Why Will The Art Buyers Be Interested To Buy Online?

No artist can afford to run his whole portfolio in a print directory. But on the Web, it's easy! So a buyer can get a very good and broad idea of an artist's skill and style at a glance. Plus, the samples online are all in color, while color samples are often prohibitively expensive in print.

Moreover, a freelance artist already on the Web is more likely to be computer-savvy and to know how to optimize his or her work for online consumption, an important consideration for art buyers in these days of cross-media publishing.

Since you as a freelance artist save money on advertising, you can pass the savings directly on to your customer, in the form of lower fees for your work. So your decreased costs directly benefit the art buyer.

One drawback may seem to be that, even with the fastest modems, it takes longer to "surf the web" to find a freelance artist than to simply flip through a print directory. But while it may seem to take longer in the short term, it is actually faster in the long term.

Getting Started As A Freelance Artist

1. Figure out what area you are interested in - Graphic Design, Artwork, Illustration, Cartooning, Painting, Sculpting, Multimedia Jobs
2. Check out all of the relevant societies, guilds, associations and forums to find out more about the field. Looking through their web sites will help you to figure out what seems like an interesting career direction and what does not.
3. Do you need more education or training?
4. Do you have a client base?

Once you have answered the above questions and are ready to get into business, you will want to develop a style. Developing a style of your own is very important. It makes you look experienced, and it calms customers. (Customers do not want to guess at what you will give them; they want to know what exactly you do.)

There are different ways to develop a signature style. You can work with similar colors, similar mediums, etc. Some work in traditional styles such as scratch-board or watercolor. Others may work with computers by either pushing pixels with Adobe Photoshop or by working with the vector based program Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw , or a 3d program such as 3d Studio Max or Maya.

Follow these tips and make a good start as a freelance artist.