I have returned on Etsy to gather some data on which avenues I should take in selling my works. Facebook Marketplace was great, it gave just the right momentum, flexibility and my favourite part is meeting the clients. However, I find that the reach is constrained. I live in Dartmouth Nova Scotia and would love it if I could reach the rest of Canada. With that goal, I decided on opening a shop on Etsy.
The first time I tried it…there were scams. You have to be vigilant when doing business online. I reported the scams and observed. I get visits by keeping up to date on your social media following but no takers. To be fair what I was offering were custom-made watercolour pet portraits and printed greeting cards. I checked the market (which I should have done in the first place) and found that there are plenty of custom-made watercolour per portraits that cost less and are done much faster. When I investigated, they had options for materials like metal, wood, etc, which is obviously not aa material for working with a medium like watercolour. So I figured, it’s printed and likely with the help of AI. Don’t get me wrong, printed art is fine as long as you have copyright on the art, and advertise it as printed from original. It’s some challenge for sure, but can we work around it as artists? We already have one key advantage, our own unique art style. The extra effort we need to take is to study the mechanics behind the technology of the market we want to use. I’ll share it here when I discover something.
Now on to the actual purpose of this post…my Birds of Nova Scotia art prints. I have made available on my shop a limited number of giclee art prints of three Nova Scotian birds I see all the time in my balcony. I do not plan to sell the originals because the crow is a gift to my husband, the cardinals is a gift I exchanged at the Association of Atlantic Area Artists Christmas party, and the blue jay is something I really liked.
Cardinal Lovers
This was a painting where I let go of the pressure to make a mistake because I did not sketch beforehand and just applied paint and trained my resilience to just apply the colours I think matches my vision. And I let it flow.
Feeding Time
My husband loves crows. They visit us in our balcony and they follow us on our walks. This one in particular is from the “mall flock”. And the crow treat right in its beak is the delicious Beggin Strips for dogs that will now forever be called “crow treat”.
Blue Jay’s Peak
I could not get a good picture of a blue jay, I always find them rushing for a meeting or something. So I bought a copyright on an image credit to mirceax from iStock. Next time, I will manage to take a photo of the blue jay who hides his peanuts in my planter.
Leave a Reply