"How to Create Sellable Artwork" FREE WORKSHOP

hey everybody hey guys uh we are super excited today we are uh we have an incredible uh webinar uh today and it is a gorgeous day here in athens georgia our new home we just moved to athens about two months ago and uh we've had a ton of rain since we've moved here much rain so much rain and we're from the desert so in arizona it like never rains you wake up it's sunshine every day of course it's hot dry dusty you know there's you know scorpions uh it's it's not you know all all fun uh but here we've had all this rain at first when we got here we're like wow what is this wet stuff coming from the sky and it was all so exciting and interesting but now we're like over it totally sick of the rain i am like ugh i i don't want to see rain again but um this was our first week of like sunshine and it's like 75 degrees it's just beautiful so so beautiful we can actually like walk around our property and we just got all these new trails so we're like riding our horses and yeah enjoying it super fun um and from what i understand it's not normally uh this rainy uh this is like a strange year for rain um no flooding just you know drizzle so we are just thankful for the sun and we hope that continues and it's warm and it's just a great day to be outdoors um so what else is going on well we want to hear from you we this is interactive this is live you can ask questions um and we will answer your questions uh we want to hear from you like where are you from where are you listening from what country do you live in uh just anything you want to tell us feel free to write it in the comment box and we love to hear from you for sure so let's see just a little bit about us tell them a little bit about you in case people don't know who who you are yeah or who i am so my name is dimitra and i've been a professional artist since i was 15 i've been selling my work through galleries and now i do it mostly like through social media and just sell like direct to my collectors i also am a co-owner of milan institute and we just teach together a lot and we teach the mastery program and i'm also really passionate about that and just helping other artists yeah so my name is ellie milan i'm dimitra's mom and uh we my husband john aka um dj freezie j uh he is uh we've both been professional artists for the last uh 25 years um we actually went to school here in athens georgia um we started out in savannah and we went to savannah college of art and design then we transferred to the university of georgia where we graduated and then we got our beginning here in athens and i started working in atlanta in an artist studio and i painted there and after about one year i went on my own and started we started our own business selling art and so we've been doing that for the last 25 years and then 10 years ago we opened milan art institute and because we really had a passion to help other artists learn how to sell their artwork how to create a profession out of what they're so passionate about because when we were starting out there was really nobody that mentored us or helped us we were kind of on our own to make all kinds of mistakes and you know it took a lot longer than it needed to because we we really didn't have anybody to follow and it was kind of frustrating um we would meet artists and most of ours we met weren't really selling their art they weren't that successful and then when we did meet artists that were they were very closed off to giving us any information and so we opened the school because we really wanted to help artists and we felt like it's a huge world out there there's a huge market and there's plenty for everyone so we want our passion is to really help artists come into their destiny come into who they really are designed to be um what they're put on this earth to do and be able to make a living at it because you you know most artists don't want that day job i know i didn't man i had so many weird day jobs i was i was a waitress i was a cashier uh bank teller i was a bank teller um and uh minimum wage back when i was a bank teller was five dollars and fifty cents an hour so every hour that would click buy in my life i go gay i just got five bucks and 50 cents plus the government got you know a buck 50 of that so it was like not good um anyway what were you talking about so you want to be an artist you want to be a professional artist so a big key to that is creating sellable artwork a lot of people feel like there's this huge mystery to selling artwork and you gotta have like you know all these like slick marketing things going on and you gotta you know do it just right and i mean it helps it helps a lot to learn all that and and that's definitely a part of the a part of the process but really if you have something that's sellable and you get it out there even just a little bit people will buy it and there will be people that want to make money off of you selling it so you'll have people even contact you that want to represent you or want to sell it for you um or want to because you know it's sellable um so creating a sellable product is first and foremost before anything and that's really what we're focused on today yeah it really starts with the art and if your art is just unique and it fits like what we're going to say then it's just it can sell itself so yeah and that's kind of your story that's i would say a huge key to your early success was you made very sellable artwork you made artwork that people wanted when they saw it they had to have it yeah um so tell tell people a little bit about your like i mean you started when you were 15 that's very young you actually started selling work before that right yeah i started painting like when they opened the school so i was about 12 and um but about like when i was 14 or 15 is when i really started finding my voice and creating like a lot of art all the time and then i started like once i found my voice and what i wanted to paint it it just like was really resonating with people and i just kept going with it so when you find something that resonates with people and you love doing it then it's just like the perfect match and you have to keep doing it until it's like more and more unique and so i think that's really what happened with me and then um once i started creating this art and selling it like a gallery like wanted to represent me and then i started working with publishers and then it just like kept going from there so what would you say um of all the elements to your art like all the different aspects to it what would you say makes it so desirable and so sellable i think most of all it's really the theme of the art and it resonates with a lot of people just like the combination of like women and nature or just mostly animals and how like just they connect with each other and i think a lot of people really like that and it's also symbolic like it can be personal to people my artwork can be many different meanings and i think that's like the main thing that really sells it i think the overarching theme to your artwork that that is um of course everyone's different and and what you know different paintings resonate differently with different people but overall a theme that that you know we see over and over again with your art and what people tell us is this feeling like anything is possible like all things are possible anything is possible the world of possibilities has opened up and it's like it's elevating it's people feel like they can do anything when they look at your art they can they can be anybody their their destiny is wide open to them and it's sort of something that's in in on a guttural level it's something you feel and i think it's because it's what's inside of you that's really what's in your heart and what you believe for other people and yourself and that just comes through in your art so and that's very sellable that is a really sellable um hope sells you know uh doom and gloom does not sell hope sells so uh really uh if you if you put out a hopeful message your artwork is going to sell yeah far better than um a negative message yeah you want to be positive and create art that's just uplifting yeah um so i would say for for myself i've had you know a much longer career so far right so i'm quite a bit older than you i'm old enough to be your mother um so anyway uh but uh in my career there's there's just been so many different um you know trails i guess and and so you know in the beginning uh i worked mostly selling to the decorative market because there's sort of two markets out there there's this decorative market in this collectible market and there's a lot of overlap between the two and when i first started out john and i sold mostly to that decorative market so it was you know a lot of like matching furniture and thinking of rooms and i'm really thankful for that experience because even in the collectible market when it's more about the connection and people really connecting um with that piece of artwork and and wanting something they can collect that's going to gain in value um it they still are putting it in a room that they live with they still are thinking of their