Secret to Artist Success

Here are some steps on how to be successful as an artist.

The best way to generate art sales is to build friendships, because it is much easier to buy from friends than it is to buy from strangers. To Do this begin by telling your story. People are fascinated by artists and telling your story is your introduction to your special audience.

The best way to make new friends and new sales is to listen, build a good report, and to understand what is being asked. In doin this you are open to now tell your unique and compelling story of you art.

Here are the basic things people always want to know. It's always the same whether your at your studio, gallery, being interviewed or over a meal.

How and when did you start to make your art?

What and who influenced your art?

What kind of art do you make? What is the style called? Is there a name for it? Keep it simple.

How do you make the art? What materials is the art made from?

What gets you going? This is your inspiration to make your art. Keep it simple again.

How long does it take you to make a piece of art? Which sometimes is an underlying question of how much do you make an hour...be honest beacuse the next question needs to also be answered.

Why is your art different? A chance to sparkle and shine, what makes your art stand out.

You can taylor these questions too, perhaps you are bringing awareness to a favorite subject, cause, or charity. However be careful and dont get preachy. These folks asking questions are wanting simple answers about your art, not dragged out answers to somthing else entirely they they may have no interest in.

What ever your art story is, keep it just that. Focused on your art, be genuine, don't get to personal, don't use big art world words or expressions, just keep it simple, be honest and stick to it. If they steer away from you and talk about someone elses art that they didnt like, dont join in in bad mouthing another artist, the art world is a small place, it can come back to haunt you, steer them back to your art and dont participate in gossip.

People who ask questions usually do so because they like what they see and are thrilled to see and artist be successful. You may have been an artist for quite sometime or brand new at, but they may be dicovering you for the first time. The sure and fun thing about being an artist is just that. Being discovered on a new and daily basis.

Your fans will begin telling your story to others and your success will increase more and more.

Here is how I answered those above questions.

I began painting when at the age of five years old. My mom had a paint by numbers set of the ship "The USS Constitution - Old Ironsides" and I got into it and finished the painting. With the left over paint created some other little paintings on paper and scraps of wood. I couldn't wait to do another painting. Soon afterward, my aunt brought me a couple of art books and I discovered the French Impressionist painters. I liked Monet Gauguin, Sisley and Van Gogh the best and drawn to the brushstrokes and styles of these artist. I started copying these masters and gave the paintings to my relatives as gifts.

Around the age of six in public school art class I realized that I wanted to be an artist especially after a local artist who made sculpture came to visit us in class. My favorite things in school where "show and tell" and "art class". Over the next few decades years I turned making and selling - painting into my vocation.

My favorite things to paint vary, and my favorite piece of art is usually the one I am working on at the time. While I am making it, whether it's a cityscape, landscape, a portrait, or abstract the art belongs to me, and when the artwork completed I enjoy sharing it with the world. This is where my show and tell experience comes in.

The process for making my art pieces includes photography, drawing, painting, and field trips, where I visit sites to paint and discover new places at the same time. Being an avid photographer, I take many pictures of my subjects and when I return to the studio, I dissect them and compile new scenes on canvas or paper. I first make a small painting around 8 x 10 to 16 x 20 inches, if I like it; I move on to make a larger painting.

Originally, I made these small paintings to create a portfolio to show gallery for consideration and soon realized that people wanted the little paintings because they would fit into their homes and offices. Therefore, I continue to sell and market my little paintings.

I paint mostly in acrylic and mixed media, where I can include details in ink with the acrylic. I also enjoy pen and ink. Black ink and white paper are a departure from my bold color when I step back and take a break from it.

Most of my art scenes depict iconic and historic American city and country architecture, and street-scenes including where I live, San Diego, California. I am fortunate to live in this beautiful city and amazing state that is inspiring to me everyday with its diverse topography, peoples that I experience in brilliant color in shapes and feelings. I paint and draw originals and reproduce into prints and then can share with everyone who comes to my studio and exhibits and beyond.
©RD Riccoboni 2006

You may use any part of this article as long as the following words are included. (RD Riccoboni is one of the America's favorite, succesful internationally collected artists, author and gallery owner his work may be seen at http://beacon-artworks.com ©RD Riccoboni 2006)

Click here to buy art prints!

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Funny how we receive messages, I was at an art show recently and the artist there asked me what drives me and how do you become successful as an artist. (You can read my personal journey of success below.) When I told the artist my answer, they negatively replied "Oh I can't do that, Im not famous or know what I'm doing like you." I thought that was a strange answer but one I've heard many times from artists. There are many factors to succes, like persistance, making decisions, a good business plan and networking, discipline and tenacity of your purpose along with acting, doing and thinking in a certain way as well a sacrifice. More about that later.. Immediately I remembered and replied to my friend one my favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt in which she said "You must do that thing which you think you cannot do." No less than the very next day I received this timely message from my friend Bob Proctor on Success and I want to share it with you. Bob writes:

 

Dear Randy,

I have often referred to the words of Albert E.N. Gray and his speech, "The Common Denominator of Success." Years of experience as a successful executive helped Mr. Gray find answers to the questions you have probably asked yourself—questions like, "How can I avoid failure in this new career?" ... "How can I manage to succeed in my interesting, new profession?" Mr. Gray crystallized his thoughts about these common, but important doubts that we all experience at some time during our lives, and he incorporated them into a speech called, "The Common Denominator of Success." I have taken the liberty of substituting a few phrases to help each of us relate to Mr. Gray's remarkable message more personally. The information in "The Common Denominator of Success" is truly powerful. I have referred to this information numerous times in my own commercial career and I know it has had a profound impact on my performance.

