Special Edition: Our 20th Newsletter

Morning artrepreneurs! Welcome to another edition of the Stay Sketchy newsletter.

Woah! It’s already the 20th edition of the Stay Sketchy newsletter 🤯! Since every 10th issue is special, this one will feature top insights from the previous 9 artists we’ve interviewed.

This week we’ve got:

Top Insights from Recently Featured Artists

All the artists we interview share some seriously insightful stuff when it comes to how they grew their art businesses into what they are today. Below are our favorite pieces of advice from each of them.

🔹 Network with Other Artists in Your Niche

Gene emphasizes the value of networking with other artists, which can foster learning, collaborative projects, cross-promotions, and brand deals.

His connection with the graffiti community in Florida allows him to easily organize events and showcase his work alongside similar artists

These connections have also led to tangible benefits like sponsorship deals, notably with Fredrix Canvas, which supports him with regular supplies and even led to the launch of his own marker pad.

Engaging with more experienced artists also provides an opportunity to gain invaluable insights and guidance on advancing one's art career.

🔹 Adopt a “Product Drop” Methodology

Adopting a "Product Drop" methodology for releasing art has distinct advantages. That’s what Katie discovered when she began making her signature rope art.

Instead of posting new pieces as they're created, announcing the release of a new collection on a specific date can build excitement and anticipation among followers.

This approach also helps in growing a mailing list, as followers can sign up to get early notifications about the releases.

Additionally, concentrating marketing efforts on fewer, larger events can be more efficient and potentially boost sales.

🔹 Learn From Your Sales Data & Use It to Inform Your Future Decisions

If James has one regret about how he’s run his art business, it’d be that he wishes he paid closer attention to his sales data earlier on.

He now regularly tracks performance at art markets and online, adjusting his inventory based on sales trends.

Observing that most of his income came from in-person events, he’s increased his presence at these markets, attending 16 in the first half of 2024 alone. He evaluates each event’s effectiveness, and decides whether to return based on sales numbers and how much he stands out among the other artists.

James advises other artists to categorize their sales data extensively to gain a clearer understanding of their business performance across various channels like direct sales, galleries, and licensing.

This approach helps him tailor his own strategies more effectively.

🔹 Batch Your Content and Schedule Social Media Posts

To maximize productivity and focus more on creating art, many successful artists adopt the strategy of batching and scheduling their social media content.

By dedicating a single day to prepare and schedule posts for the coming weeks, artists like Hannah effectively reduce daily disruptions and administrative burdens.

This approach not only streamlines their workflow but also ensures they can concentrate on their primary passion—creating art—without being interrupted by the constant demands of social media.

🔹 Combine Writing with Your Artwork

Kevin enhances his photography by pairing each image with a short story that details the inspiration, location, and interesting occurrences related to the photograph.

He incorporates these narratives into his social media captions and attaches them to the back of his matted photographs that he sells in-person, enriching the viewer's experience and connection to his work.

Additionally, Kevin expands on his experiences and insights through more detailed blog posts on his website and articles on Medium, offering deeper engagement and valuable information to his fans and fellow photographers.

🔹 Embrace Originality and Avoid Getting Caught Up in Trends

Instead of just creating art that was different, Matt makes sure to create content that’s different too.

This is ultimately one of the key components to his overall success.

After establishing his own style, he brainstormed for a long time how he could create engaging and creative videos that audiences would love and come to know as specifically Matt Chessco’s.

When initial feedback was good, he double downed on it.

Matt lets the quality of his videos do the work for him. He doesn’t rely on trends that were started by other creators - he makes his own unique content that speaks for itself, and it gets shared on a mass scale as a result.

🔹 Consider Creating Familiar Faces

During the 2020 COVID lockdown, Will embarked on a challenge to create 100 small portraits, sharing photos and timelapse videos of his progress daily.

This significantly boosted his engagement on Instagram.

He found success particularly through creating artwork of celebrities and well-known figures, since images of recognizable people tend to be shared more frequently on social media.

This strategy taps into the popularity of TV and film personalities, leveraging their fan bases to increase visibility and engagement with his work, a technique similar to focusing on niche subjects with cult followings.

🔹 Look for Opportunities to Become a Resident Artist

In exchange for hosting weekly art events for the other residents in the community where she lives, Taylor is compensated with a one-bedroom apartment and her own art studio in the community clubhouse.

In other words, teaching 4 workshops per month gets Taylor access to a high-quality art studio and free rent.

