How to Sell Your Drawings and Succeed: 9 Great Tips

Kevin Hayler: Professional Wildlife artist, author, and traveler.

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I’ve been selling my art for over 20 years so I’m well placed to tell you how to sell your drawings. In this post I cover the key points you must get right if you are to succeed in making money.

Drawings are very much a niche market and to succeed you will have to accept there are limitations. There are pros and cons.

Does it make sense to sell your drawings? You’ll need to make an informed choice.

Let’s dig deeper.

Disclaimer: When you buy something via my affiliate links I earn from qualifying purchases and sometimes earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. I am an Amazon Associate among others. I only recommend trusted sites.

Drawings Are an Easy Way to Get Started

When I set about building up a portfolio of drawings to print and sell, I was working in a youth hostel. I drew in my free time, between shifts. I simply sat at a table with a pencil and pad and drew. What could be easier than that?

I did the same when I was traveling. All I needed was a pen and paper and I could make money.

I didn’t have to set up my paints, carry an easel, or let things dry. I could stop and start at will. It was a portable job and simple.

And materials cost next to nothing. If costs concern you then drawing is the most affordable art form out there.

1. Print Your Drawings

The only practical way to make money from drawing, in the long term, is to make and sell art prints. It’s the way to scale your art business.

When I first started, I had to keep my costs down and it was cheaper to print in black and white, and that was all I could afford.

As it turned out, my profit margins were high and I made good money so I stuck with it.

There are a number of options open to artists when it comes to printing:

• Offset litho prints are the most cost-effective prints if you decide to print in quantity. The outlay is huge but the unit price of each print is low.
• Commercial Giclee prints are favored by most artists. There’s no minimum order, after the initial setup, they can be printed to order. However, the cost per print is high, so they are only suitable for short runs at a premium price.
• Home Printing is the other option open to artists. The choice is between two types of inkjet printers: Giclee pigment-based printers and dye-based printers. Giclee prints are archival, dye prints are not. The equipment and running costs are expensive, plus there’s a steep learning curve.
• Print-on-demand is another option. It’s easy to set up a basic online shop on Etsy, or on other POD marketplaces, and upload your images. Getting sales, however, is difficult and the profit margins are tiny.

All 4 printing methods have their pros and cons.

I go into far more detail if you follow the link: How to Make Prints of Your Art – Printing Art Explained in Detail

2. Scan Your Drawings Professionally

A top-quality scan is vital if you are going to reproduce your artwork to the highest possible standard. Hi-res scans will capture every detail on the page and professionals can tidy up your scan, correct the tonal values, remove blemishes, and lay out your image ready for commercial printing.

You can do the scanning and editing yourself, but I leave it to the experts, it doesn’t cost that much money.

By the time you have bought a high-end home scanner, had your computer monitor calibrated properly, cleaned the highlights, erased the blemishes, added the borderline, and guillotine marks, you may as well have paid £40 ($50) to get the job done without the headache.

I’ve read many blogs suggesting that you can cut costs by scanning or photographing your work at home. I’ve never photographed my own work to a high standard, but if that appeals to you, do it properly and follow an expert.

Take my advice and don’t D.I.Y. your most important work unless you know what you are doing. The exception would be for ephemera, things such as greeting cards and fridge magnets, where the quality can be compromised somewhat.

The Epson V600 Perfection has a good reputation if you want to get a good scanner.

3. How to Price Your Drawings

Pricing Original Drawings

Art prices are determined by the medium you use, your target demographic, and your personal customer base. Unfortunately, drawings are not valued as highly as paintings. The world prefers color. Sadly, your talent is not the most important thing.

Art buyers will pay more for larger drawings (prints) regardless of how long they take to create. Larger, bolder, graphic drawings will command higher prices than smaller photorealistic drawings, which took weeks to complete. It’s not fair, but that’s life.