colors and preferences and the way their room looks and feels it's not without that so i'm really thankful that i learned all that and we're going to talk a little bit about that in this webinar and um and you know i feel like i'm not saying this to to to brag but it's it's just to show that it's possible and it's possible for you too um we calculated it a few years ago john and i how many paintings we've sold over the years and i was shocked when i when we counted them all up and it was over 10 000 pieces of art in 25 years and so that that means we figured out what cells we figured out um you know how to create sellable artwork because we have 10 000 pieces that people wanted to buy there's a lot of artists that haven't even painted that many pieces and believe me if we've sold that many pieces we've painted a lot more that went in the garbage so um uh so really figuring out what sells is a big part of this and a lot of people say ah what a what a big sell-out you know you you're just trying to match the couch and that's not exactly it you still want to paint what you love to paint what you really want to paint what feels like your voice what feels like you but try to tailor that within the confines of what people want to live with so if what you want to paint is so far outside of what people want to live with you kind of have a problem you have to resolve that but most people paint things that people do want to live with it's just a matter of tweaking those small things that will make it sell really really well so um that's more what we're talking about is is not to completely radically shift your style or what it is you want to paint and go after just you know let's say you like to do portraits but now we're telling you better do landscapes it's we're not saying that um this all fits within what you already want to paint it's just tweaking it to a little bit to to get it really sellable so today we have um three things that we want to talk to you about about how to create sellable artwork so it's color theme and excellence so those are the three things that really create soluble artwork and we actually have a slideshow that yeah okay so the slideshow should be up now and you should be able to see this so um this actually talk a little bit about this painting because we we just have the have this well this what's the title is running the distance and this painting was like i kind of painted it um not kind of painted it well it was done like a few years ago like in 2016 and like even like just since the moment i painted it it's still my best selling painting and the original sold like right away in the beginning but now i just continue to make prints and tapestries and i saw it all the time and it resonates with so many people and people tell me like their stories and like what it means to them and it just happened like i wasn't really intentionally trying to create something that like had all this meaning to it but of course like this painting means something to me but it's so broad like it really can mean anything to like anyone who's looking at it they can have a different story and like find their own story in this painting so i think just the combination of the color and the theme really like that's why it just resonates with so many people yeah and and um also if as you're going along in your career if you sort of hit on something like this and you find um this really sells like for us early on it was like poppies like it seemed like no matter how we painted red poppy fields it was gonna sell we literally couldn't keep up with the demand like as fast as we painted puffy fields they sold um then it was cities then it was horses um so it's like these now while we painted horses we tried all kinds of other things as well but it was really the horses that took off so um sometimes you you can't predict these things but yeah things will just take off and and um the audience really will kind of connect and resonate with it and you have to watch for these things and it's you have to i think work with the audience and with demand um if you want to be a professional artist uh if you sorry i didn't judge you no go ahead well just like what she's saying like you wanted to work with the audience but also like it you still need to really enjoy it and love it and but you do want to like go with that like if if it's resonating don't just like switch to something else and just that was a one-time thing like this painting i had a lot of fun creating it and then it launched me into like other ideas where then i started repeating this idea of like a girl facing an animal and i did that with like lots of different animals and themes and those were like some of my most popular paintings yeah so it's really important to like just really pay attention to like what is resonating okay so um we're going to go through these sort of three categories color theme and excellence and we have groupings of slides of artwork and what you're going to see is the painting on the left is going to be sort of don't do this and the painting on the right is like okay do this so um the left one just remember is not so great and the one on the right is is a better example um so first with color um and i would say color is probably the most important thing that sells a piece i know that's not what artists always want to hear that it's all reduced down to color but color is deep if you really think about it color um brings about emotion there's certain colors connect with certain emotions color is actually frequency and and and the frequency that's in a room really affects people deeply so there's even movements just about color field painting and and color is is an extremely important and deep thing so don't overlook it as it's just color color is very very important um so here we have uh two examples and uh lilies so the painting on the right is your color should always be rich doesn't mean bright necessarily but rich so rich is clean color um you know your your water or your solvent didn't get muddy it's not all mucky and muddy and anemic it's rich um the warms are warms the cools are cools uh it's not all sort of dead on arrival it's rich it's alive you want color that is alive so that is very important you want color that transitions throughout the painting it's not same same so the painting on the left the color is you know same same it's the same green everywhere it's the same blue everywhere it's seen pink everywhere nothing transitions if you look at the painting on the right that red and that pink it transitions through the blue transitions from turquoise to kind of a royal blue to a purple so this is a good example of rich color versus anemic like not so great color and it's like more like muted and muted and it's not even up to date yeah okay and then with these two paintings like this is actually kind of opposite but um the painting on the right has like a lot of neutral color mixed like balanced with some bright color and contrast so it's like a lot more tasteful the one on the left is like a giant rainbow kind of mess it's all the same brightness and it's like primary colors like if you're going to have primary colors like that you have to do different transitions like different types of yellows different types of blues and then balance it with like neutral colors like gray or tan or whites so there's a good example and even though even though the painting on the right is let's say more muted it's still rich so rich doesn't mean bright um the painting on the left those aren't rich colors they are bright colors but they're not rich um okay so again kind of this similar idea you can do a rainbow meaning you have you know all the primary and tertiary colors represented you know both paintings have that but if you do that you need to mix with neutrals you have to have grays and browns and blacks and um you know sort of neutral tones so that you don't overwhelm people with this big rainbow um it just looks more sophisticated more tasteful so the painting on the left uh is is really bright color it's all equally bright there isn't too many neutral colors the painting on the on the right did i say rape before i think i said write twice anyway um the painting on the right is uh much more tasteful because of those neutrals um yet it's still kind of a rainbow it has you know yellow orange red green blue purple um and and it's not on a complementary theme and then here's some examples of just abstracts and uh like just with their color the one on the right is a lot of neutrals like both these paintings have neutrals but this the one on the right is a lot more updated and like more trending with today's colors and like tastes and it's like a lot of neutrals but there's still pops of like color so and you have like pink and green which are opposites so you can think of like compliments too and then on the left there's like it's just so 2008 yeah it's just not like really modern looking even though it's an abstract it's just the same colors everywhere it's just all kind of like one layer and so oh okay so well the one on the left um it has you know again that that rainbow that bright bright rainbow um and