Art Marketing 101

Ok, so it's been a little longer than a week since my last post. Managing 2 blogs...what the heck was I thinking??? Oh well, you can only do what you can do.

I've been thinking alot about marketing myself lately. I have this book called Art Marketing 101. It's a great book for any artist who really wants to know how to run his or her career as the business it really is.

Now, I know some of you out there will disagree that art is a business. So to you purists, I apologize in advance! I personally want to be able to do what I love and hope to be well rewarded financially! So if you want to paint and never sell a canvas, more power to you! That's just not my style.

Anyways, back to this art marketing thing. This book says the first most important step to fulfilling your dream of being a full-time artist is to create your identity as an artist. When you meet people for the first time and they ask you what you do for a living, what do you say? I say "I'm a freelance illustrator". I may not have made a dime in the last week from selling my illustrations, but by saying it, I become it. Every time I say it, I believe it a little bit more, and gain a little bit more self-confidence as an illustrator! Amazing the power of positive thought!

What's the next step? Well I've got to come up with a "brand" and get serious about this business thing. A business plan, logo, identity, even a mission statement. All this so I can present myself in a consistent, identifiable way. This identity should extend across all platforms...i.e. letterhead, logo, business cards, web site, blog. You know the drill. Some thought about what I want to be doing in 5 years, 10 years. Where I want to be. Then focus, and get to work! If I want to be a children's book illustrator like I've been saying forever, I've got to start doing some kids illos, don't I?

So back to the book to figure out how to do all this stuff, and then figure out some kind of story to use for a picture book dummy. Whew. Ok, deep breath...go for a run, clear my head. More research required! Here's a sketch of some characters I was fooling with a while back. I like the little burrowing owl character. I even did an "emo" version messing around one day. I'm off to run. Later!

A Blog a Day?

I just looked at today's Blog of Note list. I have to say my favorite is An Apple A Day. It's awesome. Beautifully photographed and well written! Emerson's blog has inspired me to write and post more. The problem is...what to write and post about? I hate blogs that are just random...and I don't presume to be a great writer. I really admire the blogs that have a theme and stick to it.

I created this blog to have a place to show my artwork...my illustrations, really. So that's what this blog is about. I want to be a full-time, freelance illustrator. The blog is supposed to document my process and progress. I guess I just really have a short attention span, because in the past, I mostly would post some recent (or not so recent) work and then forget about it. But you can probably tell that from reading this.

So what is this process of becoming a full-time illustrator? Can I really do it? Will blogging about it help? Let me tell you what I'm doing so far...

1. Posting to this blog...committing to post at least once a week?!?
2. Posting to my second blog...http://www.trailsketches.blogspot.com...committing to update it once weekly as well.
3. Listing myself at several freelance sites such as: www.ifreelance.com and www.guru.com
4. Drawing, sketching, painting daily.
5. Working on development of my own children's picture book
6. Deciding on and executing a body of work (fine art) for a future gallery show.
7. Finding ways to market myself and my work.

I need to get serious about this if I'm going to make any progress before I'm old and gray! Ok, enough of my rant...now let's get to the good stuff...artwork!!!