Summer this year has been jam-packed with everything!

This summer, we have been extra busy, from swimming lessons to kids’ parties to learning. Can you relate?

You set these goals to start taking your art seriously, and then summer hit. Now, school is coming into view, and you are gearing up to hit the ground running and accomplish your art goals.

How will you move forward after your plans were scattered because of a fun-filled summer?

The best way to start is by reviewing your goals, to-do lists, and classes you wanted to work on when the summer began.

Let’s start with your goals.

Is your goal still to start an art business? Yes 😊. Sweet.

Now for your to-dos.

• Take art classes
• Practice drawing and design every day
• Put together an email sign-up form
• Design website
• Connect with fellow artists
• Start posting on social media

Art Classes.

Review your list of classes. Make a separate list of the order you want to complete them. Put the ones that will help you reach your goals at the top.

If you still need to pick out any classes, SkillShare is an excellent place to start. SkillShare is the platform I started on, and there is a wealth of great teachers and classes there.

Now for the planning phase.

What do you need to accomplish first?

If you are an artist in training, you will have one path. If you already have a lot of art skills, you may take a different path.

You need to focus heavily on the learning path for the artist just starting and developing her skills.

The artist with some skills needs to focus on the business path.

Let’s cover the learning artist first.

What area do you want to focus on for your art? This will determine what classes you work through.

If you want to be an illustrator, you need to look for classes that will teach you about drawing, character design, and the tools of the industry, which will help you advance your career.

For drawing characters, check out this artist.

– Kris Lauren of Pretty Little Lines

If you want to be a fabric designer, you need to seek out teachers who specialize in teaching you everything about designing for fabric.

These ladies would be a great place to start for fabric design.

-Bonnie Christine
-Sarah Watts
-Liz Kohler Brown

Once you have completed a few classes, your job is to practice like mad. Every day, you should draw and create something for your art. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even complete, but you need to practice. This will strengthen your skills and help you see what you like and don’t like about certain art styles.

Speaking of art styles, many artists have more than one style. It also takes a while for you to find your style, so try as many different types of art as you want. You may fall in love with watercolors or pencil drawings. You won’t know which art form you love until you try.

Now that you have started the learning portion, you will want to move on to a way for the world to know you are an artist and that you have work to bless them with.

Some artists start with a website, while others create a landing page to showcase a few art pieces and collect emails.

No matter what route you take, you HAVE to have a way to collect emails. This is the most important thing to do from the get-go when showing your art to the world.

In a nutshell, you will own your email list, and it can’t be taken away from you. You do not own any social media platforms, and your account can be shut down anytime.

Start an email list immediately!!!

If you choose a landing page or website, it doesn’t have to be fancy. It just needs to be up so people can find you. As you go, you can tweak your website and landing pages. The most essential things on your website and landing pages are the ability to collect email addresses and a way to contact you when starting out.

By this time, you should have completed some of your art classes, created a website or landing page, created an email form, and created a place for people to connect with you.

At this stage, get comfortable with social media and connect with fellow artists.

You will want to have artists you can talk to when no one else in your world understands what you are doing and when you need help.

As much as I don’t like it, social media is a place for people and art directors to find you. Start sharing your work now, even while you learn to get over the “stuff” that comes with putting your art out in the world.

Now, let’s look at the artist who already has the skills and wants to focus more on the business side of building an art business.

You already have a substantial collection of work. This doesn’t have to be work designed for collections, but you have work you can present to the world.

Considering you can skip the art classes, you can focus on your website and build your email list.

Since I’ve already expressed the need for an email list and the importance of building one immediately, I will skip that here. Start an email list!

Now for your website. You have more art to showcase, and a website would benefit you when you get ready to start reaching out to art directors or even wanting a place to send potential clients to hire you for a job.

These things are must-haves on your website:

• Contact Me
• About Section
• Portfolio or a way to showcase your art

Later, you can add other pages, but the goal is to get your website up as quickly as possible. There are some great platforms out there.

I use ShowIt for my website. It works with my designer brain, and there is no coding. They do have templates you can use to get you started right away. All the templates can be customized, and you can buy custom templates if you like.

I’ve used WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix. Each has pros and cons. You can do your own research to decide which one you want to work with.

I love ShowIt.

Now that your website is finished with an email form to collect emails, pick which route you will go, either reach out to companies to work with them or start selling products on your own site.

Either way is excellent. Licensing is more of a long game. Getting paid for a licensing deal can take up to twelve months. Whereas selling your own products can lead to a quicker paycheck, but you have to market heavily and be ready to source your products.

No matter what path you are on, you need to continue to create art daily. Create a freebie to build your email list and promote it. Post on social media regularly. Design a schedule for your posting and stick to it. Know that posting weekly is okay. Social media does not need to take over your life. Find a group of artists that you click with and start connecting.  

This journey is a marathon. There will be periods of sprinting, but you want to play the long game and build your business on a firm foundation from the start to weather the changes of this world.  

Until next week, Happy Creating.

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