and all those colors are sort of equally important and so they're sort of fighting each other and there's this sort of color tension all the time and so it's it's not that pleasing whereas the one on the right is very rich color and there's an overwhelming amount of violet to contrast with the gold so it has this gold and violet theme with just a tiny bit of other colors put in there but it's much more of a sophisticated up-to-date palette that has intentionality to it like when you go to do your paintings don't just you know willy-nilly paint whatever and whatever comes out comes out and you have no intention to it like plan your palette realize color is important imagine the space that's going and imagine who who are these people that are buying it already think about your paintings as sold already imagine the people buying it um and what wallet is going to go on what where do these people eat where do they what do they do every day what's their vocation what you know how many kids do they have what's in their house and and it will really help you create a color palette that is something that people really want to live with rather than just like i like this color and i like that color and i like that color and that color let's put them all in one painting you know you you can you can create lots of paintings and each painting can be a color that you like but you don't have to get it all in one painting all the time and i wanted to add like within this purplish painting like with that purple it's just if you look closely there's like so many different shades of other colors within the purple so that's like a very transitioning color of doing absolutely color themes yeah okay so i think this is the last color slide um oh you're supposed to talk about this one well these are total opposites but like the one on the left is actually the good painting oh yeah i switched them it's like this one really has a mood to it and it's like overall kind of like a red painting but there's like lots of different shades of green on the left and then even in the clouds there's green so like it's just like hints of like neutrals but it's just like the way they did the color is very sophisticated and then the one on the right is like everything is so bright in your face and there's no like resting there's no moodiness to that one so if you're trying to like create a mood which i think that makes a painting more sophisticated if there's like an overall mood so just be careful with if you have bright color balance it with neutrals yeah so again we you know messed the slide up the the painting on the right in this case is the not so great one and the one on the left is the good one and so limited palette can be um a great tool for mood to evoke moodiness whereas on the other side even though it's a sunset we hardly feel like the mood of a sunset yeah it's and look at that red the same red that's in the sky is in the in the foreground middle ground and background the same green is everywhere it's just it's it's there's no intentionality to the color theme not enough mixed color it's like right out of the tube um okay so let's move on to theme so theme is really like the imagery that you choose um it could be the emotion or the mood that it's evoking it's really what the painting says or the voice behind the painting in a lot of ways do you want to talk about those ones sure um so the one on the left is there's obviously like both these paintings have stories but the one left is like a very confusing story like you want to figure it out but you don't know what it means like there's way too many symbols happening and so like those types of paintings just don't really sell because it's hard to like understand you feel like you have to be really smart to understand paintings like that the one on the right is like more simplified but it's still super interesting and there's definitely a story happening but it could really mean anything so like i could come up a story and then someone else will think of something else so these types of symbolic paintings are much more sellable yeah i feel like for me the open-ended one on the right i can create my own story and i have freedom to do that and i don't feel forced into there's a specific story in mind and if i don't figure it out i'm stupid you know i don't want to look at paintings and feel like i'm you know the dumbest person in the room i want to feel like free when i look at painting so uh that the one on the left is is far less sellable okay so you definitely want to be subtle with your themes um and you don't want to uh you know in this case you're you're expecting your audience to be too smart you know to figure out your riddle um and here you sort of are saying your audience is dumb and they can't figure it out so you have to beat them over the head with your message so you don't want to do either one you want to give your audience freedom leave things open-ended don't preach at people don't you know have an agenda in mind and and it's so specific and if they don't get it you know they've missed it so uh the painting on the left is you know sort of um forcing your agenda on somebody the painting on the right speaks the same message says the same thing but in a much more open-ended way that's subtle and you arrive at it and um that that's much more so and it really like evokes a feeling like the one on the right like has so much freedom in it like i really love that painting yeah okay so this is an example oh okay well go ahead okay so this is an example of um let's say two uh portraits of two women that are maybe thinking about similar things you know um let's pretend each one is you know waiting for their lover well the one on the left it's kind of like like smutty and you know like so specific and not it kind of has a negative connotation to it it doesn't have a super positive one it's not romantic it's very very specific it's extra realistic so extra hyper realism like this where you can't even tell if it's a photo or not is going to be less sellable than something that's looser so this painting on the right which is one of the most you know all-time best-selling artists ever uh is is romantic and he evokes this sort of romance around the same idea um but in a in a way where you you want to be that woman or you want to um you know escape there and so it's it's really important i know it's kind of a subtle uh different well no it's not actually that sort of a difference but you it's like you want to be careful about really the message that you're sending you can have the same theme but you want to speak it in a more romantic uh you know um hopeful way a positive way so with these two um yeah it's like a similar thing like which person would you rather be or which world like would you rather be in so the one on the right it's like you're invited to be in her world and it's really bright she's like looking to like a bright future and the color is really nice um we're talking about theme though and then on the left uh that girl it's just like kind of a negative feeling like it's a little bit edgy like maybe she's about to be hit in the face or she looks like really depressed and she's like thinking like really deeply and so it's just it's like too edgy to have like in a room so yeah it looks depressing it looks negative it looks like whatever you know she looks ashamed or um you know depressed she doesn't look hopeful to her future she looks negative to her future and yeah if you think about which girl you'd rather be it's like more on the right okay this is funny so so this is sort of um creepy in a bad way and then creepy in a good way so um so there's sellable creepy and then there's you know unsellable creepy so the one on the left it's like i don't know if it was intentional or what but you know she just looks like like she's biting her lip yeah cruised and heard yeah she looks vampirish and and those cornrows what's up with those cornrows in her hair um anyway uh and you know it's just off-putting too that that that little green emblem is just off a little it's like ah i just want to move it back but um yeah anyway it's it's just it's just a creepy painting um and then the one on the right is definitely odd i mean that is not a super attractive looking person um but in a very interesting way and it's it's edgy and it's it's fascinating and you know very well done with how you know that bird just kind of you know breaks into the different space and uh and even though that she still looks royal or regal or uh there's something yeah there's something very interesting and fascinating about it um so it's edgy it's it's uh it's provocative in a way but it it doesn't but it it takes you somewhere exotic or or nice or so it it works so creepy can work but it has to be done right so um with these themes it's just more about like the portraits like if you wanted to paint a portrait like really you just want to create like a person that where you feel like they could be anyone or someone looking at that feels like that could be them and so the girl on the left is very specific i think that's my second grade teacher it's just like it's in a time period