5 Steps to Making Prints of Your Art

Your's truly holding the "Happy Cows" original

I love helping other artists on their journey and while there is SO MUCH more that I don't know, I feel it is important to share some of the things I have learned along the way.  After all, it just might be what someone else is trying to figure out.

I've only been offering reproductions of my artwork for maybe 4 years now.  When I first started thinking about it, I felt a bit lost.  I didn't have a clue where to even start.  First, you have to decide if you are going to pay to have your prints made professionally or if  you plan on trying to tackle that job yourself.  Because I create so many pieces of art,  I felt that I would never be able to figure out which ones to make the investment in and I didn't want to have lots of money tied up in inventory just collecting dust in my studio.  The logical decision for me was to print my own.

Prints getting ready to be matted for sale

I think it would be helpful here at this stage in this blog for me just to give you a list of the supplies I use for making my prints and their Amazon links.  I hope you find this helpful.

Canon Pixma Pro 100 Printer 
Photoshop Elements or other photo editing program
Epson Premium Presentation Paper
Matte set (backboard and cellophane bag included in 8 x 10 & 11 x 14)
Art Tape
Scotch Brand Adhesive Glider (acid free adhesive)
.009 mechanical pencil
Authentic Reproduction sticker
Rigid Mailers  for shipping your prints



When I have a new work of art. the first thing you have to do is get a good photograph of the piece.  This is the foundation for being able to continue making money from your work so this is the most important step.  I'm using my image of "Happy Cows" painted in 2017 and sold two years later in 2019.  I actually had this piece professionally photographed for about $65 I think and I'm glad I did.  The larger pieces seem to be more difficult for us to get a good photo of with our camera.  The smaller canvases are much easier.  I just scan all my drawing and color pencil art.

So now you have your photo. I create a folder just for this piece and I save all my print files in that folder.   I save the original image in a PNG format to folder first and name it in this case, Happy Cows-Original.  I save it in a PNG format because JPEGs are of the devil.   I'm kidding, but I do know that over time and after a number of copies a JPEG looses it's clarity as an image and you don't want that to happen to your file. I do save a JPEG image of the 5x7 size and add a watermark to it for social media sharing purposes.  I also am sure to keep the original image unedited if for some reason I need it down the road before I have made any edits.

I want to create a print file for these 4 sizes along with a note card template.  4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x 10 and 11x14.  I start with the largest size desired size which in my case is 11 x 14 and I create my new document size 1" smaller on both sides; for example the 11 x 14 print file is really sized 10 x 13 inches and so on.  This insures when printed that I have a nice even white border around the image.  I leave the bottom border slightly larger because this is where I am going to write the title and sign the print using my .009 mechanical pencil.  I love the very fine line that this pencil gives me.  It is also my go to drawing pencil so I always have it there in my studio.

For the 5 x 7 prints I can actually fit 2 on one paper so I create a a file that I title 5x7 (2).  This is what the file looks like that I print from.  I get 2 prints on one sheet of paper and then I have an extra one to file away to fulfill any future order that I will have.

The image size here is really 4 x 6 (remember it is one inch smaller on both sides).  I print 4 x 6 images usually on glossy photo paper, laminate them and put a magnet on the back.  I sell a lot of magnets and at $8 each they certainly add up.  Here is the Amazon link for both the magnet sheet and the lamination film.  I've started actually cutting the magnet in half because it make it easier to place the magnet on the laminated photos and it also cuts the cost in half. It was one of those light bulb moments where you smack your head and say "Gee I could have had a V-8".  I have for years been painstakingly trying to place that 4 x 6 magnet perfectly on the back and not have any of it showing on the front side.  What a challenge that was and sometimes failed miserably.  This way it is just so less stressful to use 1/2 a magnet centered on the back.  I'm giving away all my trade secrets today.  LOL!

My Note Card Template for "Happy Cows"

I sell a lot of note cards throughout the year and so I also make a note card template for each of my pieces of artwork.  Here is the template I use for "Happy Cows".  I use card stock that I purchase directly from the Red River Paper Company.  I love their 60lb Polar Matte paper.  It comes in 7 x 10 and is already scored for me.  The colors that come off the printer are amazing.  For my Canon Pixma Printer I had to create a custom paper size and I use the setting Photo Paper Pro Premium Matte as my paper type.

I have a template made for both vertical and horizontal orientations and so I just grab the correct template I want to use in Photoshop and add the image.  I have started adding the title of the piece and my name in a handwritten font (Homemade Apple) to give it more of a "Print" feel.

