
Art Shop Diaries 1 – Early Thoughts & Planning
If you follow me on social media or if you are one of the 2 people I talk to regularly you will know that I announced last month that I plan to open up an art shop in the new year. I don’t have a specific date in mind just yet as I’m still setting things up and doing a lot of learning. I had some people curious about what I’m up to and how I’m doing things so I thought I’d share what has led up to the decision to open an art shop and some of what that process has looked like so far.
One of the first things people ask me when they find out I make art and see some of it is “do you sell your work?” and my answer since about 2011 has been no. For a number of years prior to that I did portrait commissions that I sold on Etsy and locally and while I certainly had fun drawing people and their pets, there were a lot of negative experiences I had with selling. What I learned about myself during that time is that the act of creating art is very tied to emotional expression for me, and so essentially drawing/painting things other people (especially people I don’t know) are telling me to draw/paint sucks the joy out of it for me. I ended up closing my shop back then and didn’t touch a pencil or paint brush for a few years because I needed time to creatively recover and feel inspired again.
When I did start making art again it was with a lot of play and experimentation where I came up with my current process using watercolour and ink. At that point I made the decision to protect my creative energy by continuing to refuse commission work but I did occasionally sell some of my original work when I was approached for it or posted it online. And I do love getting my art into other people’s hands and there’s just something special about hearing from those people years later and they still have my art displayed in their home or office. Knowing something that I made with my hands is decorating a space or bringing someone joy is an amazing feeling.
Selling original artwork is challenging in that it takes so long just to make one piece, and then you sell it for $500-$600 or so and it’s gone. I still do want to sell original art but I kind of got attached to the idea of doing prints. I did a limited run of prints for one of my paintings 10 or so years ago and I had those prints produced by a third party company. They sold really well and initially when I started thinking of starting my art shop that was the route I was leaning toward. Prints are so much more accessible for people to buy (like 1/10th of price), and then each finished piece of art I make can be sold to multiple people and in multiple sizes.
The more I thought about it the more realistic it felt to start up a little online shop for my art. I thought, finally, next time someone asks me if I sell my work I can say YES and direct them to my shop. I can start with a few pieces and expand over time. As I started to work out the logistics, the idea of ordering a bunch of prints from a third party supplier again felt tedious. Having to wait for proofs, paying higher amounts per print since I’m not ordering big quantities, all that extra shipping just to get my inventory and having to rely on someone else to produce it felt stressful. So, why not just rely on myself?
Ultimately I did a lot of research and priced out the options of having someone else print vs doing it myself and I made the decision to invest in a professional printer from Canon. It was important to me that it use pigment based inks, which are necessary if you want to be able to call your prints giclée (check out my shop FAQ for more info on what giclée means) or museum quality. It was also important to me that it not be too large. There are some huge professional printers that would almost need a whole room to operate. I don’t plan on selling very large prints (just 8 x 10 or 5 x 7 initially) and live in a really small house so that was a major consideration. The printer I chose (Canon Pro-300) will print up to 13″ wide, which gives me plenty of room to expand my size range as the shop grows. The ink for this printer meets the highest archival standards so I feel confident that what I’m sending out is something I feel good about.
Another avenue I could have gone down would have been print-on-demand services. The initial investment is nothing to my understanding, and it creates a situation where you don’t have to manage inventory or ship anything yourself. I have used these kinds of services to put my own designs on t shirts and things before just for personal use, and the quality was always hit or miss. If my name is going to be attached to something, I don’t want that association to be with something that is being created as a minimum viable product to turn a quick profit. I want to feel proud of everything I send out and have control over that experience. A print-on-demand service would also preclude me from designing the unboxing experience for my customers. When my prints are received I want it to be as personal an experience as possible and I want to be able to include little thank you notes and hand-sign my prints before they go out.
These were some of the early thoughts I had when deciding to start my art shop. I quickly learned that it’s a much more complicated process than I originally intended, especially with the way I’m structuring my shop. In the next post in the Art Shop Diaries series, I’ll talk more about some of the next things I decided on regarding shipping my prints, self-hosting my shop vs. using a service, testing out the print making process, and deciding which designs to include in my upcoming launch. I’m also working on starting a newsletter! So, watch for a sign up form soon if you’d like to stay connected with blog or shop updates.
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5 Comments
Betsy MacPherson
This sounds so exciting!!!!!! Looking forward to more!!!!
Wendy Blacke
Thank you so much Betsy! Plenty more to come 🙂
Jennifer Harris
Wendy, it’s really fun to be on this journey with you through this diary entry. Archival standards and giclee, I feel, would draw my attention if I saw those words in descriptions of your artwork. I cannot wait to have a print from your shop.
Jennifer Harris
I appreciate the process of art. I can see that there is such an advantage to doing this all on your own with room for expansion! I wonder if there are some galleries near you- or down where I am at that would catapult your launch?
Wendy Blacke
Great suggestion! Might be worth checking out. I get impostor syndrome in the gallery space. I am self taught so don’t have the education or confidence to back me up with the “real artists” out there.