It is not that easy to start a full time career as an artist especially in the beginning where you will struggle to sell you artwork even if they look like the artworks of Leonardo da Vinci or Van Gogh.
Van Gogh has the most expensive artworks, but he died poor, this is said is not evident you will get recognition of your art, or people will come searching for you. Instead, you need to work the other way around, disseminate your work and promote it everywhere, so people can see it and praise it.
Now first question how I will be able to go around the globe, disseminate my work and reach large public or art lover and I don’t have enough money for that. I totally agree with you. You need a different approach.
First of all, let’s see what are the ways to turns a nobody artist to a famous one. That for sure requires a lot of effort and hard work, but also resources.
Step 1 Artwork collection:
Choose a medium or a field and focus on it. It could be oil, acrylics, Watercolors, Charcoal, Pastels, Chalk, 3D art and the list is too long. Try to be specific and decide which area you see you can excel in it faster.
Create a collection of artwork 5 to 10 artworks, this is essential to build a portfolio. It is better to do the next steps that I will discuss in this article for a collection rather than a single artwork.
Step 2 Create an online presence
Publish your artwork for free in different platforms whether social media or art platform. I would say that Instagram is a good place to post your artwork and get some followers, use always tag to reach the proper audience.
Post some short videos on TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts when you are working in the studio on your artworks. This will help you build a community and supporters for your work.
Publish you bio and artwork in art platform, there are some which are free and other which are paid. It will not cost you much but it will help you to get online visibility and index fast your artwork making it easy to reach potential buyers.
Create a minimalist website where you can publish you CV and artworks it could be for free on blogger or wordpress.
You can chose among the available free template, a template for a gallery so visitor can browse for your artwork and find information like price etc.
Step 3 Take part in online contest
Start with the free ones, submit your artwork. Whenever you win in art contest, share the news with your audience, promote your featured artwork and talk about it in a local newspaper this will create value and allow you to gain recognition for your work.
Make sure to take part in multiple art contest, to increase your chances to win and off course later on add these new achievements to you CV and portfolio. I will tell you in the next step why this is useful.
Step 4 Take part in exhibitions
Congratulation now you have all the requirements to take part in exhibition and you have a good artist portfolio too. Start first with exhibitions in your city, then in other cities of your country.
Then try to find exhibitions abroad, Now you will ask me, I don’t have enough money to do so, well the good news that you can take part in some exhibition for free and it can be fully funded art exhibition, you can search them online.
Now after taking part in exhibition, your community will grow even faster and your artwork will get high exposure. Don’t forget to share the best moments of your exhibition online as I already explained in step 2.
Step 5 apply for art fund
You can find calls for art fund online, take part in them wait for answer, now your chances to win some grants are higher then when you was in previous steps. You are an emerging artist with a strong portfolio and you have enough recognition for your work.
I hope that this article was helpful for artists, to level up their artist career and to gain recognition for their work. If you need help or a consultancy you can write us on arthouseonlinegallery1@gmail.com ,we help artists to promote their work.
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