Damn some of the responses here are unnecessarily harsh.

There's some artists I follow on IG whose work I really enjoy, but they're total egotistical dicks. It sucks but save your own sanity and unfollow or block those type of people if you have to. Warning others about how problematic they are just sucks you into the drama fest and will likely affect your own reputation.

I like the idea of requiring 1/3 down. Thank you for your input!

You can get a temporary seller's permit for the dates of the convention.

https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/temporary-sellers.htm

I think it's important. Ya never know what kind of freaks are out there.

If you have your own domain, make sure to also pay extra for privacy protection.

60% commission? Get outta heeeeere.

LOOOOVE! And I love that there's a cat tree without it being an eyesore!

I've been wanting to do this since I got my ipad. I love your photos!

Most recent one:

I was in the middle of a desert in a multi-layer city within an asteroid crater. Alarms started going off because there was apparently a t-rex in the city and it was loose. I was toward the brim of the city and started jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get to the bottom, for shelter I guess?

Found myself in some sort of top-secret tunnel thing and these two women were frantically trying to get into an elevator. I ran in too and asked what in thee fuck is going on. They were doctors/scientists or something. They said there was a lab t-rex loose and yelled at me to give them my cell phone. They said there was some sort of tracking device on everyone's phones that alerted the t-rex to their location. They deactivated the tracker and then handed me an airline safety-looking pamphlet on what to do if a t-rex swallows you.

I woke up as I stared at the elevator ceiling. I was in and out of sleep a lot during that dream, but it was fun because I immediately popped back into the dream each time l fell asleep. Probably why that shit seemed so vivid. o_O

Seconding being active in your local community. Of course that's more challenging right now.

I set my city as my location on each IG post and use hashtags specific for my area. I'm pretty sure 50% of my followers are local haha. But it works. I get a lot of DMs from people specifically looking to buy art from my area. I was even contacted by an art consultant who wanted to present my art to a major tech company opening in my state. Ya know how she said she found me? Freaking IG hashtags lol.

Also it's not a bad thing that a lot of your followers are artists. Artists LOVE collecting and promoting other artists work.

Ooooof. If I priced my art according to how I value it or how I think others value it, I'd never make any money. What I'm comfortable paying for art is vastly different than what others will pay. I can see your points here, but overall you'd be underselling yourself following these pricing strategies.

This would be such a lovely studio rental!

Oh gosh, I would totally live here!

DANG. I envy anyone that can master watercolors like this.

I appreciate that! My first two group shows were in January so everything was normal. I was supposed to do a couple more group shows and have a mini solo show between May and August, but those never happened and the gallery never communicated with me about that. I did another group show with that gallery in Oct virtually and sold 2 out of 3 pieces, mostly due to my own social media posts. I totally lucked out with my solo show with a different gallery in October as the opening was 1) in conjunction with another artist who has a large following and 2) the timing was right in between when our state eased covid restrictions and when they enforced them once more.

The pandemic definitely opened my eyes to which galleries I want to continue working with. One handled things really poorly and had almost zero support or communication with their artists, while the other was mostly good.

If galleries are something you're interested in I recommend following them for some time on social media and asking other artists what their experience was working with them! After the unfavorable experience with one gallery, I reached out to other artists and realized we were all experiencing the same thing with them. So even though I sold most of my pieces, it was still a weird learning experience lol.

Thiiiiiis. I was considering renting a storage unit mostly to store paintings and supplies, then did some research and saw that renting an office or even retail space is almost the same cost. Plus with renting an office/retail space it's less weird if you wanna have someone over to check out your art haha.

After seeing your art I wouldn't charge anything LESS than $100 for a small painting.

I like this breakdown of pricing formulas for artists. Personally I'm a fan of linear pricing as it's more scalable and I work in a bunch of different sizes.

Also 1000% agree with the other post that you need to find the right audience/venue. Once I started finding my niche, my work sold more quickly and for higher prices.

I'd buy custom buttons online with your designs before investing in a machine. I did 4 different designs last year through purebuttons.com and was happy with them. I made packs of 2 and they sold okay but overall packaging was not worth the extra effort. They make nice freebies for online orders. I saw one vendor at an expo who was giving out a free button to anyone that followed her on IG.

Enamel pins will definitely sell better and are worth the investment more than buttons imo.

Wow! I really thought this was a painting at first glance. Nice work.

Biggest goal in 2020 was to show my work in a couple galleries I had been eyeing and open an online shop. I sold some work in group shows and had a very successful solo show. Opened an online shop in September. All in all, I felt I achieved what I wanted despite the year being a clusterfck.

2021? Idkkkkk. I'm supposed to be in 9 different cities for expos but who knows if they will be canceled like last year. I want to do another solo gallery show, find more places to sell my merch wholesale, do a couple murals, and create more video content. Also just keep applying my ideas to different mediums. My ultimate long-term goal is to work in the film industry as a character/concept type of artist or art director, so just figuring out the steps I need to take to get there.

Dancing with 10-20lb weights. Building shit. I used to love mowing the lawn but now I live in the desert with no grass lol.

That's pretty shitty that you've created work for them and they weren't happy with it. How could they expect you to create anything else if they're just going to be critical? I wouldn't do it. They don't respect your skills or creative process so they don't deserve your work, end of story.

When I moved to my current city, I went browsing around downtown and ended up finding a quirky gift shop. I asked the person working there what they know about local art groups. They invited me to do some live painting at a couple different places, I went, and had a fcking blast. Sold some art and met a bunch of artists that are friends 5 years later.

Obviously that approach isn't all that possible to do right now. I also go on IG and look for other artists in my area to see what they're doing.