While these residency periods vary in length, they can be great opportunities for people that are looking to reduce living expenses while still working full-time as artists.

Googling “resident artist programs near me” is a good place to start.

🔹 Actively Pursue the Attention of Brands You Want to Work With

To effectively attract the attention of your favorite brands, artists can utilize both passive and active strategies.

For instance, tagging brands in posts is a passive method that might lead to recognition and potential collaborations over time.

For a more direct approach, artists can create artwork and content specifically tailored to the brand's products, like Fiorella has done with Strava and Adidas.

Additionally, actively connecting with the marketing team of a brand on LinkedIn can significantly enhance the chances of getting your first paid partnership.

Suggested Resources from Our Featured Artists

You may have noticed in the last few editions of the newsletter that we’ve been showcasing some of our featured artists’ favorite art-related resources.

These can be books, podcasts, websites, blogs - you name it.

Below are a few we think might be most helpful.

Sidenote: While all of these were recommended by artists we’ve previously featured, some may be appearing here for the first time since we didn’t always have a “Suggested Resources” section in earlier versions of the newsletter!

• 📕 Be the Artist by Thomas Evans - a guide for aspiring artists, providing essential strategies and insights to navigate the art world, make informed decisions, and build a successful career.

• 📕 The Creative Act by Rick Rubin - a book that illuminates the artist's path as one we all can follow, offering wisdom to create moments of exhilaration and transcendence in your career.

• 🎙️ The Creative Endeavour by Andrew Tischler - a podcast dedicated to creative professionals wanting to maximize their art career by bringing you stories from practicing professional artists from around the world.

• 🎙️ F-Stop Collaborate and Listen by Matt Payne - A photography-focused podcast that occassionally includes conversations with more traditional fine artists. In each episode, Matt covers topics such as artistic choices behind one’s work as well as business, marketing, and workflow insights that all can learn from. Kevin D. Jordan found this episode on ‘how to license your artwork’ especially helpful.

• 🌐 CODAworx - a hub that connects artists, creative teams, and industry professionals to facilitate and support the creation of commissioned art projects worldwide.

• 🌐 PublicArtist - a site that connects artists with public art opportunities and provides tools for managing applications and portfolios.

A Tool for All Creators

Something we always ask our featured artists is, “what are some tools you own, or systems you have in place, that help speed up your creative workflow and make your business more efficient?”

This is important, because as independent artists, our time is limited.

Between content creation, shopping for supplies, following up with potential commissions, and packing & shipping our work, we’re barely left with any time to, you know, actually make art.

The Canvas Lamp is a tool that definitely helps with the content creation part of that equation.

This thing is no joke (we have one in our studio).

The videos you film and share to social media will no longer:

• shake

• have weird shadows

• force you to paint one-handed while you carefully monitor your progress through your iPhone’s camera app

Beside their best selling lamp, they also just started offering Creator Bundles and Mini Lamps at huge discounts.

Speaking of discounts, using code “SKETCHY10” at checkout will get you an additional 10% off whatever sale price they might be offering.

Shop Canvas now.

Art Business News (that isn’t a snooze)

• Sculpting Zuckerberg’s wife 🗽 - Okay, so maybe not all art is good art. Or perhaps it’s safe to say not every creative idea needs to be executed on. Mark Zuckerberg probably didn’t think this was true when he commissioned Daniel Arsham to make a giant green & chrome statue of his wife to hang out in their backyard. Was this a genuine gift to his wife or just a gag? You decide. The comments on the instagram post certainly express some interesting opinions.

• Skiable art museum ⛷️ - This year’s 2024-25 ski season will look a little different at the Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah. The mountain, recently purchased by former Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, will feature skiable art installations by artists like James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, and several others.

• Butter artists are better 🧈 - What took 11 days to make and weighs 800 pounds? Well, the 2024 American Dairy Association Northeast Butter Sculpture of course. This year’s theme for the annual New York State Fair celebrates dairy sustainability, and don’t worry, if you feel like making a sculpture out of 800 pounds of butter isn’t very sustainable, it all gets recycled after the fair in a methane digester to create renewable energy. It just goes to show that if you’re really sick and tired of traditional mediums, you can always become a famous butter sculptor.

Thanks for checking out another edition of Stay Sketchy. Catch you next week! ✌️

As an Amazon Associate and affiliate of various partnership programs, the owner of this publication may receive commissions to linked products or services in this newsletter at no additional expense to the reader.