Your Art Career Part Five

Your Art Career Part Five – Unpacking Ideas

In part five of my “Your Art
Career” series, we take a look at what buyers really want from art in an ever-changing world. Finding a niche audience who are actively on the lookout for very
specific subjects can be a lucrative business opportunity for artists if it is
tackled in the right way.

Finding a niche that appeals
to buyers searching for specific subjects and genres can provide you with a readymade
buyer base and entice new buyers to take a look at your regular work too. But
just how difficult is it to find a niche that is perfect for you and what niche
do you even choose?

It’s a challenging question to
answer but it’s worth saying that sometimes we do have to think very much
outside of the proverbial box to find a market for our creativity and sometimes,
we need to have the crazy idea that we can begin to unpack so that we can shake
out the bits of the idea that will stick.

We’ve spoken about the
pandemic a lot over the past four articles, but we can hardly ignore how much
the world has changed over the last year. I think most people would agree that
it has not only changed the world, but it has also changed people too, and especially
when it comes to their artistic tastes.

Weirdly, many people I have had
conversations with during the pandemic have been telling me that they have
become even more exposed to different genres and art mediums as they have been
discovering more art online rather than visiting physical art spaces which  often have limited choice or a bias towards a
particular medium or genre depending on the collections on display. To me, this
was initially a little surprising because I would have thought that people
would be making a beeline towards the familiar but then I noticed I was doing
this too.

Our tastes, behaviours and
actions are defined by what we are exposed to, so it makes sense that widening
the breadth of art that you consume will widen the breadth of artwork you begin
to appreciate. What you begin to appreciate will, if you’re an artist, begin to
influence the work that you create, even if it does so subconsciously.

When it comes to buyers, it also
makes sense that as their appreciation for artwork evolves and as they begin to
become exposed to more art, they too become influenced in their tastes and
ultimately in their buying decisions, and I expect that the pandemic itself is responsible
for deep psychological changes that have changed how and what and even who we
want to connect with.  

Africa – One of my recent creations!

The markets have definitely
changed too,  and as we have been seeing
over the previous articles from the employment market data and the data that
surfaces the number of state benefit claims, in the short-term at least, the economic
impact of the pandemic is going to continue to affect some buyers ability to
buy, or rather, it will in the typical markets that the majority of working
artists are working in, and this can manifest in all sorts of ways.

Buyers might not find
themselves in a position where they have quite as much disposable income as
they once did pre-pandemic and it’s important that we don’t forget those buyers,
we need to ensure they remain engaged in the interim because we desperately
want them to return. Making our work affordable in different formats is one way
to keep those buyers engaged, but also engaging with them is the prompt that
reminds them that you haven’t forgotten them.

Having said that, as I have
written over the previous few articles, buyers are still out there, but they
might not be the same buyers or looking for the same thing.  Equally, we shouldn’t forget that not everyone
will have been financially impacted by the pandemic in a negative way but it might
make it more challenging for artists to keep track of where their market is, at
least for a little while longer.

Some buyers will have
discovered a new style of art that they have now fallen in love with, and
because we have mostly been hidden away at home for the best part of an entire
year where entire countries have been placed into lockdown, people have been
finding more and more things to keep them occupied at home.

A quick glance through the latest
videos on platforms such as YouTube or the pins on Pinterest and one would be
forgiven for thinking that everyone has become an interior designer as many
people have turned to home improvements to spruce up their space, especially
as more and more people work from home.

Video conferencing, as much as
I am no longer a fan and I’m not convinced I ever was, has presented
opportunities for artists. One of the things I have noticed throughout the many
hundreds of conference calls I have been forced to endure over the past twelve
months is that people are actively looking at the Zoom factor in the art that
they are selecting to hang on the wall behind them, and that’s something that I
had never even considered pre-pandemic.

I think it’s fair to say that
there were more than a few of us who became self-aware of untidy shelves, even
I moved a bookcase to another wall to avoid the camera, and I’ve noticed a lot
of people who are now definitely curating the books on their bookshelf. What
really highlighted this for me was when one of my long-time collectors got in
touch with me to pass on some compliments he had received about one of my
pieces that had made its inaugural appearance on Microsoft Teams! Psychologists
looking back on this time in years to come will probably have a field day analysing
our lockdown behaviour!

Clockwork by Mark Taylor – Available from my store now!

There’s something else in
that, I really don’t think we should underestimate that the Zoom factor could
very well be playing some kind of a role in artistic choice which is in itself,
a sentence I never ever thought I would ever write, but here we are. I suspect
that some artistic choices have been influenced by the need to Zoom.

Having witnessed a few familiar
works on conference calls of late I would think that video conferencing has
certainly influenced sales of some artworks where celebrities have appeared on
camera with an appealing work in the background. It would be fascinating to dig
into the data to see just how much Zoom and other conference platforms have
influenced art buying decisions lately, I can picture it now, reruns of zoom
calls to collect business intelligence on art trends.

This changing behaviour and
the resulting sea-change in artistic taste has left some artists and graphic
designers somewhere between a little and a lot exposed and others perhaps wondering
why they didn’t take a new direction with their work much earlier.  

Throughout the pandemic, many
artists have had to be creative in their approach to the business of art,
others have lost entire markets and with them, the artists have lost their
revenue streams. This has meant that in many cases, the  pre-pandemic business model where there was a heavy
reliance on offline face to face interactions has either had to dramatically change
or the artist has had to consider new ways of working to make sure that the
financial gaps continue to be filled.

