Please help I'm a noob artist

[Afrofairy96]

Hi everyone I mostly draw for fun & am pretty new to the world of professional artist & digital art in general. So to explain my situation, I saw an artist with a fairly large audience make a post on Twitter talking about how you can draw simple things to get out of art block & it can still turn out good (summarizing here) so I shared a picture of a fish I drew as an example thinking nothing of it then went to sleep.

I got up today and I gained about 30 new followers & ppl asking me about commissions & wanting prints of the fish. This was very shocking because I've never had nothing like this happen to me before I know nothing of commission & I'm not all that familiar with making prints or the steps to take to make sure I have the best quality when I make them. I feel like such a fool!

I'm completely lost & I feel like this is an opportunity I should take advantage of & not waste but I don't even know the first steps to take. I also don't know any professional artist in RL to trouble with my concerns. I know there are a lot of pro artist who use this site so pls help a noob like me out, I need some guidance 🥺

[snailienz]

For comissions, I reccomend doing a similar artwork and timing how long it takes you to do each part (like sketch, lineart, color) then multiply that by the rate per hour you want to be paid (at least minimum wage!), round up to nearest dollar for your price for each level of completion!

For prints, I suggest rebubble or society6 if you're just starting. Its harder to print your own stuff, but I suggest eventually moving to that when you have more of an audience!

[ninjashira]

First off all, congrats on the attention and the followers! A sudden influx of popularity can be a little overwhelming at first for sure.

If you want to quickly and easily sell prints of your fish, you can do it through websites like Society6. You just need to make an account and upload a high-resolution image file, and they will take care of printing it and mailing it to the customer for you. They can even print it on canvas, pillow cases, cell phone screens, whatever! They do take a cut of the profits, but especially if you don't have a quality printer and shipping supplies yet, it would probably shake out. If you get to the point where you're doing a LOT of prints, then eventually it will be more cost effective to get your own color laser printer (which is more expensive up front than an ink jet printer, but you save so much money in the long run by not having to buy overpriced ink) and a Stamps.com account for easy and affordable shipping.

If you do get to the point where you're shipping your own prints, always make sure you mail art in a sturdy cardboard mailer, sandwiched between layers of cardboard or chip board, so it won't get bent by the postal service. And no matter how many "do not bend" stickers you slap on a package, if it can be bent, it will get bent. And ship with tracking every time so shady customers can't claim they never received their order - USPS first class with tracking is under $4, and is worth it.

As for commissions, the most important thing is to price yourself fairly. Don't undersell yourself, it diminishes your own value and makes it harder for other artists to claim their own value if everyone else is undercutting each other. Charge AT LEAST minimum wage. If it takes you eight hours to do a picture, multiply that by at least your minimum wage.

When I'm doing a commission over $100, I require half the payment up front before I even start a sketch. Then when the image is done, I'll send it to the client with a big obnoxious watermark on it. After they send me the other half of the payment, they get the full-sized unmarked image to do with as they please. I only do very minor revisions, and only if they ask nicely. If they forgot to include something important in their request, that's on them, not me.

If you have any hard boundaries about content you are not willing to draw, stand by that and don't compromise yourself if someone tries to push back on that. Your boundaries are worth more than their money.

Best of luck to you!

[cleo_san]

Congratulations on your first commission(s), of hopefully many more to come =)

@snailienz has already mentioned the most important stuff. Look how long you take for an art piece and set up a store like redbubble.

I'd also recommend you to set up a free account at www.ko-fi.com, it's sort of a tipping jar for people who like your stuff.
If you invest in Ko-fi gold you can easily set up a commission page on it (as an example: my page. I enabled the commission feature, it costs about ~6$/Month, it is worth it though, especially when you already have commission requests. You can set up prices for your commissions and the shipping costs and offer add-ons to original artworks like a second character or, I don't know, a special metallic embossing =) )

Also the probably most important things:

• Request upfront payment!!!!!! (You don't want to draw a whole artwork and then the client suddenly vanished/does not want to pay). Always request upfront payment (except when you are talking sums of more than 100$, then 50% upfront is fair, too)
• Make clear if there is anything you do NOT draw (like NSFW, or gore or anything else you feel not comfortable with )
• also, it helps to tell your clients that the artwork is for personal use only. Some might want to use it commercially and this is a whole different matter regarding the price =)

I hope this helped you a little bit - good luck!

