The most successful artists incorporate daily habits to help them complete administrative tasks and have a focused plan around goals for income and pieces of art to create.
When you consider the habits of artists, it may sound overwhelming especially if you consider yourself a free spirit. However, some parameters may help you stay focused and make your art practice more successful. And, you can still incorporate a good dose of freedom and flexibility into your days.
Make Fresh Art
Having a genuine relationship with the art you're creating is one of the critical habits of artists to start with. This means that you strive to improve your work both conceptually and skill-wise. It also means that you’re a proactive participant in your art-making practice versus just showing up and making something to sell. This means you're aware of how your work fits into a larger art conversation or creative dialogue with the art world.
Showing up to make fresh work means constantly butting up against your vulnerable edge of what you can do with your art.
But how much time should you spend making your art? Typically, 50% of your time in your art practice will be in the studio making the work. It will vary from person to person because artists learn how to streamline the administrative aspects of their practice but 50% is a good starting point.
Making your ideal schedule is a great way to organize yourself so you can stay in creative flow when you need to be, and so you can quickly knock out those administrative tasks like sending out emails, posting on social media, etc.
Becoming a successful artist involves more than being a brilliant creator. Understanding your peak creative times and looking at your business's administrative and marketing sides will help you on your journey. For more inspiration on this front, check out my article, 3 Tips To Become A Successful Artist.
Have A Plan
When you’re in the habit of having a plan, you’ll know exactly what to do during your administrative hours. It will also bring more focus to your studio time, and you’ll know what you’re selling or marketing more clearly.
A plan will be created around your specific goals. It should include how much time you have to spend on your art practice in total - in both the studio and business side of things. It should have clear actions that you’ll need to create the income you need to pay your bills. It should be designed to help you consistently make an expected amount of money each month.
You can start your plan by looking at your bills each month and how much art you need to sell to cover those costs. Once you have those numbers in place, you can start to find the fastest and easiest ways to do this. For example, you may realize you could batch the time you spend doing social media posts versus doing them as one-off posts every day because it’s faster. You can find many ways like this to streamline your art practice.
Work Your Plan
Showing up to do the administrative work of your practice isn't glamorous but it's one of the absolutely necessary habits of artists to move your art practice forward. Pay your bills, clean your studio, order new materials, review or update your goals, answer your emails, reply to comments and direct messages on your social media profiles, and plan. These are just some tasks you'll need to maintain to keep your business moving in the right direction.
For each art piece or workshop you decide to sell, you'll want to create a plan for it. What needs to happen to sell your most recent collection? Things like writing your artist statement for the series, emailing your list, and posting on social media are typical things needed to make sales for a new body of art.
This micro-plan is then incorporated into the larger plan so you can see how it all comes together over a period of months or years. Taking action by following your micro-plans is what I mean by "working your plan". —You're implementing the actions that you believe will give you the desired art sales you want.
If grant proposals are part of your overall income plan, you may be able to get funding that will help reduce your overhead costs. Typical things that are a part of a micro-plan to win a grant are writing your artist statement and bio within a certain character limit, curating a selection of images, resizing and naming images to their specifications, paying a fee, filling out an application, and more. These are all the actions you’ll need to take to make it happen.
When you review your plan and micro-plans, you can see what goals you’ve accomplished as well as what changes you’d like to incorporate for next time.
Cultivate Your Art Community
Art stimulates art enthusiasts, collectors, and artists' emotional response. When you practice a consistent habit of sharing your art, you'll connect with potential buyers and start a vital connection based on your shared interests. So this is also one of the most important habits of artists.
In today's digital age, you'll want to consider an online presence as well as in-person events to participate in. May it be exhibiting your pieces or celebrating another artist, being a visible member of your art community is key to getting your work out there.
When you understand who your work resonates with most, you'll start to connect with art buyers everywhere you go. Here are some of the top places you can find them.
Where Do You Go Now?
If you understand the importance of having these successful habits of artists in place but aren’t sure where to start, let’s hop on a call and discuss how I can support you in designing a plan that will help you sell more art, more consistently.