Whether you are an established
artist or someone who has found the creative sector after previously working in
an entirely different career, finding any market for your work can be arduously
difficult even in the best of times. In a pandemic, the reality that many
artists and indeed many small businesses have faced has often been a scenario of
fight, flight, or adapt and steer an entirely new course.

Flora – another work in my recent Yin and Yang series!

As always, when it comes to providing
any kind of artistic insight or advice, there’s a proverbial gorilla in the
room that has to be addressed whenever anyone talks about deviating from your
main body of work, but deviating from your forever niche is often uncomfortable
and it’s a subject that is often avoided, but I’m not sure we can. If you have
lost a market, you have to adapt.   

Today we’re not really
discussing the niche that is in itself offering prints or offering your work on
anything other than a canvas, we’re talking about figuring out what work might
sell better than the work you usually create given the unprecedented times we
all find ourselves in.

There will be a few artists
who will be nervous about creating anything other than their ‘norm’ for fear of
appearing inconsistent and upsetting the purists, but to counter this, the other
piece of advice I generally issue out to the artists that I mentor, which is a
little blunt is that the purists aren’t generally having to pay any of your bills.

Consistency is something I
have written about previously and to summarise, there is an opportunity for
artists to work on very different creations, so long as there is no ambiguity
or confusion introduced and you continue to keep the promises you previously made
to existing collectors. A good example is in, not selling previously sold work
as a print when you long ago made a promise to collectors that you wouldn’t, or
it could be adding another ten pieces to the limited edition of 100 you have already
sold.

Consistency in art is
important, but there is more to consistency than consistently producing the
same type of work, consistency is about much more than that. Consistency means
all kinds of things depending on the market, it could be, not turning up to an
exhibition with twelve very different works with all of them in very different
frames so that they appear to be created by twelve different artists, or it
could be creating collections of different work outside of your usual body of
work and not providing any separation between the new and the old which can
confuse buyers.

Consistency is an
interchangeable term, it could just as easily apply to the quality of your work
regardless of the medium or subject, or it could be consistency in how the work
is presented, or the message, it doesn’t and shouldn’t default to meaning that
an artist will forever be compelled to produce one iteration of one thing.

I don’t really think that
producing one thing over and over is really healthy for an artist because we
have to evolve, we have to figure out new techniques, and we have to make sure
that our main body of work is always fresh, we can’t always find that freshness
if we never get to stretch the creative muscle beyond our comfort zone. Even if
you never publish the work you create outside of your usual body of work, it’s
really important to have the ability to stretch your creative muscle in other
ways and even more important to strive towards mastery of your technique.

That might sound a little blunt
too, but, there will be purists in the art world who would baulk at the very
idea that an artist would ever deviate from their main body of work, but you
also have a responsibility to those who have previously collected your work to
ensure that you not only survive in uncertain economic times but that you also
thrive because that’s good for collectors too. There is nothing worse for a
collector to hear than the news that their favourite artist has lost their
passion or has given up.

If you have any doubt about switching
to a completely different medium or genre, or subject, the trick is in ensuring
that there is some delineation between your usual work and your new niche or niches.
Creating collections as an aside from your main body of work is perhaps one of
the best ways to go about separation, but with so many great platforms online,
it’s entirely feasible to utilise a different platform to reach different
markets.

When we talk about niches, we’re
not necessarily talking about limiting yourself to your previous or current
portfolio, the right niche can be the complete opposite of your usual work in
terms of medium and subject. I know a few artists who selected a niche and
stuck with it for many years but then got backed into a corner where they became
frustrated with the subject, and that’s never a good place for an artist to be.

Summer by Mark Taylor – another addition to my store!

Finding a new niche is not
necessarily about figuring out a way to remarket what we already do either, although
it could be. You might want to create smaller or larger works to attract new
audiences or offer your work on alternative products, but it could be looking
to create something entirely new. That’s essentially what we are covering here
today, creating something very different from your usual work and if you have
lost your zest in one subject but have found it in another, it’s probably a
sign that you are ready for a change. Think about the likes of Jackson Pollock
and there is already a precedent to change, artists have been doing this
throughout art history, so you certainly won’t be the first artist to jump in a
different direction.

That’s really the point here,
finding a niche is about finding something that you feel passionate about.  As a professional artist, that also means that
you need to ensure that there is a market, the two do go hand in hand sadly
because ultimately, you do need the ability to generate the funds needed to
carry on producing your artistic first love. That’s often another conversation
that is avoided, but when you are creating art professionally and it’s your livelihood
that’s at stake, if it’s not working it has to change, or the marketing has to
change or the market itself has to change, just as it would if any business starts to
flag behind.

What generally stops us from making
a move into a new niche is either fear of the critic, or the inner critic, or
the thought that we’re selling out to cash in, and yes, every artist I have
ever met with very few exceptions would say that they produce the art they
produce out of passion. Of course, that passion we have is exactly what makes
us artists, but when you are a professional artist, there is this dark sad
reality that to professionally deliver your passion there is a financial outlay
that needs to be recovered.

So with that uncomfortableness
out of the way, the next step is to give yourself permission to begin exploring
new niches so that you can decide if they might work for you. Just as I have
been doing over the previous articles, I have been looking at the data,
carrying out the research, and asking the questions, not just over the course
of writing this article, but over the course of taking a deep interest in all
of the various art markets over the past decade, something that the economic
crisis back in 2008 taught me to do.

Empty Deckchairs – There is something more poignant about this work given the times we are in.

