Business Lessons For Artists
If left to their own devices, most artists will end up going one of a few sad routes: homeless, pyramid scheme, or Hitler. The truth is, it doesn’t have to be that way. With a little guidance by someone who specializes in the kind of thinking that artists aren’t too gifted at, there can be a much happier ending.
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Looking for a really bright idea? A light box is a great gift for artists who draw and sketch. If you’ve ever seen them trace an image by taping it up on a window, then you’ve found the perfect gift. These LED light boxes are thin and portable, can last more than 50,000 hours, and stay cool to the touch.
Any artist will want need this circular ruler as soon as they see it. Why did it take so long for someone to invent this? All that time spent multiplying the diameter by Pi to find the circumference of a circle, wasted. This is a no-brainer. Buy this thing now.
If the artist you know is a maker or builder, they surely already have a toolbox. What they need though, is a Coolbox. This modern evolution of the toolbox has come a long way from being just a place to store tools. It has built-in power strips and an internal battery, a clock, wheels, bluetooth audio, an LED lamp, a whiteboard, and even a bottle opener.
It’s rumored that the real reason great Renaissance artists like Ingres, Van Eyck, and Caravaggio were able to draw so accurately is very simple - they cheated. The Camera Lucida is an ingenious tool that superimposes the subject’s image on the artist’s canvas. From there, all the artist needs to do is trace the projected image and, voila, another masterpiece accurate down to the last detail.
If the artist you know has a show at a gallery coming up, this handy picture hanging tool is just what they need. Hanging lots of pictures of varying sizes on a wall and having it look neat and evenly spaced is a challenge. This tool includes 6 feet of tape measure, a built-in level, and will mark the wall to tell them exactly where the nails should go.
Know an artist who has lots and lots of time on their hands? This stop motion animation kit may be the perfect thing to fill up those hours. It’s actually a really fun process, but it is slow - there’s no way around that. This kit will certainly help speed things up and they’ll be making short films before they can say Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
This color sensor scans any surface and translates real world colors into digital color data (RGB, CMYK, XYZ) which can be imported into Photoshop and Illustrator, or matched with paints at Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, and Behr. This handy device has a million possible uses for artists, from capturing colors in the real world for use in digital artwork, to redecorating their home. A great gift for painters, designers, digital artists and illustrators.
The greatest innovation in stippling since…well maybe the only innovation in stippling. It’s a fun process and the results are beautiful, there’s just one big problem - making all those damn dots. If the artist you know happens to have shaky hands (or a serious coffee addiction), then they may already be a stippling machine, but for the rest of us there is the Pointillist Electronic Pen.