1.  You will need a good printer
2.  Get a good photo of your artwork
3.  Invest in a supply of paper and mattes 
4.  Learn to use a photo editing program like Photoshop Elements
5.  START MAKING EXTRA MONEY from your art by print your own cards and reproductions. 

Just remember to be patient with the process.  Everything has a learning curve but the end rewards are certainly worth the effort.

Want to check out my ETSY Shop?  I hope I have peaked your interest and now you want to see all the artwork available there.  I plan on blogging about my ETSY experience very soon because I am asked questions frequently by artists who are considering opening a shop themselves.

Was this blog helpful?  I would love to hear your feed back and comments.  Please consider following me on FACEBOOK or INSTAGRAM too.

Seeing Spots

When I see cows, while traveling down some back country road,  I AM THAT PERSON THAT ANNOUNCES “COWS” TO EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CAR!  I am also rolling down the window and shouting at the top of my lungs, "MOO!"  I can't help myself.  While I was raised out in the country with agriculture all around, I wasn't raised on a farm but cows have always had a special place in my country heart.  I guess that is why I just love to draw and paint them.

I've been including cows as a central theme in my drawings and paintings for several years now and I find them always to be fun subjects.  They have big huge sweet eyes and large curious faces.  While I suppose some can be a little on the ornery side, mostly they are just giant lawnmowers eating the grass from morning to night.

This past month, I have just been having a blast adding cows to items such as stone coaster, stickers,magnets and greeting cards. Here are just a few of the examples I have come up with so far:

Etsy Shop Sticker Listing




Etsy Shop Greeting Card listing

Blogging about Carrots

I've been a little over the top these days about carrots it seems.  It was just a few weeks ago that I jumped in and got really messy trying my hand at paper mache' and made some large carrots as part of my Easter entryway decorations.  They make me smile each time I walk through my front door.  These giant vegetables added just the right amount of color to my display.



This little sketch I did last year of a bunny sitting among a whole bunch of carrots is a favorite of mine.  I call it "Don't Forget Your Vegetables" and I love the contrast created by the black and white of the bunny against the bright orange and green of the carrots.

This week I had a few hours that I had to be away from my studio.  I'm part of a co-op gallery in the downtown Las Vegas Arts District and there are afternoons that I must take a shift to keep the gallery open during their scheduled business hours.  Sometimes I lug my paints down there and sit up a table, but this week I just took my small sketchbook and my travel pencil bag.  I decided to draw and I think you can just guess what the subject of my drawing was...You got it!  A Carrot!  I really wanted this carrot to have obvious bunny chew marks on it and I'm pretty happy with how the end results came out.  I decided to add some text so one of my digital files of this sketch has "Some Bunny Loves You" on it.





 I love when I can just sit for a short time and do something that I absolutely love to do and then take that effort and turn it into a potential income source.  I thought these two sketches made a perfect pair and so I couldn't wait to work on a sticker sheet that focused on these drawings.  Besides stickers the carrot sketch makes a beautiful magnet or gift card to give to someone special.  I have this full sheet of cute carrot stickers available now on my Etsy Store and will soon be adding the magnets when I get some good photos of them.

Traveling Down Country Roads

I lived the best years of my childhood on a dusty dirt road surrounded by trees, flowers, wildlife and farming.  I love old farm houses, gardens, livestock, barns, porch swings, old mail boxes, barbed wire fences and fence posts covered in morning glories and banks of wild flowers dotting every dirt road and 2 lane highway across this amazing country and they are my inspiration as I approach my senior years. 

When the world feels like crazy is becoming the normal,  I have to only return to my roots to find that this country is still full of good folk that appreciate the freedom to work hard and get their hands dirty, to raise their families and take care of their neighbors. This series of paintings is my tribute to that way of life and looking at them.  My goal with this series is frankly to, if only for a moment, take you back to your childhood and make you smile.

My artist motto, "Telling Stories with My Paintbrush" has never been more relevant in my life.  So I'm stuck on painting farm animals and standing along barbed wire fence posts   Cows are such curious creatures and will often watch you as drive by, especially if all your children are hanging out of the windows yelling, "MOO."  

I just can't help myself and found that I have a strong compulsion to paint these giant creatures with their sweet curious faces and large eyes.  Maybe they are just chewing their cud or engaging in the disgusting habit of licking their nose with their over sized tongues.  No matter what they are doing, cows make great subjects for my stories. Pair that with the consistent theme of blue morning glories and tall green grass you have all the elements of a great composition.  

I have painted 6 large feature works and several smaller pieces for this theme and hopefully all of them tell a story of life "Down Country Roads".  

