 

 

We go back to our own psychology when it comes down to pricing our own art. I already mentioned that as artists we are our own harshest critics, often discounting our work because we are not quite so confident in its value. I reach out to others to help me do this, but in return I help them. I'm way better at valuing the work of other artists than I am my own. 

 

Case in point, I recently spoke to an artist friend who produced some amazing work, and when I asked him how much he was selling it for, he said oh, you know, about £20 because I spent that on materials, and no one really knows me.

 

Wow! How are you even considering selling this for only £20? He was dumbstruck when I told him to sell it for £300, and even more dumbstruck when he did just three days later. It was also the first work he had sold in more than a year.

 

There was another interesting thing to note and that was that he said no one knew him. Yet he had failed to tell anyone that he was once a fashion designer, and a well-respected one too. He never linked this role he once had in design with his love for producing art. Very relevant I would say. 

 

Firstly, it really was a great piece of work, secondly, it was painted on a huge 8x6 feet canvas but also a canvas he didn't have to pay for because he was originally gifted it as a present. He took the cost of the canvas out of the equation altogether because he didn’t have to pay for it. The thing is, next time he needs a canvas this size, there is a good chance that he is not going to get it for free. 

 

BREAKING THE PRICE OF ART DOWN

 

So how do we set prices? We need to break the cost of producing art down into categories too. Many artists work on cost per square inch, but when it comes to offering prints, and especially when that work might have been produced digitally, it’s not as straight forward as a square inch, but the overhead could be the same or even more.

 

OVERHEAD

 

I bet many of you forget this especially if you produce your artwork at home. You will have overhead, and even though that overhead might be low, you need to take into account things such as electricity consumption, any fees you need to pay to cover the costs of hosting your artist website or portfolio, studio fees or rental, phone calls (keep a log of these so you can offset them against personal calls), essentially anything that equates to the cost of ancillary items for producing the art is overhead.

 

Imagine that you have no lights in your studio, no electricity, and no natural substitutes. The overhead is what makes the environment suitable for creating your art, or more simply the essentials you need to produce what you need to produce in the way you need to produce it.

 

This will give you an overall cost of X which you will need to write down. I suggest you use the picture I have posted as a template and record costs next to each heading. 

 

If you have a large portfolio you can spread out your overhead across each work as some works cost more in ancillary costs to create, otherwise there will be huge variances in costs, and that needs to be explained to the buyer.

 

MATERIAL COSTS

 

You need to consider the cost of materials. Materials can be anything from canvas to paper, to ink, to specific software or Photoshop brushes, and about a bazillion things in between.

 

Here is a breakdown of what a single piece of digital art might cost to produce when factoring in those ancillary costs, materials, time, and profit:

 

Costs of digital art production:

 

Electricity to use PC or Mac, 4-hours of lighting, Software needed to produce anything, subscriptions to Creative Cloud, Yearly subscription to artist website hosting or other fees, IT equipment, stylus, graphics tablet, depreciation because things can break down, phone calls, stock images if needed, storage of digital work, backups, printer and printer ink, other consumables. Specific software to create specific works, apps, specific brushes for Photoshop, digital art papers, paper to test out printed elements, how much do you need to earn each year, divided by the number of pieces in your portfolio should give you a rough idea, how much profit do you need to make, or do you break even (only marginally better than making a loss), how much do you need to invest in exhibiting, advertising, buying new equipment, and I am sure there are more costs I haven’t identified.

 

With traditional painting it is not too different. Instead of digital brushes you will be buying physical brushes, you also need to add on costs of the canvas, and instead of software you need to add your paint or medium of choice.

 

The profit element of your costs is not how much extra you will have in your pocket, but how much you have to tide you over when we see those slow times. Or when you have a tax bill, or pay for exhibition space, or pay for advertising, or create leaflets, or buy a professional banner, profit is also what makes your business bloom when times are tough.

How much profit you make is entirely down to you, but you do need to consider two things when deciding the amount:

 

• What do I need to sustain the business when I’m not selling, and;

• Where do I want to take my business in the future?

 

You might decide that there isn’t much you need to do when things are slow except wait it out, but mostly you will need to be thinking of opportunities that will help you make sales during what many call the off-season, and that season could vary. I sell more art between November and June, than July to the end of October.

 

When you add all of this up you end up with your bottom line price. That is the least amount of money you need to be paid to make it worthwhile running as a business.

 

Now here’s the crunch, the art market will decide ultimately what your work is worth. That could be less than your bottom line, or it could be higher. If it’s less, then you’ll need to skimp back on a few things or do things differently and if it’s more, great.

 

Galleries, appraisers, even collectors will be the ones who ultimately decide the monetary value of what your art is worth, you just have to agree.

 

Once you understand these costs it becomes much easier to place a value on your art, and without the psychological elements that tell you too often and untruthfully, how bad you are. Equally knowing these costs lets you know when you are running in the red or the black.

 

LET THE MARKET DECIDE

 

I mentioned earlier that you often need to explain prices to buyers. Many people who love art simply cannot afford art, and this is why I always offer my art on a wide range of other products and in smaller sizes. These are the very people who will aspire to own a larger work, and these are also the people who support me regularly. You can be a collector of 5x7 inch works, or a collector of 40x30 inch works, you are still a collector. Equally never forget casual buyers, these will become your bread and butter. 

 

Art prices shouldn’t be increased just because you feel like it, or based upon what other artists are doing at any particular time. The last thing you want is to put people off buying your art by alienating them or pricing them out of the market.

