Not The Starving Artist site is dedicated to all artists wanting to make a living by promoting themselves and their artwork
Most artists seem to have problems with coming to terms with marketing their work. They seem to have a blind spot when it comes to making money from their talents. They will tell you that this is the norm for artists, and that ALL artists struggle with business.
Not So
The artists that struggle with business are the artists that the public like to call “The starving artist.” On this site we will have no truck with that. We are “not the starving artist.”
Making money from your art is just an extension to your creative work. Some would say that promotion is just as creative as painting, sculpting, photographing etc. As artists we spend a great amount of time producing our work. Surely we deserve to have a process that allows us to feed our family as well as our creative passions. Well we have – its called “selling your work to the public”
The problem with selling artwork to the public is that unless you are already famous the public don’t know that you are there. You could be the best artist in the world but if nobody knows about you you will still be the starving artist. To become “not the starving artist” you will have to put yourself around. Let people know that you are there. Let the public know that you are proud of what you do.
This is where I come in.
My name is Robert (Bob) Maddison and like you I am an artist. (If you Google “Robert Maddison” you should come to some of my art work and photographs)
I was born in 1946 and by 1950 I was quite a proficient drawer. I always wanted to be an artist and I let very little get in my way towards that ambition. I live in a small hamlet called Allenheads in the Northern Pennine hills of the UK. I have a small studio attached to my house in which I produce and sell my work. Now that my son and daughter have completed their university education and have left home I live only with my wife Elizabeth, a botanist.
The reason for telling you this is to help you get to know me and to show you why I think that I can help all of you starving artists out there.
As an artist who has spent a lifetime making a living from my art I have experienced the same problems that you experience. I will show you how I solved them, only you will solve them quicker because I will help you to not make the mistakes that I did. This will hopefully enable you to make a decent living and allow you to spend more time on your art.
Being realistic – unless you have a great talent and you are lucky, you are not going to get super rich from your art. If you are a Damien Hurst kind of personality you will already be doing your own thing and on your way to your first million. What I can promise is that if you have a reasonable creative talent that you are willing to develop, and that you are committed to branding yourself you will make a reasonable living in a field that you are passionate about.
That’s it. It only remains for me to thank you for stopping by “Not The Starving Artist.” I greatly appreciate it. As the site grows I hope that there will be something here for every struggling artist. Why not bookmark the site so that you can keep coming back to see if there is anything new that’s relevant to your situation? If there are any questions or comments send them to me. I will answer them as best I can, and if I don’t know the answer I will tell you that I don’t know the answer. I most definitely will not try to baffle you with “art speak.” You can contact me Press here and I will do my utmost to get back to you as soon as poss
Hi Robert
This is a great web page and I can relate to the content. I believ I am in the “starving artist” category. I have been an artist for 30 years and I have a Diploma in art as well as two unverity degrees in Visual Commincations and the Fine Arts.
I have noticed many people around me making names or selling their art because they seem to got a handle on the marketing aspect through galleries of friends of friends of the Sydney gallery scene and so on.
I am 42 years of age and I sometimes come out and I show my art at zine fairs to which i make small booklet’s of a carefully selected drawings. I do not make a great deal of money from this method but it is wonderful to see people’s reaction to my work’s. I recently had some work shown in a group exhibition at an independent gallery (recently opened gallery in Sydney) and I got a huge positive response with people telling me to have a solo show etc. I am anxious towards this but I will need to do it sometime, in order for me to start making some sought of living from the many years I have made art. I currently use ink , nib’s and fountain pen to make my own drawing and I do a lot of freestyle works from my imagination.
Demetra Christopher ( I am at facebook if you would like to become my friend there you can see some of my works)
Hi Demetra,
Thanks for the post.
First let’s look at the positives.
You realise that you need to do something to promote your work.
When you do show your work people seem to like it.
You have two degrees which shows that you have the ability to take on a project and stick to it.
So what are you going to do about it?
Do you have a web site? Your drawings may be the worlds best drawings, but if people don’t know about them you won’t make money from them.
If you don’t have a site get yourself onto GoDaddy and purchase an interesting .com address relating to your work
Next buy yourself some hosting from Hostmonster. This will all cost about $15 and you will not need to spend anything else.
Get to WordPress through your Cpanel at your Hostmonster hosting and build a Wordpres blog.
Find an art related theme for your blog by Googling “Free art related WordPress Themes” (or photography related) Find one that allows you to put a gallery widget on the blog.
You will need a free account at Mail Chimp (http://www.mailchimp.com) in order to build up your email list. The advice and instruction on this site is great.
You need something to bribe people to give you their email address. Suggestion – You say that when you make booklets of your drawings people like them. Why not make an ebook of your drawings and give it away for free: Well not quite for free, but in exchange for an email address.
Open a free account at Paypal.
There you go. For about $15 and a couple of days work you are up and running.
Get all of that going and then you can think about developing other outlets, such as printing your drawings onto T shirts,mugs, notelets etc using sites such as Etsy, Cafe Press etc.
Print on demand sites etc.
Your work is at the moment all in monochrome. It doesn’t cost a lot to have books made in black and white at Blurr. – This is all for the future. The important thing is to make a start NOW.
Best of luck in your endeavours,
Bob Maddison.