It’s impossible to set a ‘right’ price for your drawings, there is no formula, especially for beginners with no track record. My best advice is to start low and work your way up. It’s easier to charge less at the beginning and gradually raise your prices until you hit the sweet spot and your sales slow down.

Besides, raising your prices doesn’t hurt anyone. Your previous customers are happy they bought when they did, and pleased that their drawing is worth more. New customers will use your reputation to confirm that people are happy to pay for your work. Everyone is happy.

It’s all psychology. If there is one golden rule and it’s this:

Charge what the market will bear

Your original work is worth what people are prepared to pay for it. That price is higher if your demographic is wealthier. Selling prints gives you the freedom to set a high asking price and wait for the right buyer to come along,

Pricing Art Prints

I draw my original artwork in order to make prints. That’s the way I think about it. It makes no real difference to me if the original drawing sells or not. It’s a treat when it happens but I don’t try very hard to sell them. There is something strangely liberating in that.

Art prints fall into two categories, limited and open editions. I sell both.

My open edition prints are my bread and butter. They are high-quality offset litho prints and sell for under $12. They’re cheap enough for anyone to buy on impulse. Even students and children can afford my prints.

My limited edition prints cost more. They are aimed at an older audience but are still affordable at only $25 each, at the time of writing.

Remember, they are offset litho prints, and I sell them from a market stall (booth). Litho black and white prints cost a fraction of the price of color prints and far less than Giclee prints. The economics are in my favor.

To gain a better insight into selling art, read how I sell prints: Pricing Art For Beginners: Originals, Art Prints, and Formulas

4. Make High-Quality Drawings

If you’re going to sell your drawings with any chance of success, you’ll have to go the extra mile. It’s got to be impressive.

Your first job is to get noticed and, in a colorful world, that’s not easy.

You can do it in a number of ways:

• Go Large: Make ’em big. The bigger the image the more impact you’ll have. Subtlety will get you nowhere. If you can’t make larger work, try advertising your smaller drawings by getting them digitally enlarged. It works wonders. I do that myself.
• Go Bold: High-contrast artwork will have more punch. Think about the composition carefully. It’s your job to get passers-by to take a double look. Strong shapes, big eyes, humor. Think Banksy and you’ll get the idea.
• Go Detailed: It’s both my pleasure and my curse. My specialty is obsessive attention to detail. It’s my trump card, but you don’t have to be hyper-realistic if that’s not your thing. You can stylize and be equally intricate. It’s all about discovering unexpected things within the picture and people love it.

There’s nothing more pleasurable than entertaining kids by pointing out hidden features.

• “Did you notice the tiny bird in the tree?”
• “Look, I’ve even drawn the snot in its nose”
• “Can you see in the fur? Look closely, I’ve drawn some fleas”

People are in awe of very fine work, but boy do you have to put in the effort. It’s far easier to please with a dash of color.

It’s all very well telling you the pros and cons of selling black and white art, but where can you sell your drawings?

You have two practical choices, online and in-person.

5. Sell Your Drawings Online

You have a number of options.

Online marketplaces give you an instant store in return for a percentage of the transaction. The most popular and well-known site for art and crafts is probably Etsy.

I’ve looked into things in more detail: Is Selling on Etsy Worth it? Pros and Cons for Art and Crafters

You can make your own prints and sell them via Etsy or link your site to a print-on-demand platform such as Printful or Printify.

The overheads are modest and the process of setting up a shop is easy. It’s possible to make money if you optimize your site properly with the right tags and keywords and market yourself like crazy.

Don’t kid yourself that setting up an Etsy shop is passive income because volume sales require dedication. That’s the same for all online marketplaces. I use Etsy as a sideline.

It’s passive for me because I do nothing but wait for the trickle of potential customers to find me organically. I earn almost nothing as a consequence. I haven’t got the spare time to concentrate on this platform.

You might decide to forgo the other options and concentrate on selling online, in which case be warned.

