How to advertise your paintings?

Painting is a skill not everyone is blessed with. Therefore, if you are one who can draw clean strokes and give shape to an abstract idea, you should nurture this gift of God. Paintings can be done in a variety of medium using different colour strokes. For instance, you can make a painting on canvas, paper, glass or even cloth. Be it water colour, oil paint or even acrylic paint, you can give wings to your ideas.

If you are thinking of taking up painting professionally, it would be best you start young. An artist takes a long time to be recognised, sometimes beyond death even! It would be best you started tutoring under a painter or undertook a course in painting. You will be taught how to best express your ideas and make your strokes perfect. A good painting is one which not only depicts good imagery and detail but one which communicates an idea to an onlooker. Paintings must be able to make the onlooker think and marvel over the concept being depicted. For instance, the Mona Lisa is lauded the world over for its smile. Most people wonder about the pain that she suffers, whether it is at all a smile or a grimace and much more. Your paintings must have the quality of striking a chord with people. It should be universal and not only appealing to a certain segment of people.

Once you have started creating pieces which speak a thousand words without saying anything, you need to get into the business of putting up your painting for sale. For a newbie artist to gain exposure in the over populated and sceptical world of art is quite difficult. Galleries may refuse to showcase your paintings and you may have to spend a lot of money to get an exhibition at a gallery. Even after you have gotten yourself a spot at an exhibition, there is no guarantee that your painting for sale will be picked up and you would be able to pay for the space that you rented.

There are quite a few galleries which showcase paintings from lesser known artists to give them exposure. However, these galleries are over stuffed with entries and it may take you a long time to get a slot with them.

The best way to advertise your painting for sale is to create a website meant to showcase your paintings exclusively. You can get a website with a couple of pages and lots of space for very cheap and start showcasing your creations on it. Invest a little money in SEO and other techniques which would popularize your website in no time. You should also make a Facebook page and promote it among your friends for better response. Once your website becomes popular, visits from art patrons would trickle in soon enough and you will have buyers for your creations. The investment required in such a pursuit is very little and can prove to be more effective over showcasing your creation in a gallery. An art gallery offers only limited exposure to your works while the online media shall bring you fame faster than you can imagine.

However, the main issue with showcasing all your works online is risking plagiarism and unlawful use of the snapshots. You should invest in good anti-piracy software so that snapshots of your paintings cannot be downloaded indiscriminately for personal use. Nevertheless, stopping plagiarism is quite difficult, especially when it comes to online media.

Alternatively, you can use online classifieds for advertising your painting for sale. You can give a good description of the painting including the medium, base, image, size and other details which would attract genuine buyers. Quote a price which you feel is acceptable for you and will sell your painting easily. Accept the fact that you are a fledgling artist who needs to establish himself. Therefore, you need to price it in a way that most people would be able to afford the painting. Provide your contact information on the listing so that people can get in touch with you to enquire about the painting. Posting an ad on online classifieds website is for free and you can get good exposure from it. You can also sign up for a paid advertising campaigning where you need to pay a token amount to keep your ad floating above all. Whenever, your painting sells, you can remove the advertisement from the website. For each painting you want to sell, you can put up a new advertisement.

Once you have started earning a steady amount from painting for sale online, you can pay the deposit required for a gallery. Like it or not, an artist has to exhibit his/her paintings at a gallery for the art world to take him/her seriously. As a matter of fact, when you mention to the free galleries about the sales that you have already made online, they would be more inclined to showcase your works over other people’s artwork. Therefore, online advertising can also help you fuel your career as a painter or artist.

There are quite a few ways in which you can progress as an artist. Once a couple of paintings of yours sell in the market, you would be able to bring in a steady source of income which would further fuel your artistic pursuits. Over time, you would be able to develop distinctive artistic traits, motifs and styles of paintings for which you would be known the world over. For instance, Pablo Picasso was known for his Cubist paintings. Developing one’s own style is quite difficult- no matter how hard you try, influences of different painters can be noted in your work. However, that is not to suggest that you won’t be successful as an artist. The trick to doing well in art is to have astute sensual powers which allow you to interpret different events in your own way. Moreover, you need to study a lot in order to understand painting and human emotions. Only then will you be able to polish the raw talent of yours into an artist from a painter.