Promoting yourself tips have not been a complete new thing to me. During the summer holiday we had to create a presentation which involved doing research on the career of an illustrator, this is when I read few different books:
- Zeegen, L. (2012). The fundamentals of illustration/2nd ed. Lausanne, Switzerland : AVA Academia.
- Male, A. (2014). Illustration : meeting the brief. London : Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
After summing up what I read in those books,here are some short tips on a great illustrating:
1. Collaboration with different disciplines helps gain knowledge and broaden your view.
2. When illustrating , it is important to make the image, which power captures your personality or a view point for a certain topic. Illustration has to tell a story, give it history and depth.
3. When given a brief, asking three main questions: what/how/why are we trying to achieve it?
Which sums up, if you are a great illustrator, it works as one of the best self promotion tricks.
After that I have attended few different artists talks on the INDUSTRY FRIDAY days at the university, most of them have been talking about their career and freelancing. Below I have added few tips that I thought were the most useful.
Sarah Melin said that ‘it is important to be patient – everything takes time, believe in yourself, being nice to everyone/professional (nice and professional when meeting new people), working freelance needs to be fun as it is a really hard work.’
Rebbeca Ford (RSA) talked about a strong final piece, that ‘the final product needs to look and feel well designed, important to use less text and make the product easily read for audience coming from different backgrounds and most importantly it has to be unique and surprising.’
Robert Good gave tips on being a successful artist: ‘ Important to move on – start doing something; Applying for competitions, organising exhibitions; Pushing stuff towards yourself to make things happen from what you have at that moment; Networking – not about being too pushy to someone who showed you support in the past; Socialising – keep it real and you will prosper; Being organised and getting stuff done. ‘
After given a brief to do more research on self promotion I had to look at different tips, this is when I found audio record talks of Rosalind Davis at the Artquest website. (http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/how-to-promote-your-work)
I have chosen several most important tips, in my opinion, that she talked about in her talk:
- Artists are visual people, so many do not want to write artist statements, however these are highly important as they help to reflect on your artwork and explain why are you doing this, why are you interested in this.
- Being able to talk about your artwork between 3 to 5 words. It is important to be imaginative and creative to build up curiosity. Never say ”I like drawing buildings… I enjoy drawing cats… etc.
- Taking part in the exhibition helps to evolve your practice. When at it, make sure to talk to audience about your artwork, this helps to understand your own art more.
Other tips received on different types of self promotion methods from: http://mariabrophy.com/art-marketing/self-promotion-is-not-a-dirty-word-11-ways-to-market-yourself.html
- Website
- Video
- Social Media
- Newsletters
- Business Cards
- Networking
- Trade Show Exhibits
- Teach a Class
- Networking Event
- Meet-Up Group
Domenika Grinkeviciute-Jotke / Illustration year 3 