Skills required to be an artist

Our society doesn't value all professions fairly and equally. We can blame it on economic laws or try to justify the reasons, but the reality is that not every career pays equally for your skills or efforts. Let's examine the case of a fine artist.

First of all, a fine artist (e.g. painter) must be a person capable of creating something that is appealing or intriguing enough that somebody wants to own. For this, some people have a lot of talent and many pursue art education. Creating works of art that other people want to own is not an easy task. The art creation requires the following:

• Knowledge of a particular medium, and learning how to effectively manipulate it;
• Experimenting with different techniques until finding your niche;
• Strong conceptual and technical skills to achieve intended results; Etc..

However, once this one-of-a-kind product is created, the fine artist goes to market the work in order to find the buyer for it. Here is where all the other skills come into play. While I was just painting and didn't market my art, I had far less skills.

What are some of the new skills I have developed since I started marketing and selling art?

• Learned how to take good photographs of my art, how to crop the image and present it in high quality on-line;
• Learned how to write on-line content, including blogging and social media;
• Developed my own web site, learned how to insert paypal buttons;
• Learned how to use widgets and set up syndicated content;
• Learned how to launch advertising campaigns and how important it is to market your work daily;
• Discovered how expensive it is to bring your art to the market, especially to apply and participate in art shows;
• PR skills via participation in media interviews to include newspaper and television;
• Held educational classes and participated in public speaking presenting the work;
• Participated in art grants jury that effectively convinced me that grant writing should be a major in college;
• Learned how to write effective proposals and win commissions;
• Learned how to negotiate and price products;
• Learned how to merchandise and display products in an appealing fashion;
• Learned how to design and launch marketing campaigns;
• Learned to deal with daily rejection but to keep going;
• Learned how to do my own sales tax and keep track of expenses;
• Learned how to package and ship artwork;
• Learned that outdoor art shows are not that much fun;
• Learned to be harassed by requests for donations;
• Learned to network, collaborate and support other artists;
• Learned to live with very little money.

This is, in a nutshell what it takes to be an artist. Did I forget something?