Making a living as a professional artist is part luck, part skill and part good business sense. It also requires a sense of how and what to draw to capture a paying audience. Whether you are drawing with the aim of attracting the interest of a publisher or if you plan to market your own work for profit, you have to know what is going to appeal to the market.

There isn't a single answer to the question of what sells, of course, or else the entire market of fantasy art would be flooded with everyone's version of The Formulaic Best-Seller. There are, however, a couple of general things to keep on mind if your aim is commercially appealing work.

Subject

What is your audience interested in seeing? The majority of buyers want something familiar enough to not to unsettle them, something interesting enough not to be the same as everything else, non-specific enough to be whatever they want to imagine it as, and detailed enough to 'hook' that imagination.

Know your market! Sex sells, but not to little kids with watchful parents. If you are looking for work illustrating RP manuals, you want to prove your proficiency in drawing anatomically correct looking monsters. If you want to capture the collector market, you'll do well to aim for fairies, dragons, unicorns and other popular collectable creatures. Decide what audience you are trying to coax money out of, and that's half your battle for subject matter.

Crossing boundaries can be a tricky. On the one hand, you will not want to alienate the family-friendly crowd, but on the other, you want to offer seductive or sensual work to the more mature audience. It can be very successful to offer suggestive work that has some appeal other than just the sexual angle. If your audience can look at a piece and see what they are looking for, you have succeeded, hence the popularity of gorgeous, scantily-clad warrior chicks with huge mammary assets. It's suggestive, yes, but there is something other than the sex to appeal to your customer, like dramatic action, a striking background or a 'hero-appeal.' Look for that appeal on more than one level!

I've done a lot of careful observation of customers and what they choose to buy. They never say 'I like this because it is the best one here,' and though they do appreciate quality, they don't generally buy the best-executed piece. They tend to say things like, 'oh, I'll buy this one, it has a dragon and a castle.' Combining various collectable subjects can be very successful.

People like to feel clever. They like to look a piece and see meaning, even if you as the artist intended none. I am not suggesting that you heap on gaudy symbolism, but a thought-provoking subject, or one with layers of possible meaning, will be something that people wish to look at more than once, and will be interested in purchasing, as opposed to looking at once in an on-line gallery and clicking past.

Your subject should be memorable. Not all sales are made at a first visit, and, if your target audience doesn't remember the piece well enough to find it again, then you are sore out of luck. Likewise, a publisher is not going to think to come back to your portfolio for that project they need art for if they don't remember a few of the pieces.

A beautifully rendered dragon in the center of a blank page is going to have 'that's nice' appeal, and little else. A beautifully rendered dragon that is perched on a cliff to one side of a brilliant landscape is going to be ten times more memorable. A beautifully rendered dragon that is chasing fireflies at twilight against a brilliant landscape... now that's going to stick in a person's memory.

Composition

Closely linked with subject, composition is going to be one of the first things that your audience sees when they look at a piece. This is the facet that takes into account what your sparkly dragon is doing to fill the space of your piece, and what is going on in the rest of the painting.

The painting should have good balance. If all of the action is occurring in one corner of the piece, there should be something dramatic or eye-catching to counter the weight of that action.

If you want to skimp on the background, afraid it may detract from your actual subject, consider a strong border, or an offsetting shape. Even a non-representational fill is more successful than a plain white background. At the very least, your subject should have a shadow to connect them with the ground. Floating figures are a very common mistake.

Pull out a few of your personal favorite pieces by other artists and try to trace where your eye tends to go. Things that will 'pull' vision include repeated lines, horizon lines, strong diagonal themes, or the direction that a subject is looking and/or pointing. The lines of your figure and the direction of your landscape can be manipulated to provide interest and depth to your piece. Generally, you should avoid pulling your audience to a dead spot with no detail or interest, and you should avoid pushing them off of the page. Curve the tail of that dragon so that an eye tracing the line that it makes is brought back into the action of the piece, or march that line of mountains and trees such that following it goes backwards into space, as opposed to off of the page.

Products

The largest single item sticker prices for art are on originals. Some media has a higher selling price than others. This is generally linked to the cost of the medium, but not always. Oils, for example, often receive higher auction prices than watercolors or even acrylics. A crayon original is not likely to collect a high sale price, nor is an original created on poor quality copy-paper. If you aim to sell an original, be absolutely sure you are using acid-free media and high quality supplies.

The problem with selling originals is the Highlander (TM) dilemma: there can be only one. Once it's sold, that's it! So consider what products you might try to sell with your image on it. T-shirts? Mousepads? Matted prints? Plan ahead! Custom-matting odd-sized prints can be a royal pain, so if you plan on mass-producing prints, work to a standard mat size. Think about whether or not what you're working on would be an appealing image to have under your mouse or across your chest. Plan your work with a background that can be cropped into various mousepad and card shapes without sacrificing the main action of the piece.

If you plan on selling cards, consider the holidays and occasions that cards are sent for, and use those themes in your work. If you are planning to sell bookmarks of your design, lean towards literary themes and organize your painting so that it is either a long thin design in entirety, or can be cropped to a specific bookmark-shaped area and still retain all of the interest of the original piece.

Skill

As appealing as your idea and composition is, if you don't have a certain basic level of skill to carry it out, you will not sell the piece of art.

Sometimes, mistakes in perspective and anatomy can be forgiven... and sometimes they can't. There are no hard-and-fast rules for when it's going to work and when it won't, but a general rule to follow is that if the first thing one notices about a piece is that it's a little wrong, it isn't going to work.

The most important parts of a picture are naturally the most important parts to get completely right. The face of a subject should be correct, and the hands (or paws), as the most expressive parts of most pieces. Spending the time to get eyes symmetrical is worth it on the final product.

Well-executed details and a good sense of finish work can often save a piece with minor errors. Finish work could include bold, clean inking, excellent application of color or very strong shading with a good sense of lighting. Very appealing hair and clothing can often make an otherwise mediocre piece successful.

Service

Though this is the last category to consider, do not treat it lightly.

Art doesn't sell itself. There are thousands and thousands of gorgeous, appealing, skilled paintings out there that haven't garnered their painters a single cent... and never will.

You've got to get your pieces out to where they will be seen, and present not only your art, but also yourself, in an unfailing, professional light. Customers come back to artists they respect, and it's more than just the art that they have to feel this connection to. An artist who bad-mouths his customers in the hearing of another customer is making a great black stain on their own reputation. An artist who is sensitive to critique and deals poorly with revision requests will have difficulty dealing with publishers. An artist who has difficulty meeting deadlines or mailing prints in a timely manner is going to test the patience of their customers.

An artist who follows up on their business contacts in a prompt, friendly, courteous manner is far more likely to garner repeat business and gain excellent recommendations. Never underestimate the value of your reputation as an artist. A satisfied, repeat customer with an eye to collect your work can mean a steady income. A disgruntled, insulted customer can lose you sales, no matter how beautiful and skilled your work. Art buyers, like artists, speak with each other. It is dangerous to assume that your private behavior with one client won't come back to haunt you.

Summary

By making smart choices about size, composition and subject, you can greatly increase your chances of successfully marketing your skills and talents. Good luck, and happy arting!