she's like more modern looking it's just like really and also like the symbolism it's like you still can't really understand what it's really about but the one on the right is more sophisticated like it could be anybody she's really peaceful or like also looks very strong and so yeah okay again if you're too specific right like it's not gonna work um you know you you unless you're a big round mount rushmore fan or you live in is it north dakota south dakota i don't know somebody could tell us i can't remember which dakota but um you know you're not going to want to buy that painting but the painting on the right it could be california it could be it could be italy it could be mexico could be could be greece i mean that could be a million different places you know and it takes us somewhere um we want to escape somewhere so so that's really sellable plus the colors also with this is like a subtle thing but like with the walls it's like all walled off there's nowhere for us to go yeah the one on the right has like the open gate which you can like walk through it's like more inviting yeah and these are some tips i learned from publishers actually there's some just easy easy tips like you want pass that lead somewhere you don't want paths that lead to nowhere you don't again want to be walled in you need distance and space deep space is very inviting and very sellable if you paint a table put things on the table if you have a chair either put a human in it or put something on the chair like a jacket draped over it um and a stark empty table and an empty chair feels lonely and isolated if you paint you know let's say a water theme um you know uh like the ocean in the in the sand have some evidence of life you know wind uh a wave some kind of energy some sort of evidence of life if it's just sort of flat and dead and there's no humans in it um it it if you feel that isolation you feel that loneliness so um there's there's lots of uh you know different things again it goes back to hope and drawing people into a positive message and into life and that is really what people want to live with oh okay so the painting on the right um is uh you know they're messing with proportion intentionally um and it's interesting it's abstract it's very interesting um not everybody would want to live with this but there's a lot of people that would um i personally like it i like it yeah it's it's very interesting and it was done with intention um sort of the the messed up proportions the one on the left we know that person just did not measure they didn't they didn't do their homework they didn't oh my gosh you know it's really hard to look and never mind the lobster claw for a finger you know that that's like that's another issue but um so if you're gonna have something out of proportion it should be intentional not because you just need a few more art lessons um so um like a bouquet is a very like simple and um like so many people paint this but if you want to like sell it like you have to find a way to like make it unique if this is something you want to pick yeah so the one on the right is like a very interesting way to paint that and like i like that painting like i would live with it the one on the left is just like the color is nice but it's just really boring and kind of basic so we've seen that painting a hundred thousand times um the painting on the right yes it's unique um okay so also this is another interesting thing is there's this sort of wall or this space between viewer painting and audience and unless it's done very right you don't want to sort of break that wall most art that sells best invites you in to the painting you sort of disappear into the painting you escape you go somewhere that's why people love to watch movies you escape into the movie um and then every once in a while you'll watch a movie where the movie breaks into your space like if you've seen ferris bueller's day off every once in a while he'll turn to the camera and and start talking to you while he's in the shower and you're like whoa but it was done for effect um so in paintings though typically like if you look at the one on the left here we have this guy breaking into our space he's invaded my living room and he's looking down on me like i'm some sort of nobody like i don't i don't like that i don't want to live with that i don't want some man looking down on me in my living room um but the one on the right it's like a same vibe this sort of arrogance you know i guess but it's done in a way that you're invited in you're invited into his arrogance versus you know he's invading us with his arrogance so um it's it's it's a really important thing um you can play with breaking that that um that space between audience and and painting but it has to be done in a positive way and not a diminishing way in an interesting way so like if the guy on the left was painted in this loose style like the guy on the right where it could just be anyone not someone so specific and maybe he was like smiling at us then it would be a lot different right yeah because they're just like yo there's my dad smiling at me yeah maybe yeah um but it's it's tricky so you gotta watch for that okay so finally last part let's let's move on to excellence um so excellence really is a tricky thing it comes down to um skills it comes down to the elements of art really understanding the the elements of art you know you know line color uh you know shape things like composition things like um value um you know those important aspects to art uh i think that there's in fact this artist right here uh michael carson the one on the right he's self-taught he didn't you know necessarily go to uh a four-year art school um and you know spend sixty thousand dollars a year on his art education uh he's self-taught and look fantastic painter so uh it doesn't necessarily mean to achieve excellence you have to go to you know the most expensive art school in the world and spend you know half a million dollars what it means is you have to paint you have to paint a lot so you know i've painted you know nearly 40 hours a week my whole life so you you want to paint a lot and that's how you reach mastery is really by painting a lot and so if you just sort of dabble at it infrequently here and there the level of excellence that you might have might be limited um now of course if you do take some art classes uh you know locally or with us or anybody else you will get there quicker um but it's it's an important thing you can't expect to be a singer in a concert and not you know practice practice and have a good voice i mean there's not an opera singer out there that didn't have voice lesson after voice lesson after voice lesson um there's not a writer that just one day you know after he completed third grade said i think i'll be a writer i mean they worked at their craft they work at it so if you want to be a professional artist if you want to sell your paintings on a consistent regular basis you have to paint all the time you have to work at it that's where excellence comes in also learning from other people that know some things taking lots of art classes taking workshops and so it's really important so the one on the right even though these aren't realistic even though neither of these flowers are you know representational the one on the right was done with excellence you know that word in there sire it's just so interesting um the color the the the line you know he's he's got the elements of art sort of mastered in here even though intentionally it's this um very stylized flower the one on the left we know that's an amateur painter we all know that looking skill no skill no excellence so um the painting on the right is oh sorry i'm confused the paint on the right is the good one well if you can't tell no so this one has like definitely more space and more depth and um they're using like collage or using um line like a dot a lot of textures yeah the texture there's a lot of different like elements of art that they're using the colors really good just all of it combined is like a really good painting and you get a good feeling from this like there's like a light source in the corner it's just a positive feeling the one on the left to me overall feels like really dingy and just all on one surface like there's really no depth with that painting there's not like a mastery there's no mastery of the elements of art yeah it's just kind of it's all blurry it's the same it looks like they did it really fast so yeah and that's the other thing is you know you you can't just whip through something very quickly and expect it to to sell you have to put care you have to put excellence into it um so this is really clear um you know the one on the on the left you know it doesn't have a good composition um it wasn't done with excellence um the it looks amateurish the one on the right of course was done with excellence and has all those you know attributes yeah and the one on the right is a really good angle like the lighting's really good the feeling of it's really good she's like open and free like elevated the one on the left the color i mean just the way they painted it is um it's