Just couple of years ago, it was possible to admire art in large galleries or auction halls only. Visitors often had to wait in the queue to be able to admire individual works. And, as an artist, you had to build up a network of contacts that were indispensable for your work to be endorsed by the gallery curator.
Today, fortunately, art is much closer to people than ever before. Just a few clicks, and your entire portfolio of works or illustration portfolio is within reach - thanks to an art gallery website where you can present all your works online.
Do you really need your own art gallery website?
To have well established intermediaries for selling art works certainly has its advantages. They can provide you with a physical “offline” gallery space or “lend” you high traffic on their art gallery website (such as Saatchi Art). But such a contract is never equally beneficial for both sides. The artist always gets the short end of the stick.
There are a few good reasons for which you should sell art online via your own website instead of cooperating with a large gallery.
How to beat the competition
If you sell your works over a third party, you have no influence on what happens to them. This means that you are fully dependant on a curator or a web gallery admin who can delete your artwork portfolio at any time. The biggest problem is that there are hundreds of competing works in addition to your works. And so you have to make a tremendous amount of effort to get noticed by the visitors. Supported by heavy advertising and intensive marketing through social media.
But if you have your own art gallery website, visitors will only admire your works. You can not only present your artwork portfolio and invite interested persons to exhibitions, but also sell your paintings online e.g. through the inquiry form - without having to give commissions to the intermediary.
How to create an art gallery website using an art template?
If you plan to start a web gallery or illustration portfolio, one of the options is to choose a template. The first thing that crossed your mind were probably WordPress themes for artists. Each of such art themes needs to be significantly customized. And for someone, who doesn’t have a WordPress experience, it will be rather complicated and lengthy process.
But there is also a better option. You can choose any template on Pixenio and convert it to art gallery template in a matter of minutes!
The most important is the first impression
In order for your artistic work to excel, it needs enough space on the website. An airy, clean design is a must-have! High-quality photos are also essential, which must dominate on the website.
Pixenio lets you upload high-resolution photos without insensitive compression. That means none of your photos will lose their quality.
No matter which template you choose from, each one is designed to fit your portfolio of artworks - you can choose different variants of the homepage and the color scheme that suits you best. And later on, when the visual of your works changes or perhaps you just need a change, you can switch the variant or color scheme at any time.
Your artwork portfolio
For each artist, his/her portfolio is key. However it’s not enough to have just nice and quality photos on the art gallery website; they must also be well arranged in different collections. This makes it easier for visitors to browse the portfolio more efficiently and to see for example only the works of the last collection.
You will appreciate the ability to create well organized galleries in Pixenio even when you take your website as a larger project and you will use it for presenting works from other authors too.
Invitations for exhibition or workshops
Although selling art online allows artists to expand their reach far beyond the borders, many art lovers will love to visit an “offline” gallery. That is why your website should not miss information about the upcoming or currently running exhibitions.
In addition, Pixenio allows you to insert a third-party code (embed code), through which you can easily redirect a visitor to buy tickets for your art exhibition.
What about past exhibitions?
You can also use them to your advantage and simply link them to reviews of your works by the critics or curator of the exhibition. It’s another great way to build a good name and brand not only in artistic circles, but also in the community of fans or art collectors.
Make your own art blog
You might wonder why would you need a blog if you just want to present your portfolio.
The art blog is an excellent communication channel for discovering how individual works are created or how the exhibitions are being prepared. Many artists publish their sketches on Twitter or Dribbble, where they are “overwritten” by newer posts (from other authors). Therefore, it is better to invest time and energy in your own website, which will attract not only anonymous fans, but also real customers.
Regular posting on art blog also has a crucial impact on Google ranking and the display of your art page in top positions in the search results.
Mobile friendly art gallery website
Today, more than half of the website traffic is generated by visits from mobile devices. That’s why your online gallery has to be coded in a nice responsive design. Pixenio went even further so that not only your web visitors are happy when browsing your website on the smartphone. It also offers a great user experience to YOU, because you can manage your entire website completely over the smartphone!
What is it good for?
For example… Did you draw a sketch on a clean table napkin in your favorite coffeehouse? Take a picture of it on your mobile and publish it on your blog. Or you can take a photo of your currently running vernissage and post it immediately on the web.
You can simply add or change anything right when it crosses your mind. Without having to turn on the computer.
If you like these ideas, create your own art gallery website on Pixenio in the matter of minutes! You’ll get a beautiful, airy webpage with an emphasis on photos of your works. Without any interfering elements and other distractions.