The problem with Etsy and other third-party platforms is the very real danger that your thriving little business can be ruined overnight with one change of algorithm. I’ll give you an example.

I did well on eBay. Without knowing what I was doing, I made £10,000 selling prints in my first year of trading. Brilliant, and that was a side hustle!

It begs the question: Selling Your Art in Galleries, Is It Worth It?

The take went down gradually and stabilized at a predictable £5000 per year of relatively passive income. I tweaked my settings as the rules changed until BANG, the algorithm changed, big time.

The new hoops I had to pass through were so onerous that in effect eBay was telling me to get lost, my little business didn’t pay them enough money. My rankings tanked and so did my sales. And all those thousands of customers who’d bought off me before were gone.

You don’t own the business unless you own the contact list.

Can you succeed with 3rd party platforms? Yep. Is it secure? Absolutely not.

You are a minnow in a sea of competition. How do you stand out? And if you do, how long will it last? Putting all your eggs in one basket is a high risk. And spreading yourself over several sites will entail enormous amounts of work.

Make no mistake, these platforms are in it for themselves and their shareholders. They own and dictate the business. You have no control.

Update: As if to prove the point, Etsy has just announced a hike in fees from 5% to 6.5% which is a 30% increase, and declared that anyone turning over $10,000 a year will be charged an extra 12% fee for compulsory offline marketing.

If you want to follow a more hands-on approach why not follow along with Katy on Domestika.

Print-on-Demand Marketplaces offer a similar service. They use your images on their products and print, dispatch, and process the orders. You earn a commission or apply a markup. They are NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS. Your artwork is merely licensed to the company.

Related posts worth reading:

• Is Redbubble Worth it? Pros and Cons For Artists
• Is Selling on Etsy Worth it? Pros and Cons for Artists and Crafters
• Is Print on Demand Worth it? The Pros and Cons of a POD Business
• Is Selling Art Online Worth It? Can You Make Money?

You must market yourself to get enough trade. It then begs the question, why not do the marketing for your own website instead?

Think of it this way. The moment potential buyers land on your product, what happens? they see your competition being promoted! As soon as your prospect gets distracted and clicks a link, you’ve probably lost them for good.

It’s far better to set up your own website and control all aspects of your own business.

It takes time and effort to get your site found and I’m not suggesting that it’s easy. It’s a long learning curve but at least you can keep your clients on-site and the mailing list is your own.

I know it sounds daunting before you set WordPress up, but honestly, it’s easy to follow instructions and be up and running in no time. I set up my own e-commerce website myself and I knew nothing beforehand.

This will convince you: Do Artists Need a Website? Yes – 11 Best Reasons Why

Print-on-Demand fulfillment companies do all the printing and shipping for you but YOU process the order, they’re YOUR customers and YOU get their contact details.

This is a good compromise for anyone wishing to dropship from their own website

The No1 fulfillment company at present is Printful.com. They have a good reputation for quality, and good turn-around times, plus they integrate with all major e-commerce platforms.

Reputation is one thing, but don’t take any chances. Check them out first. Printful offers a 20% discount for samples so take advantage of it.

It’s not just t-shirts you can print your drawings on other popular products, including:

• Wall Art
• iPhone Cases
• Hoodies
• Canvas Prints
• Tote Bags

And many, many more.

If you want to go all in and set up a print-on-demand business from scratch, you’ll need some help.

Follow my guide:

• Sell Art on Society6 Step-by-Step in 2022 (It’s FREE)
• How to Sell Art Prints on Etsy: Mega Selling Guide

This Domestika course by Rocio will also help you out.

6. Sell Your Drawings in Markets and Art Fairs

Why choose to sell face-to-face to a passing crowd when you could have tens of thousands of customers online? My answer to that is to try it before you knock it. This is the best way to learn how to sell your drawings. I’ve learned everything useful from selling in person.