just like slightly out of proportion and the theme is sad it's just anyways compared with one on the right it's not as good so this is a good example of excellence versus not excellent so the one on the right of course there's a very fascinating interesting composition the color is the style i mean there's so many great things about the painting on the right is very unique it's done with excellence this is somebody that you know has spent years and years and years perfecting their craft you know that they have experience behind them you know that they aren't just dabbling in it they're not a flash in the pan they this is their career this is their life they've put their whole heart into it the one in the left you know they might have taken a an art a weekend art class and that was their second or third painting um you know maybe not that you can tell that they they haven't perfected their craft they haven't you know put excellence into it um and and excellence is is both attitude like you you you know have you guys ever painted hands you know or ears and hands ears feet and you're like everybody knows it's a hand i don't really have to paint all those fingers that's a lot of fingers right that's some that's not excellent you've got to paint those hands you've got to get in there with your brushes and render out the hands as if it was the eyes everybody goes right for the eyes ooh eyes yeah and the shiny spot and they love it and they do it with excellence but when they get to hands they're like you know it's a hand everybody knows it so excellence is attitude also you know putting the effort in putting those final touches not being in a rush um and then it's sort of over the long haul year after year after year getting better and better i'm still learning myself i have not arrived i think if you think you've arrived you you're you're just you know it's not a good a good place to be you don't ever want to arrive do you have you arrived no no so i haven't arrived either i'm i'm always learning i always i'm hungry for knowledge i'm hungry to perfect my skills to get my skills better and better you know every year i want to look back on my career and go wow my skills are better this year than they were last year you know that that's easier for me or i've now mastered that and now i'm i'm out to master this next thing so um now you can begin selling your art uh you know before you arrive right because we never really do arrive uh but there has to be sort of a level of excellence that's there for people to buy your work they have to really know that you know you know what you're doing so and that you like put care into it you really cared about every spot and it's like intentional and yeah and and i'm thinking back early early in my career even though i went to art school and i i did you know have some skill my i look back on that work and i'm it's like it's it's not good you know the skills were you know pretty bad but i still sold our work we still sold our work all the time so it's not like you have to have let's say you know the ultimate skill levels here and when you can start selling is about here but if you're here you've got to get your skills up there so there's a certain point where things will begin to sell for you but you don't have to actually have you know expert skill so um so this this is a great case of that so this last slide if we look at the one on the left it's really not that terrible it's not it's it's actually a sellable piece i think that artist could sell that piece the color is really good the color is good now there's some things wrong with it you know the horizon line cuts right in half um it it looks a little bit fast like it wasn't done um you know with a tremendous amount of time or care into it but it has a lot of the elements even though the skill is not at the same level as the one on the right the one on the right is very skilled very exquisitely done uh super sophisticated there's there's so many great things about the painting on the right uh and you know that they have perfected their craft the one on the left you can tell they're you know they haven't probably perfected it but it's still sellable so um yeah there's one thing that's like really important we didn't talk about yet but with like having a painting that's like sellable you want it to work up close and also far away so like with a lot of these paintings that are really good up close you can notice these really cool details that just like mean a lot and then also from far away it works and you understand it you know what's going on but if a painting like only works from far away and it's really boring up close then it's going to be harder to sell like people want to spend like all their time like looking at the pain and seeing things like differently every time they look at it yeah yeah the very best scenario is if you're painting we're hanging in a gallery and you're walking down the street and you looked in the glass windows of the gallery and you saw your painting in the back wall of the gallery it would grab you there would be enough contrast enough punch enough effect that it would grab you from off the street the collector would walk into the gallery stand 10 15 15 feet from the painting go wow and see something else and go oh my gosh that's that's incredible and then be invited to come up close to it and get this close to it you know two three feet away and see all kinds of details and stay captivated for a long time longer they can look at it like the more they're going to be like connected to it and invested in looking at it so if you create those rewards those that's what uh john my husband is so good at if you look at one of his paintings i mean i know he's my husband i like to you know of course we all want to brag about our husbands but he's truly a master because from far away his paintings will grip you and grab you and they're fascinating they're so interesting they're very very unique most of the time they grab you because you're like whoa i've never seen that before and then at 15 feet they're they're more fascinating you're drawn in you want to come even closer and then you get right up on it and you could stare at it for hours i mean you are there looking at all those little details that he's put that are deeply embedded in there that you couldn't see at 15 feet and so that is what really makes a piece uh extra sellable yeah that's the cherry on top that's the cherry on top and not every not all of us have all these things that we're talking about but hopefully these tips these clues the this information has been helpful to you um we're saying them not from a textbook or you know from some like thing we read or read online or you know five ways to sell your artwork you know it's this is this is really our our experience this is our life this is what we've learned through our own careers these are this is information we've gathered over the years and um of of living it so um we we really hope that that has helped and um and that you as you apply these things as you're thinking about your own artwork um that you're motivated to incorporate some of these things into your own artwork and i think it's also really important to kind of take a um an evaluation of of yourself and and think okay i really want to be an artist i really want to be a professional artist i love to paint and that's that's really where i think it starts is you know how do you know if you're just sort of a hobby artist versus a professional it comes down to passion and that's why at our school we have no prerequisites we're probably one of the only art schools out there that doesn't require any prerequisites i don't really care if somebody can paint or not paint before they come to our school we've had all of it i've had people that have never touched drawing never drawn never painted in their entire life but they want to be an artist they want to be able to do it they want they look at paintings and they go wow i wish i could do that they're passionate about art they're passionate about self-expression and being able to put their ideas on a canvas and then it's just a matter of learning that skill so i think it's really really important to think about you know your passion level within art how passionate about it are you is this something you love to do when you were when you were painting or thinking about it is it something you really love and then it's just a matter of doing it and doing it as often as you possibly can um until you're just like a painting machine and uh and and then taking some classes and learning you know the things that maybe you don't know how to do and and always be willing to evolve always be willing to grow um and and then you can do it you can sell your art you can sell your art all over the world we live in a day that there's really no better time to be alive as an artist you you can sell your artwork all over the world and and you you can be in touch with your audience just like that through the internet it's it's incredible when we were first starting out it wasn't like that it would be like you know do a painting wait for the paint to dry you know take a picture