Bob Proctor

The Common Denominator of Success

 by Albert E.N. Gray

"Several years ago I was brought face to face with the very disturbing realization that I  was trying to supervise and direct the efforts of a large number of people who were trying to achieve success, without knowing myself what the secret of success really was. And that, naturally, brought me face to face with the further realization that regardless of what other knowledge I might have brought to my job, I was definitely lacking in the most important knowledge of all.

Of course, like most of us, I had been brought up on the popular belief that the secret of success is hard work, but I had seen so many people work hard without succeeding and so many people succeed without working hard that I had become convinced that hard work was not the real secret, even though in most cases it might be one of the requirements.

And so I set out on a voyage of discovery which carried me through biographies and autobiographies and all sorts of dissertations on success and the lives of successful people until I finally reached the point at which I realized that the secret I was trying to discover lay not only in what people did, but also in what made them do it.

 

 I realized further that the secret for which I was searching must not only apply to every definition of success, but since it must apply to everyone to whom it was offered, it must also apply to everyone who had ever been successful. In short, I was looking for the common denominator of success. And, because that is exactly what I was looking for,that is exactly what I found.

But this common denominator of success is so big, so powerful, and so vitally important to your future and mine that I'm not going to make a speech about it. I'm just going to "lay it on the line" in words of one syllable, so simple that anybody can understand them.

The common denominator of success—the secret of success of every person who has ever been successful—lies in the fact that "THEY FORMED THE HABIT OF DOING THINGS THAT FAILURES DON'T LIKE TO DO."

It's just as true as it sounds and it's just as simple as it seems. You can hold it up to the light, you can put it to the acid test, and you can kick it around until it's worn out, but when you are all through with it, it will still be the common denominator of success, whether we like it or not.

It will still explain why people have gone into a business or profession with every apparent qualification for success and have been nothing but disappointing failures, while others have achieved outstanding success in spite of many obvious handicaps. And since it will also explain your future, it would seem to be a mighty good idea for you to use it in determining just what sort of future you are going to have. In other words, let's take this big, all-embracing secret and boil it down to fit you.

If the secret of success lies in forming the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do, let's start the boiling-down process by determining what are the things that failures don't like to do.

The things that "failures" don't like to do are the things that you and I and other human beings, including successful people, naturally don't like to do. In other words, we've got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of people ... and is therefore "unnatural" and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices. The things that failures don't like to do, in general, are too many and too obvious for us to discuss them here, and so, since our success in every endeavour lies in our ability to persuade others to do what we would like them to do, let's move on to a discussion of the things we don't like to do. Here, too, the things we don't like to do are too many to permit a specific discussion, but I think they can all be disposed of by saying that they all emanate from one basic dislike common to all of us. We don't like to talk to people about something they might not want to talk about. Any reluctance to approach someone, to suggest a change in their activity, to persuade them to take a new approach is caused by this one basic dislike.

Perhaps you have wondered what is behind this peculiar lack of welcome on the part of those we're trying to persuade. Isn't it due to the fact that our prospects are human too? And isn't it true that the average human being is highly resistant to change even when it's for their own improvement, and is therefore prone to escape our efforts to persuade them to do something they don't want to do by striking at the most important weakness we possess: namely, our desire to be appreciated?

Perhaps you've been discouraged by a feeling that you were born subject to certain dislikes peculiar to you, with which successful people are not afflicted. Perhaps you have wondered why it is that those who accomplish most seem to like to do the things that you don't like to do.

They don't! And I think this is the most important and encouraging statement I have ever offered any person. But if they don't like to do these things, then why do they do them?

Because by doing the things they don't like to do, they can accomplish the things they want to accomplish. Now let me repeat that: Successful people are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do.

Why are successful people able to do things they don't like to do while failures are not? Because successful people have a purpose—strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don't like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.

Sometimes even the best producers get into a slump. When a person gets into a slump, it simply means that they have reached a point at which, for the time being, the things they don't like to do have become more important than their reasons for doing them.

Many people with whom I have discussed this common denominator of success have said at this point, "But, I have a family to support and I have to have a living for my family and myself. Isn't that enough of a purpose?"

No, it isn't. It isn't a sufficiently strong purpose to make you form the habit of doing the things that you don't like to do for the very simple reason that it is easier to adjust ourselves to the hardships of a poor living than it is to adjust ourselves to the hardships of making a better one. If you doubt me, just think of all the things you are willing to go without in order to avoid doing the things you don't like to do. All of which seems to prove that the strength that holds you to your purpose is not your own strength but the strength of the purpose itself.

Now let' see why habit belongs so importantly in this common denominator of success. People are creatures of habit just as machines are creatures of momentum, for habit is nothing more or less than momentum translated from the concrete into the abstract. Can you picture the problem that would face our mechanical engineers if there were no such thing as momentum? Speed would be impossible because the highest speed at which any vehicle could be moved would be the fir