[apexdraws]

How big is your fish image? For print, images usually need to be at least 300 dpi and/or a large canvas size. You can always get an account on a POD site like Redbubble or Society6 and upload the image there. Redbubble will let you preview it so that you can see what it would actually look like on different products (including wall art). I'm assuming other POD sites are the same.

Also be wary of very bright colors in prints. They can look great on a monitor but washed out once printed, because a printer can't always replicate them. I'm assuming your image is in RGB; if you switch it to CMYK you can see what it might look like as a print.

For commissions, only take a few at a time. You can make a small document outlining what you will/won't draw, your prices, and examples of your art so people know what to expect. Also, when I took comms I used Paypal invoices for it. That method offered protection for myself as well as my client.
It's common for clients to pay 50% upfront and 50% once their commission is finished.

Congrats, BTW!

[Afrofairy96]

Thank you! Do you know about how much of the profit society 6 takes out? My mom is telling me to get them done at Walgreens since I already work there but I have a feeling it would not be the same.

[writercynknapp]

Have you considered setting up a free account on DeviantArt?

I know it is simple to create for offering prints and downloads for sale.

[writercynknapp]

Downloads give you the most control in pricing on DA.

That might be a good start for a sudden demand by others to get a single image.

You might want to price a download high enough to hit the withdrawal minimum after the DA commissions.

[Afrofairy96]

I never used DA before unfortunately but I will try & look into this

[ninjashira]

Artist earnings on Society6 are a little complicated. Basically, if you set your print at the Society6 minimum retail price, you as the artist get 10% of that. Then, anything you charge above the base price, you get the full amount of. So if the base retail price is $10, but you're charging $20 for your art, then you would get $11.

There's nothing wrong with getting your prints done at a place like Walgreens, a lot of artists will do their prints at places like that. Just make sure you print at high quality on sturdy low-gloss or semi-gloss paper, and take into account the cost of printing and shipping when you price your prints. If it costs you $2 to print, $2 for the shipping supplies, and $4 to ship, and you're charging $15 for a print, your profit is only $7. Make it worth your time!

[Afrofairy96]

Okay I wasn't sure if Walgreens was okay to use in that case then I will use whats more easily available to me. I thought artist prints had to be on cotton paper you were very helpful to me because I was really stressing & didn't want to do something dumb & seem unprofessional thank you! ️

[ninjashira]

Yeah it's one of those things where you can charge more if you print on fancier paper or canvas or whatever, but it's very okay for entry-level prints to be on a nice low-gloss photo paper. If you can get your hands on some cheap photo mattes (like this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KK3Q1V7/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_7yerFb34HYDQ9 ), that's a nice way to increase the appearance (and thus the value) of your prints too.

[Afrofairy96]

Hey do you think 24.99 would be too much for an 8x10 I don't want to under sale myself but I don't want to go over board with pricing either I stay in the deep south & the lady who I'm talking to now stays all the way in Cali so I was trying to keep the shipping & handling in mind we also have matte paper at Walgreens too so I wanted to give her that as an option for 11x14 I was thinking 31.99 is that fairly reasonable?

[ninjashira]

Yeah those prices sound totally reasonable! I wouldn't bother with the .99 though, that's really an in-house theft-prevention retail gimmick and is totally unnecessary for situations like this, especially if you ever plan to sell at conventions or craft fairs. Just round it up to the dollar and make life easier for everyone

[Afrofairy96]

Thank you everyone you were all so very helpful I feel more self assured now

[cleo_san]

You're welcome =)
All the best of luck to you - and if you have any more questions, as you have seen, the tapas forum can and will help

[writercynknapp]

It is easier to post images for sale or download, when the image is large.