Dropping your usual body of
work, even temporarily, to create something that you believe will sell better
isn’t without its own set of challenges. You still need to find both an
audience and a market for your new body of work rarely does anything magical
happen without expending some effort. Just painting something that appears to
be popular right now doesn’t necessarily mean that it will instantly sell, so
whatever you decide to focus on will still require you to do some homework to
figure out where the marketing needs to be focussed.

Many who start out on the
creative path have to very quickly work out who the audience and the market
will be for whatever it is that they produce, although, for the most part, that’s
something that isn’t always worked out upfront and in some cases,  it’s something that isn’t worked out for quite
a while after. I get why it’s not always possible to commit to a specific
subject and medium that will become your forever choice, at least at the beginning
of an art career and this is one of the reasons why you might see new artists
testing the water by creating a horse portrait one day and an abstract the next
and then attempting to market both pieces to the same audience.

Testing the water though requires
a little more than dipping in a single toe, it might, in the above case require
you to produce twenty or thirty of each genre or topic, maybe less, maybe more,
and it also requires you to work out where the marketing should be focussed for
both the abstracts and the horse because those would be two very different
markets. Remember what I keep saying over and over, you can market your art all
you want but if there aren’t enough of the right eyes viewing it, it’s just not
going to sell.

Being a newcomer in the sector
is more than a little challenging, we create some art, make it available for
sale, but at least initially, we might not have an idea about the type of
person who might fall in love with it enough to buy it. It’s one of those
perpetual circles, it’s also a trap because it becomes impossible to define a
marketing strategy until you know exactly the kind of person you are marketing
to. Art careers should come with a warning label that says, be prepared to walk
in circles, until you figure stuff out, but with niches, the right ones can come
with an almost templated audience and market giving you at least a clue about
where to focus your marketing attention.

The benefits of multiple
niches…

The world is very different
today, with the relative ease of getting work out there, it is possible to work
in multiple niches that have a touchpoint with multiple markets. The only
caution I would add is that the more niches and markets you work in, the busier
your life will be, and it won’t always be good busy, nor will it be easy
juggling that many balls and spinning that many plates whilst maintaining any
level of quality. But, in the midst of a pandemic the artist who strives,
thrives, just don’t get too carried away, and maybe explore one additional niche
at a time and never underestimate the additional workload.

So long as your messaging is
clear and you’re not confusing your audience, multiple niches are a good way to
cover multiple bases in terms of finding buyers who can subsidise the work that
you have a real passion for creating. I am going to add in a caveat right about
here, never try to be everything to everyone, it’s impossible and you will end
up pleasing no one. This is something I learned quite late on in my art career, I previously thought that there was little merit in deviating away from my
regular landscape work which I have always been passionate about creating and
then frantically running around getting excited about the two hundred ideas I
had, that needed to be created there and then.

I began dipping into work
beyond the landscapes just after the last financial crisis, although I had
always had a little side hustle on the go with my video game artwork, but back
then, the market for 8-bit art was limited. It was my designs for restaurant menus
that had come about initially as a favour for a friend, that made it financially
possible for me to create my 8-bit retro computer and arcade game art which back
in the day didn’t have a huge commercial market,  but which I still really enjoy creating to this
day.

As retro gaming is one of my hobbies
and has been since I first picked up a computer in 1979, I’m able to work on
those pieces without it feeling anything like work, I am never more in my
element than when my mind is travelling back to my childhood! Today, I’m less
reliant on subsidising that work and over the past year I have seen an increase
in commission requests and although I rarely promote my work in this area, it’s
generally word of mouth from a long-time collector base who are equally into
the retro games scene.

Tear Down This Wall by Mark Taylor – One of my favourite works ever!

It’s the same with book covers
which are definitely not my first love when it comes to design projects, but
they do serve a purpose that makes other art and the purchase of art supplies
and technology to continue creating my regular work a little easier to fund,
and the pandemic has meant that everyone who thought they had a book inside
them decided to write it. Last year I was having to turn work away for book
covers which given the situation is remarkable.

So we can clearly see the benefits
of adding a niche or two to our main body of work, it is possible to work
across genres, mediums and subjects, but you do kind of need to want to do it.  Unless you are really not bonding with your
usual style, subject or medium, I would certainly suggest that you keep going
with that in parallel, there are never any guarantees in the art world other
than the guarantee that art supplies will keep increasing in price.

There are a few caveats as usual,
bear in mind that not every region will lend itself to every niche, neither
will every niche lend itself to any single artist, and any success still
depends on the amount of effort you expend on marketing and figuring out the
markets, and of course, how you approach the business end of art.

Any niche requires you to work
out the how and the who and the where, but as I said a little earlier, niches
can at least give you a slightly better clue about where to begin, but you
absolutely do have to be passionate about whatever niche you select otherwise
it shows in what you produce, even if you can’t see it yourself.

The following should provide
you with at least some idea of the art of the possible. It’s not meant to be the
defacto, this is what you must paint to sell art and make money list and you
might not bond with any of the subjects at all, but that’s not really the point.
This is to get you thinking, not just outside the box, but thinking about how
to create an entirely new box because sometimes, that’s really what it takes to
thrive and in some cases, survive.

While I was writing this
article my good friends at Artfinder reached out to share what they had been noticing on their website in the way
people were changing their behaviours and searching for different art, they had
been finding out that the most popular searches since last year had been for
uplifting scenes of nature.