Yes, in theory, it’s better to have a larger audience online but they still have to trust you, decide your artwork is good enough for them and follow through with a purchase. That’s not easy if your customer is home-grown let alone from overseas. Plus the postal service sucks.

It makes more sense for me, to dedicate a chunk of my year to selling my prints, in-person, from a market stall (booth).

I get to meet my customers, I find out what works, and what doesn’t, plus I get their emails (usually). All my market research is based on direct experience, not Google.

Selling a non-essential item, such as art, is about personal relationships. It’s about connecting on an emotional level and that’s better done in real life. Selling your art requires you to sell yourself.

With practice, your confidence grows and you learn to recognize the subtle nuances involved with selling and how to build up a rapport with people from all backgrounds.

My work pattern is perfect. I sell to tourists in the summer and the profit I make allows me to spend my winters abroad. I use the tax system to help pay for it and that’s because my field trips are tax-deductible.

When do I have time to make my art? At my market stand.

Not only can I switch on and off with a drawing, but it’s also a sales prop too. If I look ‘busy’ my display is approachable. I get to work AND sell, instead of work OR sell.

It gets me out of the house and gives me some discipline. There is a lot to be said for structure.

I have a summer pitch, courtesy of my local council. Good pitches are not easy to find, but if that was unavailable I would arrange a short-term agreement on private land or pre-book local markets and fairs.

You’ll find out more about the public by market trading than you ever will by sitting on your own with a computer.

7. Take Art Commissions

There’s no better way of getting art commissions than by advertising yourself from a market stall. The public can see your work, meet you, and discuss their ideas person-to-person.

I am approached on a daily basis with requests which, it must be said, mostly concern loved pets. Or to be more precise, EX-pets. They’ve usually just died.

You could call your business ‘Posthumous Pets’, you can have that one.

Yet again the public will not pay as much for black and white and you’ll have to offer separate prices for color. I go into the subject of commissions in more detail if you hit the link.

This is great advice: How to Get Art Commissions: The Easy Way

You can make a living just by getting into the right set and drawing pet portraits. The key to success is finding the right market. Your aim is to find people with money. You’ll make more money getting into the horsey set than you will by drawing pet hamsters.

Any animal that costs a fortune to acquire or own will have owners willing to spend a premium. As well as horses and ponies, you can target owners of top breeds of cats and dogs. Think outside the box and look for enthusiasts in clubs and societies.

Once you have a foot in the door, you can network with the group. One commission will lead to another.

5. Experiment With Drawing Techniques

If there is one universal truth it’s this,

The more you practice, the better you get

And if you sit down and draw every day, your drawings improve. It may not be apparent at first but if you keep your early work and compare them a year or so down the line you’ll see a marked difference in your skill level.

I discuss this theme further: Can Anyone Learn to Draw?

If you need more help with drawing, then I urge you to check out
Dorian Iten on Proko. His course is reasonably priced and inspiring

I learned so many useful techniques by trial and error and good old serendipity. If I hadn’t decided to try mechanical pencils my drawings would be very different. Likewise playing around with a battery eraser transformed my abilities.

In fact, playing with tools and ideas built the foundations for what I’m capable of drawing today. Remember I learned my craft in the pre-internet days, so there were very few shortcuts. No Youtube – imagine!

Drawing skills and painting are two sides of the same coin. If your drawing is the first stage of a painting, a good sketch is essential. You can’t divide them if realism is your aim. You must grease the wheels and practice.

Drawing, in my opinion, is very much a skill to be mastered. It is the craft that underpins everything else you do. I hear people declare that they can paint but they can’t draw and I’m left baffled.

8. Target a Hobby or a Passion

When it comes to making money with your art it pays to specialize. As with finding commissions, you are better off targeting particular interest groups.

Like it or not people buy art for emotional reasons and very few spend money on art alone. They must connect with the subject matter and one way to do that is to draw subjects that resonate.

Souvenirs work this way. Local views are a pleasant memory, that’s why they sell well. If you live in a touristy area with famous landmarks you’ll have a steady trade, at least in the high season.

