A top art agent shares 3 ways to make a living as an artist
Top art agent and former full-time illustrator, Lilla Rogers, shares the secret for making a living as an artist (after all, it’s the greatest job in the world).
In this four minute video Lilla opens your eyes to a variety of new markets for your work and shows some samples of the kind of cool product gigs you might get (eye candy alert!). Watch above or read the transcript below.
Gorgeous products agented by Lilla and illustrated by the artists she represents. Learn about the huge variety of art markets available to you and discover how you can get gigs like these in Hot Markets for Your Art Part A and Part B.
Lilla also discusses the importance of diversifying and leveraging creative work in the art market. She talks about different hot art markets such as home decor, toy and baby, editorial, and scrapbooking, and provides examples of how artists can leverage their work across multiple markets.
She emphasizes the need to stay fresh and adapt to new markets, and offers insights on how to design for different products and markets.
3 ways to make a living as an artist
Here are 3 ways to make a living as an artist:
- Research hot art markets like children’s books, party supplies, or baby apparel.
- Consider your personal unique art style and strengths to figure out the best markets for you.
- Develop your understanding of the design requirements for different product types like round plates or gift bags.
Do you want to explore ten of the hottest markets for your art and learn how you can get amazing jobs like these? Sign up for Hot Markets for Your Art Part A and Part B today!
3 ways to make a living as an artist: Transcript
So here’s the deal: you want to make living as an artist because it’s the greatest job in the world to do.
And my whole thing is diversification, just like a stock portfolio. You don’t know what’s going to give you a ton of work, or what market’s going to go down, what’s gonna go up. That’s one reason for the variety of markets.
Another reason is: you do a piece for one market, and it’s actually applicable to a variety of markets, so you’re leveraging the piece you did, you might be able to licence it in a variety of markets. So for example, maybe you did an owl here, like on this Suzy Ultman piece for her bolt fabric line, and then she got a home decor line for bath products: this is toothbrush holder, how cool is that? So you can leverage your imagery into a variety of markets.
Bolt fabric and toothbrush holder illustrated by Suzy Ultman and agented by Lilla Rogers.
Another advantage is that you stay fresh, you’re excited. Like for the home decor market, this was a project my agency got for Mati Rose McDonough, and so her paintings then were produced on a whole number of products in home decor. Maybe you didn’t even know some of the markets, like here we’ve got this by Helen [Dardik], a Russian doll. Did you know that that ornaments is actually a very lucrative market and they’re, you know, hand painted wood, for example?
Or creating characters for the toy and baby market is huge. Perhaps you’re interested in editorial, which might be coming up with a concept for a book, that’s an interactive book, in other words, you draw in the book. These are all products by my artists.
Maybe you didn’t know that, you know, how do you get this gig? How do you get this project? To do this? (I want to play with this later after the video I’m gonna play with this thing.) This fabulous thing by Jillian Phillips. How do you get these projects?
How can you do these – are cards lucrative? How do you get them? What is scrapbooking? This was my collection, Ruby Violet, for the craft market. The scrapbooking market. This is a book of papers for scrapbooking that I did. But what else is in the scrapbooking market? It’s also crafts, it’s needlepoint kits, it’s all kinds of cool stuff.
Nesting dolls illustrated by Helen Dardik and agented by Lilla Rogers.
How about baby apparel? So this work that Helen did for this is something that she could relicense to a company for baby apparel. It goes on and on and on. Editorial, okay, editorial, how do you get a children’s book? What is a children’s book like? These are by my artists, beautiful, beautiful books. What style is right for you? Are you gifted in that area?
Paper products, paper products like party paper, for example, in [Hot Markets for Your Art] Part B, where that’s about party plates. So how do you work on round plates and paper napkins and bags and gift wrap, how do you design for that? Do you just do the same thing and stick it on a bunch of products? Do you vary it? What are you giving the client, are you giving 110%? So these are the kinds of things that we discuss in the markets.