Here’s what they had to say:

Whether it’s a painting of a
dreamy coastline, a lush green forest or even a National Health Service (NHS)-inspired
rainbow, here are the top searches on Artfinder and Google UK over the past
year:

 

• Searches for artwork
  containing beaches and trees increased 94% and 74% respectively on Artfinder
  during the first lockdown (March-June 2020) as many looked to replicate a part
  of the outside world in the face of uncertainty

 

• Spiking during the first
  lockdown, Google searches for forest-themed art grew again as restrictions
  tightened in the autumn, increasing by 91% during September and October
  compared to the same period in 2019

 

• While we might normally
  associate paintings of beach scenes with summer decor and holiday homes, the
  term ‘beach artwork’ saw a 24% jump in Google searches during the second
  lockdown in November 2020 compared to the previous month, 53% more than the
  same period in 2019

 

• Unsurprisingly, artwork
  containing rainbows also enjoyed a sharp rise in interest thanks to new
  connotations with the NHS fight against Covid-19, seeing a 370% rise in
  searches on Artfinder during the first lockdown period.

 

Following the announcement of
the most recent lockdown in January, Artfinder also saw a rise in interest for
abstract artworks, suggesting we are now looking for an alternative escape from
reality. From intense volcanic landscapes to boldly coloured sunsets over rolling
hills, the peak and troughs for particular searches reveal just how significant
global events continue to be in the shaping of art trends.

 

Michal
Szczesny, CEO of Artfinder says “Pablo Picasso once said that
‘art washes away from the soul the dust
of everyday life’ and all over the UK, and indeed all over the world, we
can see that people have been washing away the dust of stay-home orders by
seeking out art that depicts soul-soothing settings such as beaches, forests
and oceans.”

“By the beginning of 2021, we
can see that buyers are turning from familiar, often comforting scenes, to
artworks that may in some instances feel more intense, more profound, and which
are not rooted in those sights that people are missing as a result of still
being stuck indoors.”

 The largest online marketplace
for art, Artfinder is a VC funded startup, backed by the investors behind
Spotify and Zoopla and growing fast, with 110% growth in 2020. Investors
include Wellington Partners, Oxford
Capital, Cambridge Angels, plus private investors in the UK, the US and
Switzerland. In August 2019, Artfinder became the art world’s first B Corp,
solidifying its commitment to its values to support artists and make art
affordable and accessible.

Other Niches…

The Artfinder findings are also
a really good indicator that buying behaviour has changed, abstracts,
landscapes and rainbows, in particular, are amongst the most popular artworks
being sought out by buyers, at least in the UK. Abstracts are interesting, but
as an artist who has been painting abstract works for a few decades, I have to
say that they’re not the easiest of genres to pick up and run with as an artist.
They can be deeply emotional and exhausting works to create, and I tip my hat
to any abstract artist who can make a career out of creating them.

My own deep dive around niches
has drawn some similar conclusions of late, abstracts have been much more
popular recently, and I haven’t noticed any slow down in my own landscape
creations, but as I indicated earlier, there are a number of other niches that
seem to becoming more popular of late.

Art Supplies by Mark Taylor – one of my digital fabric creations and the glitter doesn’t get everywhere!

Retro demands its very own
article to be written (I have already made a start), but I’m not sure if the
pandemic has had anything to do with it, although I expect it has, but lots of
people are becoming increasingly interested in rediscovering their childhood
memories.

Nostalgia has always sold, yet
I remember reading an article in Popular Science magazine not all that long ago
that suggested that nostalgia was thought to be a disease in around 1688 with
the term nostalgia originating from Johannes Hofer who coined it in his medical
dissertation describing it as a combination of the Greek words nostos, or
homecoming and algos, or pain. It was a type of homesickness associated with
soldiers who fought far-off wars.

Today, nostalgia, vintage, retro,
are all terms that can take us immediately back to childhood memories, either
through a visual cue, smells or sounds. For me, there is nothing that takes me
back to my childhood more than the sound of video game arcades and the pings of
Pac Man or Galaxian, and the mere mention of 8-bit or Atari has me weak at the
knees, but then I am the stereotypical geek, and probably one of the originals
because I was involved in the scene at the age of ten.

I also remember those day
trips we had at school and certain places always remind me of the days pre-the
responsibility monster showing up at the door. What I wouldn’t do to just go
back for a week or two and relive some of those experiences, although I’m sure
they wouldn’t be quite as I remember them, maybe the memories are better!

Regular readers will recall
that I have written about my early days creating video game art for 8-bit home
computers and an early video game (that wasn’t particularly great and didn’t
particularly sell!), and today, with podcasts such as the Ted Dabney Experience
(those hot tub stories from Atari are true), Retro Asylum (which is a superb UK
based podcast about the UK microcomputer scene from the eighties), and Maximum
Power Up which looks primarily back at the home computer magazines from
yesteryear, the stories of the time are being retold as remembered by the
people who were there at the start and these podcasts are creating not just a
buzz, but an entire retro community.

There are a lot more people
getting involved in the retro gaming scene today than there were pre-pandemic, but
I think retro is also heading some way beyond gaming. Childhood toys, home décor,
eighties music, retro TV shows from the seventies and eighties are all popular
when you look online and one only has to look at the prices for vintage toys
and tech on platforms such as eBay to notice that there is rising demand.

Surprisingly, this is also a
niche that seems to be attractive to those hard to reach millennials too, four
of my 8-bit commissions, last year came from the millennial generation who
probably wanted one of the original dinosaurs to create their art.

Of course, retro is not just
about the golden days of video games, although if you ask me, retro is all about
the golden age of video games, there is plenty of choice in choosing a
topic, subject or theme that goes far beyond video games.

