Zoe Zuniga Creations
Artist's Resources
Courses and tools for you
Resources for making art saleable
Have you though about getting commissions, licensing your art, or doing print on demand?
I used to think the only way to sell art was through offering original art through fine art galleries, or crafts fairs; and those are great ways to sell art depending on your personality, and what you are selling.
But we have so many more resources now to take out the middle man and sell directly to our own clients.
Through art licensing, online sales using print on demand services, commissions and collaborations there are many avenues for selling fine art prints, printable downloads, and selling limited reproduction rights without even selling the origionals through licensing deals. A combination of many different streams of revenue can be created from one piece of art.
Licensing Your Work
When you make high quality scans of your work you can sell the orginonal and still hold the copyright to your work which you can then “rent out” to companies for a limited time and limited scope, to use on their products or you can sell your own prints, or set up an online store to print your art on demand on many different objects without every leaving the studio if you so desire.
Marketing Master Classes for Artists
Empowered Artist has a series of master classes for visual artists from getting commissions to licensing your artwork for use on products.
They offer individual courses or a yearly membership to talke all the courses they offer!
Negotiate Contracts
Learn how to negotiate contracts for licensing your artwork for use on products and how to prepare a licensing portfolio that sells, through Empowered Artists.
Get Paid Comissions
Learn how to get paying art commissions without paying for ads and learn how to negotiate and charge for commissioned projects with courses at Empowered Artists.
Mel Armstrong is a freelance surface pattern designer from New Zealand, with years of experience selling her art through licensing and other formats. She’s a wonderful teacher for learning the fundamentals of pattern design.
I wish I had taken her course before taking more advanced courses because she gives such a clear understanding of how to use photoshop, and illustrator as well as drawing and painting by hand. With her course you will learn how to create repeating patterns.
The course comes with a free one year membership to her community and extra perks on marketing, art licensing, and selling on Spoonflower.
If you are interested in learning how to create repeating patterns for fabric, wallpaper and more her course is one of the best ways to get a good overall sense of what surface pattern design and art licensing entails. at around $300 it is a real bargain.
The Print School is the teaching arm of an established surface pattern design firm focused on fabric design for clothing and haute Couture. Longina Phillips Designs in Sydney Australia, has been going strong since 1988.
If you want to learn the industry standards for fashion design and become more proficient with using photoshop to transform watercolor art into repeats this is the place for you!
They have a series of courses from the most basic to advanced technique for creating repeats, hand painting flowers in gouache and watercolor and a business course for advanced students who are ready to market their work.
This is a wealth of informaton about working in the fashion industry for pattern design.
Barbel is very knowledgeable about traditional patterns and how to create similar work without plagiarizing older works. She understands the construction of many types of design.
Her Repertoire Course is on the advanced side. You should already have some experience creating repeating patterns before taking this course.
This is a huge course with a wealth of technique and history lessons to take you deeper into the tradition of repeating patterns for surface design. It goes for several months but I think it will take me several years to really understand all the materials fully. This is a course for artists who know they want to go in-depth with surface pattern design and are willing to put in a lot of time.
She does not go into marketing or keeping up with trends in this course. But she has another course for those interested in the marketing aspects of surface pattern Design. Repertoire is strictly for creating repeating patterns and understanding the techniques.
The course runs for 4 months with a community of talented artists to learn with. It costs around $1000 with payment plan and lifetime access and is well worth every penny.
Cat Coquillette has an amazing course on creating collections. She comes to art licensing and surface pattern design from the point of view of an illustrator.
Her course was the first course I took on art licensing and surface pattern design. It was a little over my head. But as an illustrator I appreciated her broad approach to licensing art.
She follows trends and designs her work to be used on any and all types of products. Cat has a lot of shorter courses on Skillshare which I would recommend taking first to get you in gear for this more in-depth plunge into creating collections of art to sell to many different buyers.
The Art of Collections is a wonderful course to take if you already know you are serious about art licensing.
It focuses mostly on gearing your work to sell. So you need to go in with a firm grip on how to create art, a working knowledge of photoshop, and an understanding of how to create repeating patterns.
This course is a six month deep dive into creating collections. She offers a wealth of PDFs and videos and a community and requires a good amount of time commitment.
The course costs around $2000 but is well worth it and to make it more doable she has a monthly payment plan. The community is well worth the money and you have lifetime access to the course materials.
Goodtype is a freelance design firm run by two hand lettering artists.
the Art Licensing Blueprint is an excellent overview of art licensing and creating work. You get access to the course materials for six months for $500 dollars, and they have a payment plan. It is well worth the money, But make sure you have time to review everything before access runs out.
It is a perspective on art licensing from the their point of view as hand lettering artists, which is invaluable.
They work with greeting card, stationary and companies who use type and graphics. The Blueprint is a great overview of art licensing. They also offer a course on contracts for art licensing deals, and a course of 100 prompts for creating licensable work. They are a superb resource for learning to hand letter.
Erin Kendal is another Aussi designer. Her focus is mostly on selling on Spoonflower and other print on demand shops rather than just licensing art.
I joined her Power Sellers Academy where she has a wealth of knowledge on trends, techniques for creating repeats, and tools for creating mockups and marketing your work on Pinterest, and Instagram.
She is constantly adding more lessons and hosts contests which give you opportunities to create specific collections. the cost is only $45 a month and is well worth it for the community and all the hundreds of lessons on marketing and creating surface pattern design.
She also has a course on drop shipping using your own site or through Esty or other established markets. She is incredibly knowledgeable about creating and selling wallpaper and fabric designs.
Ash Ambirge is an inspiring writing and marketing teacher She helps your writing sound less like a soggy noodle and more like you.
I include her here because no matter what you sell she helps you stand out as an individual.
Her Dead Voice Club helps you stop sounding like AI and start sounding human again.
With so many artists it is hard to be noticed at all without adding some personality and individuality so you can connect with your audience. Art directors are people too after all.
Ash should be a national treasure for her newsletter alone! Read more about her in my review. Or just go sign up for her newsletter this minute!
Wayne worked in the graphic design industry at the professional level in the UK before starting his YouTube channel and courses.
Wayne is an amazing resource for workflows with Canva videos and more.
He also has a wonderful newsletter that is very upbeat. He helps with branding, and workflows on Canva for doing posts and video for social media, etc.