of it um you know uh have have a have a slide of it we didn't have digital cameras you know physically mail it or take it to the gallery it'd sit on the wall you know then it would sell only people who when the gallery saw your art yeah yeah and it wasn't like you know spread all over the world how many people have seen running the distance do you think hundreds of thousands yeah i really don't know but it's it could be even over a million i know that it's like been in like several different countries all over the world yeah and also like once you guys start like selling your art and just even the first few times like creating it just you just like really fall in love with it and it just becomes really addicting because you know like other people are connecting with what you're creating so i think like that's a huge motivation is once your art is getting out there and being sold you're just going to really fall in love with it even more mm-hmm but we is there any questions to answer there yeah let's answer a few i know i feel like we've done all the talking okay so um stephanie ribiero uh is a stay-at-home mom with her daughter and she's currently in art education school and she said she'll be attending milan institute after she graduates but she wants to know how do you find time to create and she wants you know she was wondering if ellie you could give tips on maintaining a family life and work and painting at the same time um yeah so uh that's good i i painted um i had four four children and they were all super young ones and they were only two years apart so um they were you know two two four six and eight and they were one three five and seven um and so we had you know at least two kids in diapers almost all i felt like i had diapers dealing with diapers half my life but um so yeah i mean i definitely we know all about you know um children and and and trying to balance everything um also running you know multiple businesses you know the art school and my art art business also and balancing all that with with a family and homeschooling and like everything so um i would say that you know writing down a schedule and scheduling in your painting time is really important uh whether that's you know at nine o'clock after the kids go to bed until 11 30. if it's written down that you will every single night for an hour and a half paint you've got it so you got to write make a schedule and write things down and schedule in painting time and then obey your schedule your schedule is your boss and i make a schedule every sunday night before my head hits the pillow and that is my schedule for the week and i obey it uh because i know if i get off track and i i you know get lazy about things and i don't want to do it then i i sort of you know fall behind in my goals so i think that if you're passionate about art and you have you know stephanie all this um desire to do it even though you have um you know small children to take care of you can still do it you just have to schedule in your time and be disciplined and involve your kids paint with them um let them let them kind of be a part of it share your life with them yeah and ellie you actually had a post recently on your instagram where you talked about five habits all artists should have so maybe that's something stephanie that you would want to go and check out uh on her instagram which is ellie milan and that way you can learn those and you can read a little bit more about the tips that ellie describes on there also i just want to say one last thing about that as i remember when i was young um feeling guilty about should i should i really really pursue my life as an artist or should i you know take care of these children and a lot of my friends were stay-at-home moms and and you know raising children and i would kind of compare myself to them because i wanted a career and i would sort of feel kind of guilty about and i just remember one day i just clicked at my head and i i just made this shift and i realized i had three girls you know we have three three daughters and one son i have these three girls and would i want my girls to watch me live my life not pursuing my destiny not pursuing my dreams and putting my dreams on a shelf for them i felt like the best mom i could be is a successful mom and a mom that pursued her dreams and a mom that went for it and that they could watch their mom you know really go for it and really uh because these dreams are inside of me for a reason they're they're my dreams given to me like a gift and it's my duty it's my obligation to live them out to to step into my destiny and i'm so glad i made that choice i'm so glad i didn't put my dream of being an artist on a shelf because you wouldn't have watched me i'm glad you didn't either yeah because and and it's do you feel neglected no i don't yeah i mean i we still spent plenty of time together and because they're painting and like full-time artists we were always around them because you were working at home so it's and then i feel like like also she involved us like with painting like we were allowed to paint in the studio with him at the same time so i think that's also something you could do with your kids and just like involve them more if you can okay so uh another question that a few people are having is how do you price your art well that's a good question that's a great question well um you want to like just when you're just like starting out it's different for like different levels or where you're at in your um your artist's career but in the beginning like if if people are wanting to buy your work and there's like a demand for it then just sell it like the first few paintings sell them at like what is comfortable with you like the amount of time just think about how much time you put into it like how fast you could do one and then um i don't know it's kind of different for each person but then yeah i definitely want to address that though because because what happens what i've seen a lot of times is somebody says oh i put six months into this painting and they sat there with their tiny brushes and they and they drew with paint and they spent six months with their tiny brushes on a painting and it's like their most precious thing they've ever done and they want to sell it for fifty thousand dollars and so you that that's not gonna work you can't sit there and calculate i've spent half my life painting this painting and so it's worth this amount of money really there's demand and then there's and then you know your your price point meets that demand so what you said about demand is right on like as it gets like more people are wind by you can like slowly raise your prices and the best way to get those skills is to paint quantity to paint quantity to do lots and lots of paintings and don't spend more than i would say 15 hours on a painting you should produce two paintings per week that would be a great goal and then you don't have to sell them for a ton of money so you can start out selling anywheres from i know this might sound like terrible but you can start selling at you know fifty dollars for a painting up to let's say 300 if you're just getting started and there's zero demand zero good yeah right you can sell at that low point and when they start selling selling selling and you're selling like three four a week at you know 150 bump up your prices to 350. then you'll sell maybe a little less for a while your skills are going to get better you'll start selling more and you build your prices pretty soon you'll be selling your artwork for 1200 1500 then 2 000 then 3 000 and thousand and then twenty thousand so it it you you want to find price points that meet demand if you have zero demand start cheap and and the idea of um you know uh i wouldn't sell like a big giant 30 by 40 oil painting for 50. but if you have a smaller painting um you know that could be a good price point whereas the bigger ones maybe it's more like 500 if you're just starting out now if you have lots of experience and you've already sold some work then you probably already know your price points um okay so so we have a couple questions about um the entering like how to approach galleries or collectors to start selling artwork and establish a link and also some people are wondering how to build a client list of collectors and if you can enter a collector's market while selling in the decorative market uh and does it affect your prices does it devalue your work okay super great questions um what i would say is um that the best way to sell your artwork to let's say the art world where it's uh you're appealing to galleries um you're appealing to collectors that are are bona fide art collectors that collect other artwork um you are uh if you are appealing to that crowd you've got to have a cohesive body of work you have to have a style you have to have a voice you have to be saying something and and it's on a more consistent basis the level that you're going to be painting out is going to be much higher that otherwise you won't appeal to that crowd if you have a hodgepodge of you know 10 paintings no gallery no collector is going to really take you serious um so if you