Likewise, certain popular themes and hobbies are going to appeal to collectors of memorabilia. If you know your audience you can figure out what appeals most in their niche and draw them.

The collector mindset is where the trade comes from. I make good sales selling elephant drawings, and that’s because people love and collect anything about elephants. My market is mostly women but men will buy them as gifts.

Here’s some shortcuts for you:

• 12 Wildlife Art Bestsellers (Use These Subjects to Make Money)
• 9 Farm Animal Art Bestsellers: Home Decor That Sells!
• 7 Bird Art Bestsellers: Best Wall Art Selling Guide

If I was to target the fishing hobby, I would draw a carp, and the reverse would happen. My market would be male, but their partners would buy them.

Lastly’ do not ignore children. The market for decorating the kid’s room is huge. Parents who would never buy a print for themselves will buy one for their kids without a problem.

To tap into the market all you have to do is draw what they love. Cliches come true. You can’t go wrong with ponies, baby animals, dinosaurs, or unicorns. Be careful with trademarks in this niche, you can’t print copyrighted images.

9. Buy Quality Art Supplies

I must make a brief mention of art materials. I know a poor craftsman blames his tools but why would you choose the cheapest crap on the market when the best are so affordable?

You really must not skimp on art materials. It’s a false economy:

• Buy quality drawing paper from a recognized brand.
• Buy quality drawing pencils also from a known brand
• Buy an easel that is sturdy and rigid. (French Box Easel)

When you choose a pencil brand, stick to it. Get to know the grades so you know instinctively which pencil to use. DON’T MIX AND MATCH brands unless you really know what you are doing. The grading system is not universal. each brand differs. An HB in one brand is not the same in another.

Buy acid-free paper. Experiment. Use the tester pads in art stores or buy the smallest pads available to play around with textures. There is a vast difference between paper manufacturers, tints, thickness (weight), and texture. The only way to discover what’s best for you is to try them out.

The Disadvantages of Selling Drawings

Let’s get real before you set off to take the art world by storm. Drawings are a niche and a small one at that. That’s the honest truth. You really have your work cut out to make them profitable. I should know, it’s been my bread and butter for over 20 years.

So here are a few problems you must consider before selling your drawings.

1. Drawings are Time-Consuming

I love art that is fast, loose, and free. It’s not, however, the kind of art I do, and for a good reason.

Drawings are hard to sell and I’ve discovered that detail is the hook that gets my work noticed. Few professionals specializing in graphite do anything else, realism is king.

And detail takes time. It’s the reason why prints are essential. You are unlikely ever to draw enough originals to make a living.

Quick and sketchy line drawings may be artistically pleasing but sadly I’ve had a harder time selling my fast sketches to the public.

The lesson is simple. Pleasing the public is all about compromise.

2. Drawings are Valued Less Than Paintings

It’s a sad fact that people do not appreciate the skill and work involved in an accomplished drawing.

There is a hierarchy of worth in the art market, with oil paintings firmly at the top, followed by acrylics, watercolor, pastels, and trailing behind them all, is pencil work. The poor cousin.

There’s no justice. There are historic reasons why various mediums command different prices, they make no sense today but they persist, and pencil drawings are at the bottom. That’s a problem. Drawings take time, and when time is money, you’re getting a poor return.

That means for an unknown artist, without a list of collectors, you should make originals primarily to get them printed. The sale of your original drawing is in that respect a sideshow. I treat the sales of my originals as extra money, and not my core business. 

Prints Make Money

The flip side of not needing to sell the original means you can sit on the price and not let it go too cheaply. I’ve been strapped for cash before and undersold myself and it makes you feel sick.

3. Fewer People Buy Black and White Art – FACT

It doesn’t matter how often you hear otherwise, black and white is hard to sell.

