Do you know the three mistakes new artists tend to make?
1: You’re not putting in enough time
You have wonderful ideas…great!
You have amazing skills…great!
You can make mesmerizing reels on Instagram…great!
But unless you put at least 20 hours into your studio and produce at least two paintings a week, you will not be successful in today’s art business.
One time I asked my art mentor if she had taken many other artists’ works in her studio. She said she had tried. But she found that many of them just don’t produce enough paintings for both her gallery and the artist to make a reasonable profit.
So, put in your hours. That’s the baseline to make it in the art world.
2: You are everywhere, and people can’t pin you down
I got you. Just like you, I have so many ideas, and I like so many styles, color palettes, and mediums… after all, we artists have a hyper-creative mind, and the world constantly feed us so many colorful inspirations.
But here is the problem: If you paint an acrylic panda today and tomorrow, you are a watercolor landscape painter, and people will be confused.
You can’t be everywhere and be everything, or you will lose your audience. Having a cohesive body of work doesn’t mean you have to do one kind of subject matter and never change your styles and mediums. But you have to be recognizable. If you change your outfit and hairstyle tomorrow, people will still know it’s you.
3: You spend too much time on one painting.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against perfectionism.
But it just doesn’t make sense to spend four months making a perfect painting to show it off to the world. You may get attention, but it won’t help you drive into the art business.
You need to have a cohesive body of work to show the world what your artistic visions and your artistic prowesses are made of. And a body of work consists of at least 25 to 30 paintings.
Do these points make sense to you? If so, leave a comment or share it with an artist friend.
Check out my article about achieving long-lasting success https://yingmclane.com/the-key-to-long-lasting-success/
Cheering you on!
Ying
Sounds completely reasonable and good advice. That’s why I stick with photography instead of painting and drawing. I can draw and paint but have a problem with perfectionism. Photography doesn’t lend itself to that, at least in the natural world. Sunsets, sunrises, clouds, animals, bugs, etc, are almost always moving. That perfect capture can be gone in a second.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, Karen. Your photographs are breathtakingly beautiful and full of the wonders of God’s creations. I enjoyed your every single post. Glad that you chose photographing to share your talent with the world.