 

Art prices are determined by the market, as in they use a whole heap of criteria which includes the above but also considers, your history, skill, consistency of selling, any particular market you sell in, any particular niche you have, and these are things which too a larger extent aren’t decided or controlled by you.

 

When you start out creating art, you might want to consider using a comparable methodology. By this I mean take a look at other artists producing similar types of works, in similar subject areas, and with a similar sales history and artistic ability as your own. You also need to consider where those artists are selling their work.

 

If they are selling in a top end gallery in the middle of London and nowhere else, expect their costs to be higher. If they are selling online in the same places as you do, then compare your prices in those places.

 

Some of the work I am producing for a gallery and my two new online outlets will be a little more expensive than buying my work on Fine Art America. It won’t be the same art, but it will be available as limited edition sets, signed limited edition sets, and on mediums which Fine Art America do not print on.  The price increases for these are strictly to do with the pieces being limited editions, I can only sell three works in an edition of three, I can sell as many as I can and recover my costs over a longer period in an open edition.

 

Essentially there is no magical structure that you can apply to selling your art. There are no lists with prices on that guarantee sales, and believe me when I say that I have scoured every corner of the internet, and even asked my Amazon Alexa. We drew a blank because a magical list doesn’t exist. There is no guaranteed monetary value which makes a buyer buy art, it's what they can afford and what they like. 

 

It would be really nice if we could sell our art for whatever we wanted to sell it for. I could upload a new work to Fine Art America and there is nothing really stopping me from setting the commission for that individual piece at $50,000, but would anybody buy it? Probably not. Should I try it?

 

The cost of art is not so much what a piece is offered for, it is what it actually sells for. There are a few galleries I have visited recently and I noticed that on a couple of occasions the prices on display were much higher than the prices being offered to buyers.

 

There is obviously some psychological stuff going on here too. If you think you are grabbing a bargain it can certainly sway your decision and especially if you actually believe that this is a one time only deal.

 

I have mentioned in previous posts why discounting is a bad idea, you don’t want to be in the position of heavily discounting on a regular basis, because just like Pavlov’s dogs, buyers will become familiar with your discount cycle and will wait it out until feeding time. It also annoys those who purchased your art at full price a week or so before.

 

Offering the occasional discount or rewarding those who have previously purchased your work is fine, but if you constantly run sales it starts to look like you are desperate to move some of your work, and that reputation sticks, and can also compromise the integrity of your artwork and as an artist more generally.

 

Consistency is also important. If you have a few online stores and perhaps your own artist website, make sure that prices for the same art are consistent across each. Buyers are intelligent and will compare your own work between even your own sites.

 

Case in point. Not too long after I had started selling my artwork online I had offered the same work on a number of different sites. I decided that I would no longer progress with one of those sites because it just wasn’t going to be worth the effort for the very minuscule commission they paid. I would have had to sell at least two hundred pieces to actually cover just my bottom line.

 

I was about to disable my account when I noticed that a piece of art had sold and the commission was $1.01. When I looked at my visitor statistics I noticed activity from the same geographical location on each of my sites which have location statistics. That buyer had obviously shopped around and found the lowest price.

FREE ART

 

Occasionally I like to give a piece of art away. I stopped taking on those jobs with the job description of “If you create this piece of work for free you will get really good exposure” or, those descriptions which say, “if you spend lots of time on this and produce something really good, and the product goes on to make millions, we will make sure you get a fair cut”. Because you never get good exposure, let alone a fair cut, and inevitably they never come back and offer you anything. Been there, done that. 

 

When I give a piece of art away it is either to collectors, occasionally to close family, or to charity organisations which I really believe in and support.  

 

When a piece is offered in a charity auction and someone bids much more than you normally sell for, remember it is more likely because they support the charities work too, it should never be used as an indicator to increase your general prices. It might not be an external validation. 

 

PRICE LABELLING

 

I often get asked if artists should put a price tag on their art. Yes is the answer. No one really likes to have to ask how much a piece is selling for, it's better to be totally open and upfront. When you are exhibiting at art fairs and prices are not displayed somewhere, you could quite easily lose customers who would just walk past not knowing that they could actually afford your art.

 

Also buyers generally don’t like asking because they automatically think of the old adage, if you have to ask you can’t afford it. Then they make a beeline for the door never to be seen again.

 

Also it stops you having to decide on the day what to charge, because that is never a good idea. Before you attend an art fair or exhibition these are details you need to have decided upfront.

 

Whenever you book a space at an art fair try to find out who else will be there, and ask the organisers who the fair is aimed at and if there is an expected price range. If you turn up with a million dollar artwork and everyone else turns up with $300 artworks, your piece will take centre stage in a kind of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not novelty and my guess is that you won’t sell it at all.

 

COMING UP

 

I have been busy preparing a brand new page for this site and it is something that you will definitely want to see. It will be showcasing some of my personal favourite artworks!

 

With explanations about the process of creating the twenty-four pieces which will be on display, this page will showcase some of the works which mean the most to me, and some of my best-selling works to date.

 

YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES

 

Is there something that you have learned over the years of producing art that really does grab buyer’s attention? Any particular colours or subject themes, and do you consider everything when pricing you art?

 

If you have anything to add to this story please leave a comment below because everyone needs to continue to learn new things!

 

ABOUT M.A

 

Mark “M.A” Taylor is a visual artist who specialises in digital art but who also picks up a paintbrush from time to time too. His work is available from his Pixels site at http://10-Mark-Taylor.pixels.com by clicking here.

 

Mark is best described as a positivity engager, other times not so much. He's a collector of awesomeness, sips water slowly, and would like to personally thank hand sanitiser for reminding him of the paper-cut he sustained a few moments ago.