Question 9: "How do you manage the business side of your art business?"

When someone uses their artistic talent as a hobby or for therapy, that is a beautiful thing. Making art is just really good for you. But when art is a hobby, you don’t have to worry at all about the whole business side of it. In fact, just the suggestion of discussing the “business side” of an art career will get a lot of cow-eyed stares from artists. “But I just want to paint and sell my paintings. That’s it. That’s all I want to do”.

“But I just want to paint…”

Okay, brilliant. However, it’s time for that hard talk. Attending to the business side of an art career is like a track and field athlete investing into top notch running shoes. Yes, you can run barefoot but you can go a lot farther with the proper tools (shoes in this case). Without serious thought regarding the business side of an art career, that art career won’t last long. You have to get answers to some very basic questions and then decide which answers will lead to wise practices. Here are some questions I would suggest a “would be professional artist” ask a full time professional artist regarding the business of running an art career:

• Where do you have your art supplies?

• How do you keep track of inventory so you always have what you need?

• How do you keep track of sales tax?

• Do you accept credit cards? What’s involved with that?

Let’s handle these questions one at a time. Regarding art supplies…

Gathering art supplies for your particular craft can take a lot of time and expense. I’m a painter, so my advice won’t be worth much to a ceramic artist or wood sculpture. But if you’re a painter, yes, you can go to Michaels or Hobby Lobby, but don’t go before checking for coupons. Always keep your eye out for a sale. Sign up on art suppliers websites and get all those irritating emails that end up in your promotional email folder. But then LOOK AT THEM and use all the coupons you can. You can save big with coupons. As far as websites on line, my favorites and Cheap Joe’s and Jerry’s Artarama, but there are lots of them.

Regarding inventory…we check once a week on our stock. What I don’t want to happen is to run out of something and then have to WAIT to get more back in stock. Some things I order come from California so I could be waiting several days. For all the main things I use, I always have a duplicate in my studio. When I am done with one paint brush and toss it, I have another just like it and A) begin using it and then immediately (B) order another so I always, always have the next one waiting for me. Think ahead.

Regarding keeping track of sales, we use Quickbooks. And by “we”, I mean my wife Joy uses Quickbooks. We’d be in jail by now if my financial status depended on my math skills. Quickbooks is great because each quarter when it’s time to do sales tax, we just give the files to our accountant and BAM! They do their accounting magic and then tell us what we owe the state of North Carolina.

And lastly, regarding accepting credit cards…Absolutely yes. Hardly anyone uses checks anymore, so I try to make selling artwork as easy as I can for a potential client. There are many, many options for you when you want to enable your clients to use a credit card for a sale. Right now, we use Card Point, but you can use Square and many other credit card readers. Just do some research and ask questions at your favorite stores. Questions like, “How do you like using Square?” or “What credit card software do you use, and how do you like it?” You can also just go the easy route and use PayPal. You can log onto PayPal, write up an invoice, email it to your client and then they pay you all on line through PayPal. That works when you’re making a sale and can your your computer (even if you don’t have a credit card reader) but if you’re selling to someone on the spot, you’d want Square or an alternative.

Sometimes, important things to know are boring. Sorry. This is all info you need to think about though if you want to run full speed into the world of being a full time artist. Good luck!

So, you're thinking about art as a career?

A client of mine recently told me his high school aged daughter was interested in pursuing art as a career and asked me if they could visit Asheville and have me offer her some words of wisdom and encouragement. I love that. So yes, that meeting is set up for the family to come up the hill to Asheville and I'll try to be as sage-like as possible. 

In thinking about what I would suggest a young artist (ANY young artist) should do as they explore career possibilities, my first suggestion has to be to visit the River Arts District in Asheville. This is a really unique place, in that there are now well over 200 artists all within a square mile, with studios open to the public. I would suggest they spend the day exploring, and make a list of their favorite studios. Then maybe the next day, go back around and ask their favorite artists if they could set up an appointment to ask some questions. I don't know ANY artists here who would have a problem with that. In fact, everyone I know would be more than happy to help and more than honored to be asked. The artists in Asheville are actually selling their art to the public, and since that's the goal (I assume), their input and suggestions would be really invaluable. 

…everyone I know would be more than happy to help and more than honored to be asked.

So, if appointments are made to basically interview the artists, the questions asked are important, so I decided to come up with a suggested list of questions to ask if someone is just beginning to think about creating art as a career. Here is that list:

1) How long have you been an artist?

2) How long have you been selling your work professionally?

3) Did you go to art school? If so, where?

4) For a high schooler interested in pursuing art as a career, would you recommend art school?, if so, how would you find the right one? 

5) Would you mind critiquing my work at some point? (But don't ask that question unless you're really open to hearing criticism.)

6) What are the positive points and negative points about having an "open studio"?

7) How do you price your work?

8) Do you advertise? If so, what seems to have worked well for you and what hasn't? What percent of your budget goes to advertising?

9) How do you manage the business side? 

• Where do you have your art supplies?

• How do you keep track of inventory so you always have what you need?

• How do you keep track of sales tax?

• Do you accept credit cards? What’s involved with that?

10) Do you have your work in galleries? How do you find the right galleries?

11) Where do you get inspiration for your work?

12) What do you do if you get a mental block? 

I'll be forwarding these questions to my clients and their daughter in a couple weeks, but I thought it might be helpful to anyone else who is considering art as a career to spend a blog entry for each question. So, stay tuned. Soon to come...my own answers to all these questions, hoping to help anyone who is interested to make the jump from being an amateur artist to being a full time professional artist.