Should I Make Art Prints?
Oh my gosh have I ever gone back and forth on this subject, sometimes offering art prints and sometimes not. I can now give you a definitive answer about whether or not you should offer prints of your artwork: It depends.
Factors to Consider
When you’re trying to decide if you want to offer reproductions of your artwork, there are several things to consider. Let’s discuss each one and what that means for your business.
Would you rather watch a video on this topic? I’ve got you covered.
Is Your Art Easy to Reproduce?
I used to paint watercolor landscapes and flowers. Watercolor works are painted on paper and dry completely flat, so they’re a snap to make prints out of! However, these days I make textured, abstract works, and artwork that’s thick and bumpy is decidedly difficult to reproduce accurately. Impossible? No, but for me it doesn’t make sense to create prints anymore. You’ll have to take stock of what kind of art you make and figure out if you could make good looking prints from it.
Do You Have a Good Way to Scan or Photograph Your Work?
I have an Epson Perfection V550 (they don’t seem to make them anymore, though you can get the V600 here), and it worked well for the smaller, flat works of art I was creating a few years ago. If you want to make prints that look nice, you’ll either need a scanner or a pretty good camera, otherwise you’ll be paying someone else to scan/photograph your works for you. Paying someone else is a totally legit option–but only if you’re sure making prints if worthwhile for you and your business.
Are You Comfortable Using Photo Editing Software?
If you’re scanning or photographing your artwork yourself, you’ll need to get comfortable editing it with Photoshop or another type of photo-editing software. Even though my scanner is good, I usually needed to tweak a few things to get the file and print to look like the original. If you pay someone else to scan or photograph your artwork they’ll likely be able to edit the images as well.
How Will You Make Prints of Your Art?
Once you have a digital reproduction of your art, you’ll need a way to print them. I’ll talk about this more in another post, but you’ll have to decide if you want to print them at home (a pretty large investment), have them printed at a local printer, or use some sort of third party service, like Society6.
Do You Have A Large Enough Audience to Sell To?
You can go all in and only sell prints (and no original paintings), and then it doesn’t matter what size your audience is, because you’re only focusing on selling one product. However, if you sell original artwork as your main product, you have to consider your audience size and if you have enough potential buyers to make investing in creating prints worth it to you and your business. If you’re selling $100 paintings, people may opt to buy original work rather than prints, but if you’re selling $3000 paintings, it’s highly likely there are buyers who can’t afford your original work but would love to have a print.
So, Should I Make Prints of My Art?
Hopefully you’ve been able to answer the questions in this blog post and determine if selling prints of your art is worth it to you. I could talk about this subject forever, but my advice is this: If your art can be easily reproduced and look good, and if you have an easy way to produce it and sell it, yes, make prints! But if your art isn’t easy to reproduce and making and then selling the prints sounds difficult and will be too taxing, then don’t sell prints!
If you want to go deep on your art business, I’d love to talk!
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