A book review for the book "Art Inc.: The Essential Guide for Building Your Career as and Artist" by Lisa Congdon, and American fine artist and illustrator. This is an excellent book for artists seeking a path of entrepreneurship in their work. Specifically, this book will be most beneficial to artists who work in two-dimensional forms, but as a business book, I recommend it for every maker out there.
Where to buy this book:: https://amzn.to/3iPUbER
*Purchasing using my affiliate links helps support and bring income to my channel.
Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori and this week I have another book review. The book I have this week is Art Inc. by Lisa Congdon, the essential guide for building your career as an artist. I found that this book would be especially helpful if you are into two-dimensional art. So, painting, drawing, sketching, any kind of two-dimensional art, this is going to be particularly helpful for you. That's not to say that it wouldn't be helpful for any kind of 3D artist, it's just that, it's really specifically geared towards people who are into two-dimensional art forms.
So, the book starts off with the artist mindset, and finding your artistic voice. You have to take risks, and push through difficulties, and also in developing a positive mindset. Developing that mindset of a striving artist and a thriving artist and not a starving artist.
Then it moves on into how to run a small business, because as an artist, you are running, essentially, a small business. The book talks about income streams, setting up your visions and goals to align with your own values, working on branding, legal bits and details in running a business. Also, organizing yourself as a business, and tips for getting your taxes and things like that together.
The book also moves on into promoting your work. So, utilizing social media, having a blog, your business cards; all that kind of stuff you need to promote yourself as an artist. There is an especially helpful detailed bit about getting press, and how to get the press to notice you; and I've seen a lot of the tips about different social media things and how you need to brand and market yourself, but this particular book has a segment about getting press and I thought that was especially helpful and also unique and interesting to this book.
The next chapter, and segment is kind of on selling your artwork. So, the different avenues that you have to sell your artwork. Like I said, this book is geared towards two-dimensional artists, so it goes into great detail about how to make prints, get prints of your artwork made, and the process that you have to go through to get a good print. And how to get those rolling and selling prints. They are great for two-dimensional artists. It's kind of hard to sell a print of a mug or a sculpture, but it's possible. So if you're into prints and you think prints would be something helpful, there's a lot of good information in this book. It also goes over selling online, the different outlets that you have for that. Taking commissions, and you know, guidelines and general how-to's on taking commission work. It can be intimidating for some people, and if you want to find a way to get some good structure in that, there's a lot of good tips in this book about that. It briefly goes over shipping your work. I mean, shipping artwork is always kind of a complicated process, especially if you make huge two-dimensional pieces. It can be really challenging to find a way to ship that. So there's lots of good details and tips on shipping your work in here.
The next segment that I found especially helpful and quiet interesting was on exhibitions and galleries. So, how to approach a gallery, and how to get your portfolio together, and how to achieve those goals, if you have goals of getting your artwork into a gallery on a professional level. This book has a lot of great information to help you get there, and help you set those goals and achieve those goals. Definitely helpful as far as like, you know, your CV and your artist statement. Some of you might know what that is, some of you might not, and if you don't, this book could really help you out a lot in that area.
There is a nice detailed section on illustration and licensing, I think I went over that a little bit in my last video, my last tips video. So, this has a lot more information on that, straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. She talks about contracts, fees, the overview of it in general and how to work with an agent. So that is isn't for everybody, but you can read a lot about the pros and cons of having an agent in this book specifically.
Finally, it kind of wraps up with other income ideas and growth opportunities. So like, learning to teach your art as a form of income for your art, teaching others. Getting residencies, if you need something to do, you can do a residency. If you've never heard of a residency it's an interesting way to learn about them. Also, tips on saying no. Because sometimes you are so successful that you are going to have to say no to people, or sometimes an opportunity just isn't going to be good for you. So, learning to say no, also important. Maybe you are so successful one day that you actually need to hire help in your artwork. I know for a lot of artists that can be challenging because we want to do it all by ourselves. But if you need to hire help, there's some guides in this book on how to go about that. And then finally, in finding balance in your success. Let's say you made it, you made it all the way and now you're super successful. That can be great, or it can be incredibly stressful. So there's some good tips wrapping up in this book about how to handle and manage success.
So again, I recommend this book especially if you're a two-dimensional artist. I think if you are into 2D art and you're seeking the traditional career path of galleries and exhibitions, that this book is going to be especially helpful for you in achieving your goals. I think it does have beneficial information for all artists. So if you're just into reading art business books, I recommend it for that too. Thank you so much for joining me. If you thought this video was helpful and you want to see more book reviews, go ahead and give it a thumbs up, and if you want to join me for a weekly art video you can subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading, and I will see you next week!
Where to buy this book:: https://amzn.to/3iPUbER
*Purchasing using my affiliate links helps support and bring income to my channel.
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