Side Hustles: Art, Offline

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Ever since I was a little kid, I have sold my art. I used to draw comic books when I was 10-12 and sell them to my neighbors. When I was in high school, I started to take freelance assignments (nothing really professional, just designs for my school or for my dad's job). When I was in college, I did start to be a bit more professional - I did several tee-shirt designs for a local sportswear shop and for a fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania. I also did a handful of assignments for other clients, and for my summer internship at the Blood Donor Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, I designed a lot of rewards that were given to donors and produced posters to promote them. My biggest project was something that I suggested - I had always wanted to design and illustrate an entire calendar! They okayed the expense, and we had that as a giveaway in December (they liked me so much they hired me after my internship was done). The above piece is from the calendar. After I got married and moved from Philadelphia to my current home, I didn't really want to work at an art job full-time - I wanted to produce art on my own terms, so I kept freelancing. I started getting into portraiture, and I have been doing that on and off ever since. I also taught drawing, portraiture, and color theory classes part-time at the local community college for about ten years. One of the ways I sold my portraits was by setting up at the local flea market so people could see my work and so they would have a place they could drop off their reference photos and pick up the finished pieces. We don't do that any more, but we made a reasonable amount of money at it. I also did a lot of designs for greeting cards and got them printed up to sell. I even made catalogues, but it was pretty hard to market them. I got a couple of wholesale orders from gift stores and made a few direct sales, but I still have boxes of cards left over, years later! We tried to sell them at the flea market, as well, but not a lot of people bought them. Most of the cards were blank inside so you could use them for anything or just to write a letter, and most people don't do that these days. But even the Christmas cards and valentines didn't sell much - I think the art was decent, but I couldn't afford to get them printed in full color. At most, I would get them printed in black ink on colored paper, or I would get them printed in two colors. These days, full-color printing is cheaper, but back then, I couldn't compete with the drugstores and stationery companies with their pretty, colorful cards. It didn't help that my catalogues were black and white, too!!! I love to do animal portraits, as well, and I had some success doing portraits of horses and other animals at the flea market. I tried to market my portraits by renting a table at a local cat show and also a horse show, but I didn't get any portrait orders. I think it was because it wasn't a stable location where people knew they could see me regularly. If I ever do a show again, I will make sure to bring small things I can sell easily off the table, and I will just bring my portraits for show and hand out a LOT of business cards. I don't think I even HAD any business cards at the shows, which was a dumb mistake. Also, I wasn't online back then, so there wasn't an easy place for people to see (or buy) any of my art. I would definitely do things differently, now. So if you are an artist interested in selling your work in real life, hopefully this will help you with some ideas about doing that. Also look for local art shows and consider asking local businesses if they would display your art - lots of restaurants do this, but I'd also ask at doctor's, dentist's, and veterinarian's offices, too, because people have to sit in the waiting room and might enjoy looking at your art while they're waiting.