Retrofuturism is also a niche
that is worthy of some exploration. This is a genre that looks back at how
people in the past thought the future might look, and I’m still waiting for my
flying car. One of the classic examples that always stands out to me when retro-futurism is mentioned is the Tomorrowland area at Walt Disney World. This to me,
really sums the genre up and even watching a video of the area is like watching
a living piece of retro-futuristic art.

Some of the techniques that do
seem to be becoming increasingly popular when creating retro art are the use of
blur and grain to highlight and shade text and add more depth to an image. The
use of faded fonts, typeset font effects and hand-drawn brush fonts will give
even modern pieces a retro vibe. Colour palettes are just as important, get the
palette wrong and the work can look too modern, get it right and the colours
used can trigger emotions and memories that will hopefully sell the art. Check
out websites such as Adobe Color and Pantone who do a fantastic job around
summarising the most on-trend pallets.

Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall – One of my traditional landscapes – That wall would have been quicker to create if I had built it out of stone, each piece was created individually!

A symbol can speak louder than
any words. Symbolism in art has been used throughout art history, and I think
in a similar vein to retro, we’re all at least on some level, looking for deeper
meaning. Designers are utilising symbols more and more frequently and in a lot
of cases, the symbols, rather than being an addition to work as we might see
in more historical pieces, are becoming the central focus.

Throughout art history and
even to this day, symbols would be used to convey some deeper meaning.  No, it wasn’t a UFO, those star shapes and
symbols that looked like our ancestors were frequently visited by alien life
forms were mostly never related to aliens at all.

Symbology was used as a way to
describe something that was difficult to show in a picture, a peach for example,
often symbolized virtue and honour, a beetle, eternal life, and colours were
used to depict certain conditions or situations, so to put a twist on a phrase,
it probably wasn’t aliens.

But here’s another niche that
can be unpacked a lot more, symbols can elevate clothing, be tied into social
causes which we will come onto in a moment, and even made up logos of non-existent
companies can give work a retro-futuristic feel. There’s lots of depth within
the genre to explore and allow your creativity to stretch a little further.

Authentic Representation…

This is certainly a niche that
many artists have jumped into, but there is a fine line between authentic
representation and cultural misappropriation, it is a niche that needs to be
approached with care and respect. Work that authentically depicts diversity can
be immensely powerful, and because all people are different, the artwork doesn’t
have to be bound by stereotypes or sameness.

Highlighting various cultures,
beliefs, ages, and identities, gives artists a truly blank canvas on which to
create some truly one of a kind works, but as I said, it’s a niche that also
needs to be approached with care, consideration, and respect. It’s not
something that should be used solely as a mechanism to generate quick cash
because buyers and viewers will see through it and you could very well lose any
credibility.

Back to nature…

Nature has underpinned much of
my art since the mid-nineties, but I don’t think I can ever recall a time when
nature hasn’t felt so important. Maybe this is due to lockdowns, maybe it is a
yearning to get back outside into the fields and forests, and maybe because we
are seeing the dramatic effects of climate change more than ever before.

Where retro provides the
feeling of security, nature provides the feeling of relaxation and calm and in
many cases even a sense of escape, something that we could all do with a little
more of after the past year.

Looking back through my own
data and numerous notes, there is something that has specifically changed in today’s
nature-inspired artwork, it’s now much simpler than it was even just a couple
of years ago.

Nature is being used more
often in product design, even when the product isn’t at all related to nature
or where it has only some very tentative links with the subject. Packaging
design is certainly something that is being outsourced more than it once was, so
there’s another opportunity for artists and designers. But you might also want
to think about the not so obvious products that need outstanding design to
attract buyers. Beer and alcohol can design, particularly with the small micro-breweries
that have been springing up over the past few years has seen some beautiful
works of art featured on the products, often using psychedelic vector-based
line art. Whenever I look at certain beer cans, why do I immediately think of
Adobe Illustrator, maybe it’s an artist thing!

This work has the title of ‘SOLD’ – you wouldn’t believe how many people congratulated me on the sale – even before I released it! Maybe the title really was too symbolic or deep! Anyway, it is available as a print in my store!

Wildlife is always popular,
and more so when it can also support local wildlife and conservation groups.
When you create work with a specific purpose that also has the potential to
raise funds for various worthwhile groups, it not only comes with a ready-made
audience, often the charity or organisation that the work supports will assist
with marketing.

Word to the wise here though,
whenever work is created for charity it needs to be created out of love and
respect for what the charity stands for rather than virtue signalling or as a
way to easily put work in front of an audience. In short, it has to be done for
the right reasons because when it isn’t, buyers can see right through this too.

Equally, the charity or
organisation involved needs to be on board, and any agreements reached around
sales need to absolutely be written down and agreed upon by both parties.

Wildlife and conservation also
tie into art with a socially conscious design. The past couple of years have
been filled with socially conscious artworks, often works that support not just
local charities but local communities raising and championing awareness of
local or even international issues. 

These works particularly appeal
to those who are conscious of the growing crisis that is climate change and
recently, socially conscious design has been increasingly used to highlight
regional issues and politics, and whilst it always has been, the work feels
more prominent than at any time I can recall. I have seen some incredibly
powerful work around the Myanmar protests but I am seeing much  more work created with renewable materials,
great art doesn’t have to cost the earth it seems.

This is also exactly the kind
of art that has been creating discussions on social media, not just the
regular social platforms but on platforms such as Reddit which really is a
platform that knows and understands how to do engagement well. Brands have been
using social consciousness more and more to rally around various issues and
challenges that affect their buyers, even outside of their core marketing
efforts.