I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane.  All of these images are available in prints at Fine Art America or as 4 x 6 art magnets on my Etsy Store- Country Magnets or Etsy Store- Cow Magnets

Stuck on You Like Gum on Your Shoe

These Stickers are the best of fun

Just plop them on and you are done

These stickers are making the world a brighter place

I’m just doing my part to help the human race

Can you tell I'm just a bit excited about making my new stickers?  I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I have been fascinated with stickers for sometime.  Not just any stickers.  I know that there are a group of people that are crazy about stickers and have sticker collections.

They are cheerful and pretty much brighten up any surface that you apply them to.  I should clarify....When my niece, our last child at home moved out to leave Brad and I to finally enjoy the empty nest we found that she had put a number of cheap stickers on her beautiful solid wood dresser.  I was not happy about that to say the least so PLEASE USE THESE STICKERS RESPONSIBLY!


So applied correctly to notebooks, laptops, books, journals, planners and such they are a really nice touch.  So this week I took the step to start making my own stickers using my original artwork.  Now that is a sticker I can get excited about.  I chose 4 of my farm animal sketches to begin with.  I purchased an inexpensive laminator and a 100 sheets of matte sticker paper and when they all arrived the learning curve commenced.



With a few other adjustments yesterday I was able to add stickers to my Etsy Store listings.

ETSY STORE- FARM ANIMAL STICKERS






Besides Etsy, I want to make these stickers available locally and several galleries so packaging and display concerns I also dealt with.

Another new addition to my Etsy store is beautiful bovine magnets.  Now over this pasts year and a half I have come up with a half a dozen or so paintings of cows.  There is something about these creatures that really struck a cord in the hearts of many.  I get a lot of positive feedback on these pieces so it only makes sense to make them available in a small 4 x 6 inch format with a magnet backing added.  Now they can easily be added to brighten your kitchen appliances, office cubical, file cabinets, lockers or many other surfaces that are made of boring metal.  I even laminated the print to add extra durability and make them water and stain resistant.  These guys and gals will make an excellent gift for any country girl or the cow lover in your life.  Guys....Mother's Day is coming!
ETSY STORE- COW MAGNETS

Curling Up to Enjoy a Good Book

So I finished this little piece today and I thought it turned out super cute.  I framed it in a 5 x 7 shadow box and decided to add some tiny bits of paper along with a crumpled piece in the mouse's hand.  I'm calling this one "There's Nothing Better Than a Good Book".

This isn't the first piece I have created that featured a little mouse enjoying a book snack.  The other two pieces have all sold and so it must have struck a cord with other book lovers around.   They both had traditional frames so I'm hoping the shadow box doesn't distract from the actual artwork.  The sketch is 4 x 6 inches and the outside matte measurement is 5 x 7 so it is actually a lot smaller than my usual drawings.  I think it turned out cute and I anticipate it selling quickly.  I think I will be on the hunt for more shadow boxes in the future.  

I don't know if you can tell from this photo but I actually used a copy of the dictionary page that contained the word MOUSE.  You can see it down there on the bottom right corner.  This is the first time that I have tried to decorate the matte and I really like how that turned out.  In this case, it really adds to the story and I'm sure I will be doing something like this again soon.

Here are the other two sketches that I told you about.  This first one actually has in tiny print excerpts from John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" written in pages.  that was a little bit of a challenge but so much fun.

I also think this will make a really cute sticker or magnet so as soon as my sticker supplies arrive I will be adding stickers to my Etsy Store and Website.  My magnets are 4 x 6 and I sell them for $6 each.  I think the stickers will be priced around $4 each.  

Go a head and check out my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com or my Etsy Store.

Etsy or Ebay....That is an Excellent Question????

Way back in 2010, when I had just begun to paint, I thought the thing for me to do was to open an Etsy Store.  I think I uploaded a total of 3 paintings, got a few page views and one comment and quickly I became disinterested in the whole thing. Frankly, the thought of paying $ .20 for each listing and the fact that poorly painted canvas pieces were not a good match for that platform.  Fast forward 6 years and today I'm chopping at the bit to get my artwork out there on Etsy. 

My artwork has changed a great deal and I feel that with these changes the pieces are much more suitable for an online marketing venue.  My illustrations and drawings are becoming more popular.  I have chosen Etsy along with FineArtAmerica.com, RedBubble.com and Zazzle.com as platforms to get my images out there.  Etsy is a bit different than the last three vendors I mentioned.  With FineArtAmerica, Redbubble and Zazzle I just upload my images and if that image is chosen by a customer to be added to some merchandise such as a pencil bag, pillow or a shirt, they handle the whole process and just mail me a commission check. This is pretty sweet way to make some money with just a little effort up front but so far I haven't made enough money to even blog about it.

