Think Forward with Your Art

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: curiousyellow / Art Photos / CC BY-NC-ND

In order to become more organized and productive in my art biz, I came up with a checklist of steps required after finishing an art piece.

The idea is to slow myself down and tie up all loose ends of the admin process so that I never lose track of a piece and have all the information and images in one place so I’m not scrambling around later trying to find everything I need.

12 Steps to Organize Art

Before you varnish:

1. Sign the art.
2. Date it somewhere on the piece – consider making an info card that includes artist name, title, media, dimensions.
3. Scan or photograph.
4. Clean and adjust the image.
5. Add copyright & info. (artist name, title, media, dimension, key words)
6. Name images properly > with ©nametitlesize if you like.
7. Save hi-res image for print & low res image for web >> one folder per image with all formats and sizes included.
8. Save to your art inventory database (publishing on May 2) – cheap and easy types are Evernote and Dropbox or a spreadsheet you’ve created. A more robust database would be something like Bento, eArtist or The Artist Archive.
9. Add piece to any online store fronts you use (like Storenvy or Etsy).
Write about the piece on your blog – include a link to buy.
11. Share on the web through social media.
12. Email your mailing list with a link to buy (you may want to consider doing this before your post it publicly – it gives your list the special “VIP – first crack” at your originals.