What you perhaps need to
remember with socially conscious artworks is that this isn’t anything new.
Artists throughout art history have documented almost anything and everything,
and even modern artists such as Banksy have put social consciousness front and centre
of the art that they produce.

We have a real problem with electronic waste when a Yeti finds a cell phone near base camp! Yeti Selfie is available in my store!

Pop Art is another niche that looks
easy, but can feel impossible as an artist to master, though it can be
lucrative when they find an eager audience for it. The simplicity of works from
Warhol was never really that simple, and nor were Warhol’s most famous works
as recent as many would think. His Cheddar Cheese Soup Can from the Campbell’s
Soup Can series was created back in 1962, yet it is at least in terms of its
concept replicated frequently even today and I’m certain it will never be
bettered.

Over the past couple of years
I have noticed a resurgence of art with a slight twist on Lichtenstein’s famous
works such as Drowning Girl which was created back in 1963. Hang a print of
that piece on the wall today and it wouldn’t look out of place in the most modern
of interiors. Great pop art, love it or hate it as many people do, is timeless
and that in itself is difficult to master.

Pop Art is a movement that originated
right here in Britain in the 1950s and became popular elsewhere in the late 50s
and early 1960s. There are distinct nuances between pop art created in disparate
geographic regions, as one would expect when art is representative of the
popular culture that it portrays. That’s exactly what lends pop art to more localised
markets but perhaps that could also be a reason as why some artists fail to
find any traction with it, there is a risk that any local cultural references
can become lost on a wider audience, so if you do select this niche, think
carefully about which markets you intend to place it in.

There is an element of comic
inspired art that sits quite neatly with or in between retro and pop art.
Utilising halftone dots, an effect that was introduced into the 5X update to
the art creating application, Procreate on the iPad, which reinforces perhaps
just how popular halftone has become. Comic art is about much more than
halftone dot effects, it’s about telling a story with bold colours and strong
composition and it’s not always about creating cute or angry characters and
surprisingly, it’s not all about anime.

As a genre, it also lends
itself to a fusion of pop art and retro, with limited  but bold colour palettes, grainy textures,
halftone effects, and aged fonts that maybe have a retro-futuristic feel, there
is plenty for artists to dig their teeth into with this particular genre.

Pet Portraits…

Perhaps one of the staples of
the niche or side hustle for many artists has the potential to become the main
source of income if the marketing is on point and in front of the right
audience. This is one area I have written about on this site previously, and it’s
also one of the niches I have been keeping a close eye on over the past half a
dozen years or so.

Pet owners and I count myself
as one of them, love their pets, they’re part of the family, oh, and they
rarely answer back! It is though, a little more complex than offering a
portrait of a dog or cat. Going down the pet portrait rabbit hole can see you specialising
in specific breeds, specific animals because it doesn’t always have to be about
dogs I guess, and exhibiting not just at art shows but at major dog and horse
shows if you are painting horses.

There is often both a local
and wider audience interest in animal art so it lends itself to very well
across every territory and that’s something that not every artwork subject gives
you the freedom to do. But, bear in mind, there is a high bar set for pet portraits
and some seriously great work already out there.

Garden Party – Still one of my popular works even after all this time! Every single flower and leaf was created as a separate artwork for this piece!

I wasn’t sure whether or not
to include florals as a specific niche, in part, because this is another area
where there is already a high bar and plenty of art, and with a slightly heavy
heart, I have to say that there might be too many artists attempting florals with
the misconception that they’re easy and quick and appeal to a wide audience.

Where florals become
challenging is when you surface them in front of an audience, there’s a lot of
noise in this space and to pull florals off, you have to do them really well. Not
every artist can master the shape and form of floral designs and do it
consistently well and very few can achieve the delicateness that florals need.
Once again, I tip my hat to any artist who works in floral design because to do
it consistently is challenging.

Having said that, florals can
be absolute gold if you get them right. Flowers and floral designs have always
been popular and if they can be marketed in the right place and aimed at the
right audience, they too can be a lucrative source of income, but it is a highly
competitive market and as I say, there are genuinely few artists who do florals
really well but hey, art is supposed to be subjective right?

Get them right and the market
can be opened up to include many of the special days we celebrate each year
such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, and it also opens up new spaces
to place your work in. Think about garden centres, high-end gift shops particularly
those in tourist hotspots in the countryside, and it’s a niche that lends
itself to much more than traditional paintings. Clothing and gifts, serving
trays, mugs, dinnerware, home décor, it’s another deep rabbit hole with plenty
of rewards possible, but remember, the bar is high.

The niches above should give
you an appetite for the art of what is possible and as I intimated earlier,
these are not necessarily the niches that will categorically work for you and
your artistic style, or even your geographic location.

They are niches that I have
been observing over the past decade and they are niches that I have noticed
have been particularly strong throughout. I have been looking and collecting
all kinds of business intelligence during that time and above all else, it’s
really beginning to tell me that we don’t always have to look to the obvious.

However, this next part is, I
think, it is fair to say, on a slightly higher level, but if you are looking to take
your creativity in a completely different direction as an aside from your
everyday creations, or in a direction that has the potential to create an
impact outside of the traditional art space, we need to look towards
building that entirely new box.