Etsy is more like a real store that I am in control of.  I handle all the orders and inventory and I stand to make much more profit on each sale. It's constant work and needs weekly attention from me but I think it will be way more satisfying overall.   Again, like anything worth while, it takes time.  I understand very well that this isn't an overnight process but rather a slow building of a fan base.  

I am no Etsy expert so this past week to help my store performance I started to do some research. Why re-invent the wheel when there are some really successful stores out there who have all four wheels rolling at full speed?  I want to sell art prints, cards and magnets that feature my artwork.  So I found a store called Paper Llamas that had digital prints of baby animals along with a number of other subjects.  I checked their sales statistics and was very impressed that they had sold nearly 9500 sales since opening their store in 2011.  Compared to my 1 sale these guys are Etsy giants.  I noticed that I posted just a single high resolution image of my art while they often posted images that showed their work framed and matted hanging on the wall.  They sold their prints both individually and in groupings.  Having them framed and matted gives the buyer a chance to visualize the art nicely displayed on their own wall.  That was smart!

Yesterday, I set up a staging area and tried to get that same hung art feeling by adding a few Christmas props and a nice wooden frame.  I used the camera on my cell phone but for my effort I think I got a much better image to compliment my work and promote my listings.  My shop received 3 favorites just yesterday alone.  That is a good sign.

My titles were a disaster.  I thought they wanted the title of the artwork but I realized after studying this successful store that this is where I need to get creative and add as many searchable phrases as possible.  I just made the artwork title the first line in the description because the image is from an original piece of art that I have taken the time to give it a name I want to include that name in the listing, just not on the title line.

They also used a variation drop down menu that gave them the ability to offer different sizes and prices for their work.  Seeing this was like a light bulb going off in my head.  Why have a separate listing for a card, a magnet or a print when I could accomplish it all with one listing?  My store will forever be much tidier and easier to manage thanks to this light bulb moment. 

My goals for 2017 for my Etsy Store is 75 products in my inventory, 500 individual sales and 100 favorite rating for the store.  I am going to also give ebay a try and see if the potential for art sales is there also.  Some artists swear ebay is better than Etsy and so I need to figure this out for myself.  

As I learn from my experiences, I will be blogging about what I have found to be successful and what has worked for me.  To sell an original canvas painting for several hundred dollars is great and I surely appreciate those moments.  They just don't happen nearly enough.  I want to supplement our retirement income with art sales and perhaps even allow additional income to continue even when I am no longer able to create.  I want to never be tempted again to take an accounting or tax preparation job. 

I have come to the conclusion in my own art path that brick and mortar galleries can only do so much to get my work out there.  I have to take ownership of my own promotion and art destiny and those small sales, I believe will add up and surpass any sale of the original piece.  I am going to be building my business one greeting card, one magnet or one print at a time.

Here is the link to my Etsy Store if you are interested in checking it out.  Remember it's a work in progress and this progress has really just begun.

Here are some images I took yesterday for my Etsy Store listings:  

Just a Can or Two of Red Spray Paint

My display set up for the night

I have had this old bakers rack for years but recently it has been come a very handy addition to my art displays. I'm almost certain I bought it at Ross maybe 14 years ago. The really cool thing about it is that all the shelves are hinged and lift up. This allows the sides then to fold in. The whole folds down completely flat which makes it great for transporting. It is also pretty light weight. Brad has added addition perforated metal sheeting to the back and sides so my magnets stick to it like a charm. It holds plenty of cowbells, greeting cards and matted artwork.

I had him paint it red the other day and I'm just loving it. I picked red for a couple of reasons 1. Red is a favorite color of mine and 2. I think it draws extra attention to my display.

Here we have it set up at the gallery in Lake Las Vegas. I'm thinking of asking him now to add 2 wheels on the bottom back and a handle so that it is easy for me to drag along behind me when folded up.

All you would have to do is add a couple of grid display panels and I easily could display close to a thousand dollars inventory in a very small space.

Looking in to the gallery from the village street

Here is the view of the gallery from outside looking in. I'm so happy to be part of this great location. I believe this gallery has much potential and how exciting to be involved from the very start. We just have to get the word out. There are 3 galleries located right in the village area. All three of the galleries run by artist Peg Lozier. My work is displayed in the North Gallery, nearest the Lake.

Great art and beautiful surroundings make for a winning combination. Now we just need to increase the visitors to the gallery, the hours of operation (volunteers like myself work in the gallery so we are only open on the weekends at this point) and of course the sales. There is really impressive artwork hung on the walls and it would be well worth your time to take a drive out there and check it out.