want to be taken serious as a career artist that this is what you do you're serious about it you're a real artist you have to have a cohesive body of work when i say a body of work that is a minimum of 30 paintings like you are not in business until you have 30 paintings so when we teach our one year program uh to to uh people who want a career in art we the portfolio section which comes at the end of the year is about uh creating a portfolio of 30 paintings because i say you're just not even in business until you have 30 paintings some artists see 10 paintings in the corner of their studio stack up and they start to feel like a big fat failure you're not even started yet you need at least 30 paintings don't get nervous until you've hit 75 paintings stacked up in the corner okay so somewhere between 30 and 75 is a good body of work and a good inventory if you have more than 75 that's all cohesive not a hodgepodge but a cohesive body of work you're just not putting it out there enough not enough people are seeing it so um that is first and foremost is you need so then it goes back to well how do you find your voice that's a very important how do you develop your style how do you find your voice well in order to do that you have to know how you want to paint if it's a drudgery to go into your studio every day then you're probably not painting in your style your style should just flow out of you and be be effortless you should be excited you should look forward every day to go to the studio it shouldn't be labor and like a drudgery so uh finding your style really comes down to experimenting with lots of materials understanding your temperament understanding you know we have a whole section in our one year program all about how to find your voice and develop your style and it's it's a really great thing but you can't really find your style or or your voice until you have the skill because if you're limited in what you can paint then you start choosing what you paint based on your skill like oh i'd really like to paint that but i can't it's too hard for me so if you have that problem where it's like i want to paint that but it's too hard for me then you just don't have enough skill yet and you have to develop your skill which comes down to drawing and oil painting you got to know oils and you got to know you know drawing because oil is king oil is what really sells artwork even if you work in mixed media and you know acrylic and lots of other things you want a final layer of oil so that's why the first part of our program is all about skill building and getting those skills so that then you have all the tools to know how to develop your style so once you're there you got your portfolio of 30 plus pieces that's all a cohesive voice a body of work to appeal to galleries you know then uh i think it's just a matter of promoting and getting it out there and doing that consistently and it will definitely catch for you now the decorative market you can you can sell to both i think if you work completely two different um styles like you have this sort of hodgepodge of decorative work and then you have sort of your let's say more serious fine art type work you probably want to use a pseudonym um you know for the decorative work because i think it could probably um you know harm you if they're that different so using a pseudonym is perfectly acceptable and that's a good way around that so hopefully that was a that was a i could talk honestly i could do like three webinars on that question but i think we're running low on time so um uh okay so another question that a lot of people are having is on selling abstract artwork and how to make like sellables specifically i know you guys talked about this in the slides but could you just give like a few bullet points on like how to make sellable abstract art so there's definitely good abstracts and bad abstracts or sellable abstracts and non-sellable abstracts and i think it comes down to depth yeah really like if if your abstracts have a lot of depth and just like there's a lot of space where you can just really go into it then it's going to be a lot more sellable also having a focal point like if your abstract has no focal point it's going to be i think not as sophisticated so plus color color yeah the color the line like i think actually creating abstracts are like it's like it's the highest form of art yeah and it's it's probably the hardest like just to do a plain non-objective abstract but if you can like they are very sellable yeah for sure okay uh so just two more questions and then we're gonna finish question period um so another one from sandra jones is is there a size of painting that sells better than other sizes well that's a good question yeah yeah um i think like uh probably like the medium size like 30 by 40s or 24 30s i think like actually size doesn't matter like so much but if you paint i think bigger paintings do sell better if you sell like if you make giant paintings like a 48 square something that takes up an entire wall like then you're going to be creating for people with a lot more money and yeah you want to yeah you want to think about it your audience like if you're making tiny paintings like you're going to sell them for less so just yeah so typically people that live in in cities and you know they have smaller spaces smaller apartments they're going to want to buy smaller um and we're saying small paintings are anything from like an 8 by 10 up to a 16 by 20. that would be like a small painting um a painting that's medium is like a 20 24 24 30 up to like a 24 36 um i would say or 30 36 but like a large painting's maybe 30 40 36 48 48 square 4860 that's a large painting so um really you you i think overall what we tell students in portfolio is to have a mix so have some small paintings have some medium and a few large pieces you don't want a lot of large pieces but at least you know let's say four large pieces and that way you have a wide view but also depends on your voice what if your your thing is to paint small scale realism if you do small scale realism then your paintings are going to be small what if your thing is to do big corporate abstracts for big corporate buildings well you're going to want to paint very large so it's very different person to person um so there's no like uh this size is the most sellable size that doesn't uh exist i would say horizontals typically sell better than verticals because the spaces they go in are more horizontal that's a good point yeah but artists like to paint verticals more i do i like to paint because they're easier compositionally okay last question this is from vidi rhoda and it is do we need any experience needed to start the milan mastery program uh for one year uh i am a beginner so can i join even if i have uh only a general idea about painting yeah that's a great question and um no you need zero experience um first let me explain because some people might not know what the mastery program is um so we developed this about six years ago um it's we've carefully dimitri and i we have like poured over the curriculum we have like really gone through the curriculum of this one year course and we purposely made it a one-year course because what we wanted is artists who are serious about becoming a professional artist even if they have zero experience to be able to come in and learn how to draw a line how to draw a line properly to at the end having a you know 30 plus piece portfolio with a website a marketing strategy a one-year plan and an action plan on how to promote and sell their artwork so that is if you think about that never drawing before i'm going to learn how to draw a line to i'm going to graduate with a website an action plan and you know a beautiful body of work in my voice and my style can you imagine that's a huge task and we did it we created up created this this um curriculum that takes you through all of that it's intense it requires about 20 hours a week of work to do it in a year and it's online so you can do it anywhere in the world um and uh you know really for for very little money especially compared to art schools that are out there so it's a really fantastic program and it's a hundred percent designed for somebody who has a passion for art to want to become a professional you can come in with some skills you can come in with already you know working at art but you can also join if you have zero skills and zero experience and we have equal amount of success with both my most favorite favorite stories of of previous students are ones that have never touched paint before in their entire life have never drawn anything um and they but they just their heart is just full of belief that they they could do this and hope and literally they come they work hard they dedicate themselves and they graduate selling their artwork we have countless stories of people like that and it's so rewarding because we are like sort of anti-elitism we're anti um that you know it's only talented people who are born with it that can make it um i think that's a false idea i think that that's garbage and i think that anybody with passion with hard work with determination with