The example I’m going to use
for this, as I say, is on a very different level to selecting a new medium or
genre, but it does I think, demonstrate that an artist or designer or creator
has the potential to utilise the skills they have in other areas. So whilst I’m
not suggesting that you unpack what I am about to fly through and run with it,
what I am suggesting is that we don’t always have to think in linear ways about
how we apply our creativity to make a living. We don’t have to immediately dismiss the crazy idea!

When we begin thinking in
non-linear ways, we can then more easily expand the idea out to work out if it
fits with the skills we have or the skills we wish to master. My advice to
anyone looking towards any new niche is to think of a hundred crazy ideas, and
if you have some confidence in your own ability I am pretty sure you could pull
99 of them off regardless of how crazy they might seem.

Tropical Parrot by Mark Taylor – Also available now!

As artists, we immediately
think about new subjects to paint and draw but the creative sector is much
broader and wider than painting and drawing, or being what I can only term as
being stereotypically creative, think sculpting, pottery, ceramics, or anything
else that might immediately spring to mind if you were asked to list what a
creative does.

The talent you have for being
creative can be applied in all sorts of different ways, but we’re not always
aware of how our creativity can be used in other disciplines, maybe because we
wouldn’t necessarily think about using our creativity differently from the way we
have always used it, sometimes I think we’re creative until we’re not.

One of the biggest areas I
have been seeing rising demand for, in part because it has been a major focus
of mine for a number of years while I have been assembling and leading a major
project to deliver three studios to do it is that of content creation.

Whilst I’m applying that
caveat again that this might not be an area that would suit you, it does
demonstrate how to run with an idea and then unpack it until you discover what
you can do with it. Sometimes the crazy idea needs a deep dive to work out if
it has legs.

When we think about content
creation we might think about creating social media posts and yes, it can be
that, I always love to see social media profiles of graphic designers who take
their craft to the nth degree on social, and some social media folk in big
organisations are becoming lockdown rock stars. Think Wendy’s and the infamous
and often brutal tweets, or UPS suggesting that if you were wondering where
your parcel is, try next door. The self-deprecating responses that have a ring
of truth are always the ones that seem to resonate the best.

Content creation or specifically
the design of content can also be a lucrative business that supplies e-learning
content and resources into multiple industries. This is also a career that I
have found to be more attuned to creatives than traditional technology
developers, so it really does have a great fit with the creative sector.

Working from home has seen a significant
increase in demand for e-learning and interactive content creation. Businesses that
have staff working from home still have a responsibility to provide those staff
with training and the most effective way to do that in the midst of a pandemic,
and I would suggest even outside of a pandemic, is to deliver that training
online. The difficulty most businesses have is with the price that they get
charged for commissioning a professional content author to create it.

Yes, it is another specific
skillset that you will need to learn if you were to decide to follow this
particular route, and it’s not straightforward to master either, but there are
also openings that allow artists and photographers to get involved in other
ways. Think about what I said about matching the skills that you already have
to different disciplines, most things involve some element of art and design
these days.

If you didn’t want to engage
in the process of building content, you could look to supply the market that
does build it with the things that they need. Image licensing can bear fruit if
your portfolio is strong, as can sound effects and music, but if you did decide
to try your hand in the actual creation of content then you will find a lot of
support and tutorials available online and much of it is freely available.

If you were to follow the
creator route, then understanding things like learning management systems such
as Moodle and Canvas and how they can be integrated into websites is kind of
mandatory, and if you can get to grips with professional authoring tools such
as Articulate 360 or Adobe Captivate and pull those skills together with an
understanding of accessibility standards, suddenly you have a brand new enterprise
that can quite happily sit alongside your usual creative output and probably
even take over from your usual creative output.

Articulate 360 and Adobe
Captivate are the tools that I have been using for a while and the tools that I
installed in the three studios I recently set up, but having other tools such
as Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, or Adobe Photoshop or
Adobe Illustrator is essential because you will need to create the assets that
get used within the learning packages. So once again, thinking your next niche
through and unpacking it might help you to develop more options to use your
creativity in a market that is growing at quite a click. If you can use
Illustrator, why limit your audience, content creators need those services too.

Pool Party – One of my most searched for artworks! Yes, also available!

There is though, another niche
that is ideally suited to those who have been offering creative tutorials over
zoom or skype or social media, but it’s only when you begin to sit down and
unpack these niches and the demand for them that you can then begin to join the
dots and apply your own creativity and skills to them.

Tutorials delivered over
social media or video conferencing are fine, but if you need to scale the
business, technology quickly becomes limiting. Embedding an e-learning
management system into your website allows you to add students, enrol them in
units or courses, track and manage their progress, set assignments and keep in
touch and even grade them and there are automation options to reduce the amount
of input and time needed to manage the process of managing students.

We can begin to see the
potential with something like this but let’s really unpack that niche a little
more. There’s also ample opportunity for the upsell, personal one to one video
tutorials, providing additional support, access to a podcast or private social
media group or forums, and these are generally the things that students expect,
they are also seen as a premium service.

But you could go even further,
selling the instructional videos, templates, patterns, even the equipment that
students might need to use which can often be found online as white label
products which you are then able to put your own branding on. Beyond that of
course, there are the obligatory conferences once we’re out of the pandemic,
live webinars, and sampler courses offered at lower price points, and it’s a
model that can lend itself to yet another subscription. More than this, you never
only offer the course once, it is a repeatable model that can grow exponentially
and it allows either fixed date enrolment or roll on roll off course starts to
keep the flow of students when you are using a tool such as Moodle to deliver
it.

So we now have a completely
new niche and in this example we’re looking to professionalise the tutorials we
have been offering, so let’s unpack it a little more. Maybe we could offer the
model as a franchise for other creatives to run with their tutorials or
offering your learning packages which are then syndicated. 

