Selling Fine Art Online? 3 Reasons to Paint and Launch Your Work as a Collection

Hello art friends,

Have you ever noticed that a lot of the artists who sell their own work online tend to work in collections? And then they launch that collection all at once on their website? Well there’s a reason why they do that, a lot of reasons actually. And today I want to explain why you should be doing the same if you’re just getting started with selling your art online.

Let me start out by saying that when I first started painting in high school, I certainly wasn’t painting in collections. That’s just not how art is taught in school. You work on one piece at a time until it's finished and it was the same in college. It wasn’t until I started to consider making a living as an artist that I was first introduced to the idea of working in a series or collection by Nicholas Wilton—one of my favorite art mentors.

1) Your work improves very quickly.

It was from Nick that I learned this first and most important reason to work on a lot of paintings at once.

Because you have a lot of paintings going on at once, no single painting feels sacred. You feel more freedom to take risks and try new things. You learn something cool in one painting and can move right to the next one and try it out over there. A series is a great way to take a deep dive into a specific color palette, size of canvas, or a new technique. For this reason alone, working in a collection is so good for your art.

2) It's much more efficient.

If you are trying to earn a living from your art then you need to be able to produce new work regularly. Painting in collections will help you make more work, more quickly because you’re not waiting around for things to dry. You always have another piece ready to work on and you build some momentum that keeps you from stalling out over any one painting.

When I started working in collections, I would guess that I went from being able to make one painting every few weeks to 12 paintings in 6 weeks. And once you get into a groove with you’re painting, you’ll see it's really easy to plan and predict how much you can get done in a month or a year.

If you’re already painting in collections let me know what you like about it in the comments below. And if you’re not working in collections, tell my why. I’m so curious.

3) It's all about marketing and selling.

This is something I really get into inside my Palette to Profit program, but the gist of it is this: by working in a collection and sharing both the process of creating the work and the excitement around the release of it, you are creating a story that people want to watch unfold and also participate in by purchasing one of your paintings. You are selling without having to sell if that makes sense.

In my experience, it is much harder to build that kind of excitement and attraction when painting and offering one piece at a time. In fact, I experimented this year with releasing my paintings one at a time even though I was still painting in collections, and let’s just say I’m already moving back to the collection model.

I hope this information has helped you understand why you may want to shift to working and selling in collections. 

All my best,

Jennifer