I still don't make an actual decent living from my artwork. But in the last 3 1/2 years, I've sold over 80 of my drawings, most of them for $120 to $160 each, a few sold through a gallery for $250 each. These drawings, 18" X 24," take me 35 to 45 hours each to draw, on average. That's not much money per hour of drawing, mostly because I was homeless most of the time I've been drawing and selling these drawings, and have been selling them to pay basic living expenses. Obviously, if you start in a better position than I did, and you art is of a good quality, much more is possible.
Here's how I sold those 80 drawings:
1. I committed to doing what it took to actually sell my work. I decided I was actually going to do the day to day work needed to make and sell my Sharpie drawings.
2. I sat down at the computer one night, looked through all kinds of art online for about three hours, and asked myself, "What would I actually want to put on my wall?" I simple stencil of my first childhood hero, Bruce Lee, was the answer to that question. So I printed out the photo, and drew it in my style. I knew then that I needed to focus on drawing picture of inspiring people. That was the subject matter that worked best for my style at that time.
3. I tapped into the online following I already had from my BMX freestyle blog. I primarily used Facebook, my main social media platform at the time, to show people my artwork, and ask if anyone would like me to draw them something. My first orders came within a week or two of doing that.
4. I sold my art cheap to start with, and offered to re-draw any drawing people didn't like. A lot of people will tell you, "Don't lower your price, your art is worth much more than that." Those people don't actually sell art. They may make a lot of it, and show it off on Instagram and Facebook, but they don't sell much. Let people get a cool piece of your work for a reasonable price, and make sure they're happy with it. My first few drawings I sold were 12" X 18," they took me 8 to 12 hours to draw, and I sold them for $20-$25. The key word there is, I SOLD them.
Then I sold a bunch of 18" X 24" drawings, that took me 18 to 22 hours to draw, for $40 to $50 each. Again, I SOLD them. I got better at my craft, my drawings improved, and I raised my prices to $75 each, then to $100 each, then to the $120-$160 range. I always offered to re-do the drawings if people weren't satisfied. I never really want to re-draw anything, but I do want people to be happy with my work. These days, after thousands of hours of drawing, that's not really an issue. Guess what, not one person who bought a $50 drawing is bummed that my drawings later sold for $150. I'm now at the point where I'm raising the prices to $350. I'd rather not sell the original and sell prints at this point, anyhow.
5. I started a Go Fund Me campaign early on, the idea was to earn raise $1,000 quickly so I would have money to make prints to sell. I didn't just ask for donations, I did drawings for everyone who pledged money. In reality, I did raise the $1,000, but I did it drawing by drawing over four months time. The Go Fund Me campaign just became an easy way to order and pay for my drawings online. The $1,000 goal encouraged people to help me out and order a drawing. It also allowed me to draw every single day for four months straight, and get into the rhythm of being an actual working artist. By the time I reached my goal, I got set up on Paypal, and just kept taking orders online.
6. Moved to a city that had a decent art scene in North Carolina, though I couldn't afford any place to live. I wound up living in a tent in the woods, which I definitely DON'T recommend, and scraped by. Some guys who saw me drawing one day suggested I show my work to a local record shop, which I did. They liked it, and I wound up doing a small art show there. That shop, a really cool one, was Earshot Music, and Phred, the owner used my Kurt Cobain drawing for the online flyer (above). Only a handful of people came to the show, but one was an artist and collector from the 1980's New York City art scene. He bought the Cobain drawing the day before the show, and wound up buying three more drawings form me. I also sold about 10 more drawings through the record shop, most to one couple. That just shows the power of getting artwork out where people can see it.
I also found one studio/gallery owner who really liked my work in the downtown art scene there, and she sold a few more. I wound up having trouble getting paid for some of my work there, so that relationship wound up bittersweet. She promoted my work a lot, but also had trouble paying me sometimes because her cash flow issues. That's another risk of this that you just have to deal with as things happen.
7. When I moved into the tent in the woods, I had several blogs going. I brought them all into one single personal blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear. Though three of my blogs drew good sized followings over the seven years before that, I wasn't sure anyone would read a blog about old school BMX freestyle stories, Sharpie artwork, and my thoughts on the future and the economy. But that blog just had its two year anniversary, and has 76,000 page views in two years. My blog readers are where most of the early buyers of my artwork came from, and where I still keep getting some art sales from. I highly recommend a blog, or for most people these days, a Vlog, to promote your artwork, in addition to Instagram, Facebook, and whatever other social media you're using.
8. I used Pinterest to help build my web presence for my artwork, and I found one good hashtag to use all the time, #sharpiescribblestyle. I use other hashtags, particularly on Instagram, which I'm not very psyched on, to be honest. But Instagran has a huge reach, and can definitely get you followers, and maybe sales. Use the social media platforms most that you actually like most. Nearly all my online sales I've done have been handled on Facebook from people who read my blog. But I took the time to make sure that is you look up #sharpiescribblestyle on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google images, you'll see A LOT of my drawings. That just took work, day after day, of actually taking the time to put stuff on each platform, with tags and hashtags, day after day.
Like I said, I did this while living much lower, and with less resources, than most all of you reading this will ever have to deal with. I'll go into more depth on these ideas in this blog as time goes by. But these 8 ideas above are the basics of how I sold over 80 major pieces of art, while homeless most of the time, in the last 3 1/2 years. Hopefully soon I'll be able to finally get to a place where I can turn this writing and art into an actual, stable living. I've had a lot of headwinds holding me back at times, but I've had a lot of people help me out, as well, at key moments.
My battery's going dead, no place to charge at the moment, so I'm going to post this and proffread it when I can. Sorry for any typos at the moment...
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