You could then go even further
taking the entire model a step further by getting your teaching resources
certified by an official awarding body so that they are recognised as an
official qualification or recognised as official CPD so that what you offer has
some value and academic worth.

That then becomes the value
add, the premium price point, and the difference between what you offer and
what everyone else is relying on pay per click to never quite deliver.

Can you do this on a limited
budget, in truth, probably not, or you can but not on any level that is scalable.
So once again, let’s unpack that thought too. My advice is to maybe look to other
creatives to form a partnership and share the workload and initial costs,
ultimately, you will need additional hands anyway so you  might as well begin with having them in place
from the off.

Unpacking any ideas that you
have, no matter how crazy those ideas might first initially seem rather than
dismissing an idea as too complex, too samey, too far out there to be remotely possible,
before exploring the depths of that idea to see if there is anything that might
stick, allows you to better visualise the idea or the niche you want to
explore.

Whilst it is probably easier
to pick any number of other niches to pursue as an artist than the example I
used with the content creation above,  that’s not necessarily the point of the
example, the point is very much that when you think about niches in the
creative sector, you don’t have to be limited, and if you spend some time
unpacking the possibilities of whatever niche you choose, you can quickly come
up with ideas that can support your existing creative endeavours or you can more
easily begin to identify things that can become new creative endeavours in
their own right.

I think one of the best ways
of unpacking any niche to see if it has a fit for you is to think about it as
if a friend is setting a business up in that niche, all you then need to ask yourself
is what can you do to help, what can you bring to the table that will help
them and that is what will help you.

In short, if you’re not
selling because the market isn’t there right now, it might be time to unpack
some of those crazy ideas you have had over the years to see what might have
enough legs to carry you through.

Your chosen niche could be anything
at all, it’s a brave soul who takes on the learning curve of using a platform
such as Articulate, but art and design is used in so many aspects of life that
there will always be a market that can be accessed and if you can solve or make
a problem easier and you feel passionate enough about it, that’s the niche you
need to be in.

Twin Sails is one of my earlier works and still available as a print!

My advice to anyone regardless
of the niche they decide to follow is to first make sure that the niche is
something that you have a passion for, and secondly, make sure that you fully
research what you’re getting into.

My very first foray into book
covers just over a decade ago was a learning curve that wasn’t easy to master, I
had no idea about ISBN codes and spine widths, trim and safety lines, today
most designs can be produced using templates depending on who is publishing the
book.

Think about the markets and
indeed whether or not there is one for whatever niche you decide to pursue, and
explore who is already working in that niche. What are they charging and what are
people already paying, and how strong is the demand. These aren’t questions
that you need to ask just because you have a new direction to work in, these
are the very questions that you need to be asking regardless of whether you are
selecting a new niche or not.

Master the Niche…

You will need to be mindful
that any new niche, subject or genre will take some time to master. There’s
plenty to do while you build up any new techniques and skills but mastering the
art of patience as always with art is the key to setting out on the right
track.

Marketing is just as important
with your niche as it is with your primary work, but you might want to consider
if there should be any form of separation and how you might apply it. I know
for most people who set out on the path to professional art that marketing is
the one thing that most of us never really enjoy, but it can be fun. It comes
down to having confidence and thinking about marketing as being a core part of
the creative process.

I do know the pressure that
marketing can put on artists, it’s something that has often made me feel like a
drowning soul waving his arms frantically in a raging sea, but without
marketing and seeing it as an essential part of the creative process, we wouldn’t
get too far.

Adrift at the Golden Hour – From my Adrift Collection of seascapes with empty boats!

It really comes down to the
art of the business of art. I have heard so often from artists that they would
much rather be spending all of their time creating, but if that’s what an
artist really wanted to do then they would be working as an artist for someone
else. The business of art is an essential part of being a self-employed
independent creative and when your confidence in this area grows, it becomes
almost second nature.

Over the past five weeks we
have broken down the skills that artists routinely use every single day and judging
by the emails and messages I have been receiving each week, many of you have
been surprised at just how epic you really are, so I have every faith in your
ability to take forward a new niche, add it to your portfolio and become an
even better artist for doing it.

Coming Soon!

Hopefully, this article will
have certainly got the wheels spinning and provided you with a few useful pointers in
working out exactly what your next creative challenge might be! If you have tested
out a new niche or already create in multiple niches, let us know what your
experience has been like by leaving a comment below!

If you have found this series
useful, let me know that too so I can plan on spending more time pouring
through the data, meandering my way around the interweb and spending a few
sleepless nights pulling it all together, it’s worth it for me even if it only
helps one artist make a success of their business!

What’s next? We’ll be taking a
stroll down memory lane as I unpack the niche that is retro. For the eagle-eyed
amongst you and for those who managed to get past the first paragraph this
week, you will have noticed that I completed an eighties inspired retro piece which appears above,  so I will be unpicking that to give you
a little insight into all of the visual queues that you might have missed in
the work!

So until next time, as always,
stay safe, stay well, stay creative, and above all else, look after each other!

Mark x

I am
an artist and blogger and live in Staffordshire, England. Like every blogger, I
have two dogs and enjoy country walks! Unlike every other blogger, I really do
enjoy country walks!

You
can purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site
here: https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com   and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at https://beechhousemedia.com

If you
are on Facebook, you can give me a follow right here,  https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia 
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia
because it’s always great to connect and sometimes I even have mildly
interesting things to say!

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