Online Art Sales Only for Small Paintings?

I've heard a lot of people say Etsy is a good place to sell artwork online. But looking around there it seems those doing the most sales are selling crafty stuff such as knitted yarn toys, jewelry, pottery, or vintage items, mostly under $50. I don't see many painters selling much there. And if they are selling paintings, it's mostly small inexpensive work.

I've also heard people say DailyPaintworks is a good place to sell paintings. But even those artists who sell frequently there only seem to be selling tiny works for $100 or less.

Same with ebay. Those who sell any at all seem to sell mainly very small paintings for a couple hundred dollars or less....usually on the "less" side.

Is that pretty much what you have to stick with to sell online, paintings 8"x10" or smaller so you can sell them dirt cheap? I haven't seen sales for larger pieces priced at $500+ on any of these sites.

Many artists supposedly use the strategy of selling lots of small, inexpensive works in order to build a following, some of whom eventually move on to buy larger works. But I don't see the sales of these larger works there.

I'd wonder if artists aren't selling larger works by other means. But it appears even those who do paint small and large are still using DPW and ebay, etc, as their shopping carts for their larger works, and those sites just don't show large works in the sales history. So even if they paint small ones to build a following it doesn't seem to result in sales of larger pieces, only more frequent sales of small ones.

Am I right?

No, not necessarily.

Why? Because I've also heard from artists who say buyers don't like to purchase larger works through these third-party check-outs. They usually contact the artist directly and make purchases behind the scenes. They like direct contact with the artist. They want a more personal interaction and communication about an expensive piece in order to feel comfortable with spending more money.

That makes sense to me.

I was wondering if I would spend much money through some third-party checkout myself and decided I would probably want to contact the artist first, too. In fact, being an artist myself, I would probably deal with them directly to save them the fees and commission associated with these third party sites. :)

Maybe even non-artist buyers sometimes think this way too.

What's your experience been with online sales? Do you only sell small works? Or have you had successful sales of larger works online?

Two Hour Paint Sketch - Elephant

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm trying to force myself to do mini paintings within 1 hour as an exercise to loosen up my tight style a bit. So far I've not been able to complete a painting within 1 hour. My previous post took 1.5 hours. This one took a good 2 hours. But, even so, it's been a good exercise. It's still forced me to let go of the nit-picky details and focus more on color and form.

I must also point out that I have only painted an elephant once in my life before this one, and that was like 20 years ago, so I figured 2 hours for a subject I never paint isn't too bad.

"Cruisin"
6"x8" oil on canvas

Available for purchase here.

One Hour Paint Sketch - Elk

There was a debate on a FaceBook page recently about hyper-realism vs "painterly" in wildlife art. Tight artists sometimes can't see the forest for the trees, so to speak, and need to step back sometimes. That's a whole topic in itself, so I won't go there. But somewhere in the responses someone suggested trying to finish a mini painting within one hour to force yourself "loosen up" a bit.
So I thought I'd give it a go. I didn't quite make it. This one took me about an hour and a half. But it is definitely more loose than my normal painting so it was a good exercise. Here's what I did:

"Fire in the Mist"
5"x7" oil on canvas.

Here I was focusing more on gesture and complimentary colors instead of detail. Movement and contrasting orange against blue.
Have you tried the "One hour" exercise?

This painting available here.

Colorful Daisy Fawn Painting

Finished up my little colorful fawn mini painting. This painting is not as realistic or detailed as I usually paint. It's not very detailed because, not only is it a very small painting, but I was trying to focus more on getting vibrant colors instead of detail in this one.

5"x7"
Oil on Gessobord

This painting is available for purchase here.

Coloring Book Page - Red Fox Pup

Another coloring book page for the kids!



As with the previous coloring pages, have your kids download it, print it out, and color it or paint it any way they want, realistic or wild and crazy! (Click on the image to see a larger version. Then right-click on the larger image and select "save image as..." to save it to your hard drive.) If they want to color it realistically they can use the image below of my original painting as a reference and try to match the colors.

Photographing Artwork

I was going to write a blog post about photographing artwork properly ... if and when I ever figure it out! lol

But I don't need to. This article by Mark Pemberton says it as well as anything I've read. I suggest you read it if you are struggling to get good photos of your paintings.

New Colorful Deer Painting - Work in Progress

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my favorite artists is Julie Chapman because she can paint a brown animal without actually using any brown paint. For example, what color is a bison? Brown?
Now what color is Julie's bison here?


What colors do you see? I see pretty much every color of the rainbow. I see various shade of blue, red, orange, green, yellow, and purple. Almost no brown. But I'd bet if you asked most people, "What color is that bison?" they'd say brown. We know and recognize this bison as a brown animal despite the fact that there's almost no brown in that painting. I think Julie's an amazing artist for being able to pull that off so beautifully!

Inspired by Julie Chapman's colorful art, I'm attempting to use less brown, and more of other colors, in my painting. In keeping with my anti-brown-painting movement, I'm working on a little colorful practice painting of a deer using no pre-mixed brown. (Sorry Burnt Sienna! You don't get to play this time!) I'm using only the three primaries and white, and attempting not to mix any of these colors to the point of brown. This is more difficult than you'd think!

This is what I have so far.


I still haven't, obviously, mastered the color technique as Julie has. My little deer is still a lot more "brown" than Julie's bison. But, it's also a lot less brown than some of my other paintings so at least it's progress!

But, my deer painting's not done yet, so who knows. And, she's actually supposed to be a cute little fawn, so I'll add some spots as well as some other details as well as, hopefully, some more color.

Check back for the finished painting soon!