a desire to succeed can take our curriculum and graduate a professional artist and make a living selling their artwork from anywhere in the world we have people um in in very difficult um countries with very difficult economic situations that are graduating our program and selling their art actively and revolutionizing their finances so uh we're super proud of this program and she absolutely can join as long as she's willing to work hard and you know has a passion for it that's that's really what you come in with you come in with hard work determination passion and we take care of the rest so um so that's our mastery program yeah and actually our our mastery program we have a new registration that actually opens today it's actually open like right now as we speak um it's open and uh we're taking students um right now so there's a link under the video um in the comments and under the video yeah and so our registration is open we we um uh you know we really are are about quality and having quality control and we also have this coaching system that goes with it well go ahead oh okay well you guys have the option if you want to have a coach and this is like your personal coach that you can text whenever you want if you have any questions while you're in the program and also once a month you have zoom calls with them so you get to see them like skype and you have like a group meeting with other people in your group so that's really cool you just really get to connect and all these artists who are coaches have like really successful careers as artists and they've taken our mastery program so they just they know the mastery program very well and and they've all been they've been through they've been through it emotionally they've been through it um you know all the lessons they know they know it really well they're all selling their artwork on a consistent basis so your coach is not just you know um some artist they're they're an artist that's actively selling their artwork and and is successful so that is really important and it's only an extra 50 a month but i have to say that space is really limited because we really want the quality of the coaching to to be there so we we are limited on how many students we can take um and offer the coaching so last i heard uh we had only a little over a hundred spaces left for coaching so if you really want a coach i highly recommend that you register now because odds are really good that there won't be enough spaces uh very soon so um i if it's something you're sure you want to do i would sign up like today um and then don't we have like a special offer also for registering just for the next 48 hours yeah so because we just opened it like it's actually pretty exciting like while we were in the middle of this webinar they opened yeah like like just a few minutes ago they opened registration um and so uh for if you um register in the next 48 hours um you uh get a 200 uh gift card towards any instructional video that we offer so you can jump right in to learning um you could take the oil painting essentials you could take the drawing courses portrait drawing and you get to have those instructional videos you know for life they're they're a lifelong thing lifetime access yeah and you know something i forgot to mention on the mastery program it's designed to be completed in a year if you put 20 hours a week of work into it you will complete it in a year and that's the pace that we we set it at but you actually can do it in your own time frame and you have up to a full two years to complete it and so you you pay monthly only for the 12 months and then you basically get the next 12 months with no payments at all so you have two years to complete it or to refresh information or go back to information especially when it comes to the marketing because it's loaded there's so much marketing material um we believe that students will want to go back to that material time and time again so um yeah so also like for the mastery program to sign up like we only have a window of seven days until um the 21st where like you can you're able to join and sign up for the mastery program so there's only a window and then we close that and then and then the next year starts so your start date if you sign up with this window it starts april 6th yeah and pretty soon and the moment you register you'll get a email from us where you get orientation videos and so we go through how to set up your studio um what kind of materials you need and you have two weeks to sort of gear up and get ready and we give you lots and lots of content on how to prepare yourself and how to get ready so it's really um fun and if you sign up for a coach you'll meet your coach you'll get a video from your coach um you'll connect with your coach um on messenger and so that all happens even before the start date so by the time you start on april 6 you're totally ready most students are like like can hardly sleep the night before because it's like they're they're so ready their studios set up they got all their art supplies their um and that's something else we didn't mention is we actually have art kits that everything that you need for the first section which is drawing and oil painting is in that kit like everything that we use in the videos is is there in one place um and and it's a pretty good deal it's not that it's uh it's it's actually very competitive to anything out there online so uh we highly recommend that you get that kit you can of course maybe you know you already have some of the supplies or you know you want to buy them yourself or it's in a country that we don't ship to but we ship to all the us and then western europe so we don't ship to australia or like india or africa yeah yeah but not because we don't want to it's just shipping issues um so anyway those kits are really good and then in the mixed media section there's another kit but you can get that later um so um is there any other um oh yeah okay um so we're having a informational night about the mastery program on wednesday this wednesday at 11 a.m eastern standard time so basically the same time that this webinar started and that's just basically an information live broadcast where we can answer questions it's going to be on our facebook page the milan art institute facebook page so um if you are you know just wanting more information you can attend that um and answer questions yeah we'll answer questions about and talk more about the mastery program we'll probably have some coaches on there too that will talk and maybe some students some current students that are online so that'll be that'll be really great that's coming up this wednesday um so and um you know we're just so thrilled that that we're able to reach people you know all over the world and uh and be able to teach them it's a real honor to us we love it we love what we do um we we are just constantly just exhilarated by you know all the feedback and the stories we hear and hearing all these people selling their artwork and and the success that they're having and how how their lives have really changed because if you think about it you know they were in this in this job or or in this um path in life where they they had this dream to be an artist but they didn't have the way to actually achieve it and then they actually see it working and they actually see their skills growing and they actually know wow i found my voice it's it's life-changing it's it's invigorating and to know that we get to play a part in that is just you know it's an honor and we just we just love it and so um we've had in in this registration we had over uh 1700 people on our waiting list in fact it was 1724 people on our waiting list to register for this program and we were just blown away we just like yeah it's the most we've had so far yeah and so we're just so happy that this um that that people recognize how great this program is because you know we we're really proud of what what we've put together and um you know it's just really a dream come true for all of us so um anyway so uh we i enjoyed this webinar i like looking at her and talking about what sells and you know i guess what i loved so much about this webinar is dreaming with you and thinking of all the people that are gonna be able to sell their artwork and and you know um you know do it more professionally and you know more full-time i hope this really inspired you guys to just like really go after your dreams and just start selling your work and just painting a lot and getting skilled yeah thank you yeah thank you and um hopefully we'll see some of you wednesday bye bye

Channel: Milan Art

Views: 137,960

Keywords: abstract art, abstract painting, acrylic painting, art, art that sells, art videos, art work, artwork, dimitra milan, dimitra milan painting technique, milan, milan art, milan art institute, milan art institute reviews, mixed media art, mixed media painting, oil painting, painting, tahlia stanton, tahlia stanton painting, webinar, art workshop, sellable art, sellable artwork, create sellable art, dimitra milan art

Id: d1PjbSSzf8U

Length: 79min 2sec (4742 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020