Talking to customers, as long as I have, I hear the same lines repeated time and again,

“I love black and white, there’s so much more atmosphere”

That’s great, and it’s all very well to appreciate an image in a book or magazine, but how many monochrome pictures are hanging on their walls?

Try taking pencil drawings into a gallery and you’ll soon discover that most gallery owners will turn you away. They know the score. When they hang a picture in their valuable retail space, they have to sell it. Admiration has got little to do with it.

Drawing is a niche. It’s not impossible to succeed, but it’s easier if you, as the artist, sell them yourself.

Advantages	Disadvantages
1. It’s simple and easy to get started	1. Time-consuming
2. Far cheaper to print	2. Commands lower prices
3. B/W compliments any color scheme	3. Fewer people buy black and white art

ALL IS NOT LOST!

Drawings are Contemporary and Timeless

If drawings have any advantages over paintings, it’s the timeless minimalism of the art form. It’s modern with a small ‘m’. They don’t age as quickly. Fashions change but drawing remains a constant.

You can re-purpose a drawing, all you need is a new frame. The same pencil sketch can hang in a country cottage or a chic designer pad. That’s not so easy to achieve with an original painting.

And let’s not forget that monochrome complements any color scheme with our design-conscious lives and shifting tastes. Like it or not, many people buy art as home decor and not for any higher purpose. If the color clashes, it’s out.

How to Sell Your Drawings: Final Thoughts

Black and white ‘fits in’. It’s a great selling point and one I am quick to point out to anyone considering buying my prints.

To summarize:

• Offset-litho’ is used for mass production. The prints are cheap but you have to order 100s to get a good price. The quality is variable and things can easily go wrong
• Giclee is digital printing using lightfast pigment inks. This method is suited to very small print runs. The unit cost is very high but the quality is more assured.
• Print-on-demand is useful if you are happy to accept a very small commission. Order a product to check the quality. It’s the only control you have.

Remember that you must still provide a professional scan for quality results. You can’t cut corners.

Are there any other ways to make money by drawing? Yes, I didn’t mention teaching and digital downloads.

Without a doubt, there is money to be made by selling knowledge. A successful online course has the most potential for making big money if you can build a big mailing list. That involves a heck of a lot of work and marketing skills.

Printable downloads can also generate sales. The idea is to sell your art as digital files. The concept is exciting. You can make art and sell the image anywhere in the world and keep most of the profits. The customer can print their picture and frame it themselves.

Digital downloads also suit digital drawings, you never have to pick up a real pencil ever! If you love line drawing and can produce drawings rapidly, you can make multiple designs and be sure that some of them will sell.

Is there a downside? You bet.

Once that file is in the public domain you have lost control. Anyone can steal your work and independent artists don’t generally have the resources to do much about it. It’s a risk.

What do you think? Now you know how to sell your drawings, is it right for you? You’ve read the pros and cons, is it worth pursuing?

I’ve made it work and I’m not alone. Plenty of people find their niche. Most of us have something in common, our drawings are combined with a particular interest. By concentrating on a niche subject while using a niche medium we have carved out our own spaces.

My love is wildlife, and I have discovered a wealth of enthusiasts who like animal portraits and my type of art.

If you know your hobby, you can cater to that passion. There will be collectors. This gives us an advantage.

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If you like the way I draw and want to try things for yourself, this is my basic kit

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Take your first step and discover the practical way to sell your art. It’s all in my guide and all you have to do is follow along, Step-by-Step!

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If you found this article useful you might like these too:

• This is How to Sell Abstract Art: A Practical Guide For Artists
• 22 Myths About Artists: Misconceptions Debunked
• Places to Sell Art: 3 Alternative Options (Not Galleries and Not Online)
• 25 Platforms for Artists to Sell Their Art Online and Make Money
• What Size Art Sells Best? Frames and Apertures – FREE Chart
• Can You Copy Art and Sell a Painting of a Painting? I Found Out
• Where to Print Art Prints From Etsy (Downloads / Printables)

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