r/artbusiness

Hi, I’m launching my shop soon and I’m kind of freaking out a bit.

This is my first time ever selling products from my paintings (prints, stickers, tote bags), and pretty much nothing turned out exactly how I imagined.

The tote bags look okay, but they’re much thinner/more see-through than I expected, so they don’t feel very “premium.”

The stickers came as large sheets instead of individually cut, so now I have to cut a huge amount of them by hand (I might try to get them re-cut though).

And for the prints I waited almost 3 months for them, and now I’m not fully happy with the layout. I made the borders too big, and some of my square artworks don’t look great on A3/A4 formats.(I even did four test prints, but they were all of the same painting, which happened to fit the print size well…)

I also feel like every small business has beautiful packaging with custom paper and everything, which I don’t have yet, and I’m worried it might come across as me not caring about my customers.

Did your first batch of products turn out the way you wanted? Or did you also have to learn things the hard way like this. And do you think it’s unfair to sell something now, knowing you’ll improve it later?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences 🥲

Hello everyone,

I’d really value some perspective on a situation I’m dealing with.

I run a gallery with a fairly clear curatorial line. We focus on work that meets a certain technical and conceptual standard, and that also performs well commercially.

Recently, because of an important relationship with a collector, I agreed to take in three acrylic paintings depicting marine animals from an artist whose work doesn’t really align with the gallery. The pieces aren’t objectively bad, but when placed alongside the rest of the program, they feel noticeably out of place in terms of both execution and concept.

In fact, within the context of the gallery, I feel like the contrast makes the works read as more naive than they might otherwise, which ends up affecting not only how this artist is perceived, but also the overall coherence of the other artists I represent.

To add context, the current owner doesn’t have any real attachment to these works. They were acquired as part of a home purchase, so neither the previous nor the current owner is particularly invested in them. They simply want to sell them.

Now I’m in a position where I need to sell them, mainly to maintain that relationship, but I don’t feel comfortable fully standing behind the work as part of the gallery’s identity.

I’m considering a few options:
– Placing the works in a different context or partner space where they might fit better
– Having an honest conversation with the artist about potential adjustments or reformatting (I consider some parts of the paintings would look better in a smaller format)
– Trying to sell them more discreetly, outside of the main gallery narrative, although most of our sales come from walk-ins, so this isn’t as straightforward

Any advice on how to handle this? Thanks in advance

I'm an oil painter, worked for galleries and did commissions locally for quite a while. I've just started making videos for Youtube. I wonder if anyone has attracted collectors doing this.

We are a small gallery and art supplies shop in the Scottish Highlands. We have been approached by a rep from Rosa which is a Ukrainian art material manufacturer trying to gain an entry into the UK market.

Does anyone know anything about them, such as the quality of their paints and brushes and how reliable they are?

I launched a punch needle initiative @asma_rugs_collecive by training women punch needle skills, plan is to make custom punch needle rugs, I am based in Pakistan but I want to market the rugs in USA.

I plan to do collaborations to get the word out, what type of people should I look to collaborate with ?

FYI: I also have an apparel business and do business with emerging streetwear brands in USA, I was thinking to collaborate with them in the earlier phase. For example, is it a good idea to make a rug of someone’s brand name or logo and to tag them in order to get their attention, instead of texting them over socials.

I recently got an email back from Vograce with my order's proof/mockup. When I download the image attachment it has the correct colors, but when I just click on the preview of it, it's significantly brighter/greener.

Is this normal/I can go ahead and verify it? This is my first time ordering from Vograce.

Looking to know if anyone has recs for cataloguing and archiving jobs, or know of companies/individuals that are hiring right now in the LA area

I'm looking to decorate my house and I love this style of artwork.

Ive grown my art page to about 7k and I really want some brand sponsorships! Its hard to discern what companies are worth contacting. Does anyone know of or have a list of companies who work with small business artist content creators? I am interested in paid brand deals, but free product would be cool too.

Scenario: If I started doing custom paintings on tote bags, for example, and ordered the bags online to paint on them and started selling these bags, am I breaking any laws on copyright or ownership or something?

because technically the bag isnt mine,, but the painting is, and i DID buy the bag, but i didn't create it

Another scenario: If I started a commission sample/template that provides book covers/sleeves for bookworms for their favorite books, am I liable for anything? I won't be producing/printing the sleeves, its a commission service and I will have to make sure it's not official art or anything like that. Will the publishing companies come for my throat?

I commissioned an artist to draw a full body on a piece of clothing. The artist did not show me the draft and drew straight on. Initially, I felt uncomfortable asking the artist to make changes on this detail as it would mean they would have to recolor the face again hence I only asked them to make slight changes on other places(such as coloring certain places more, or making something darker). The artwork is quite small and it would be hard to make more changes, but they also did not state how many times I could ask to make changes

However, I was extremely unsatisfied with the face of the person they drew on the art and finally decided to ask them to alter it slightly to make it closer to the reference photo I sent them. After altering, the face looks worse than the one they drew before and I felt quite disappointed so I asked them to make changes again and the artist seemed annoyed, am I wrong here?