Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The Business of Art


I've been sharing several different lectures and discussions with the students in the Visualization Department here at Texas A&M as part of my weeklong residency here. Yesterday in Sam Woodfin's figure drawing class I covered sketching with colored pencils and ideas about color, light, and composition.


I also took them through a new talk called "The New Art Economy: Living Off Your Dreams." This illustrated lecture is about the changing business paradigms for independent content creators. We looked at the big trends in media and the effects of digital production, digital distribution, and social media, and what that means for people like me who are learning my way around the new business models as old ones become obsolete or increasingly marginalized.

One of the takeaways was this: If you want to be a self-publisher, you not only need to learn about painting and drawing, but also about writing, photography, video, animation, marketing, publicity, graphics, sales, and shipping.

It's a sobering, but also an inspiring and empowering talk with lots of statistics and practical tips. We finished with a lively discussion about the trends in popular culture media, and I learned a lot from the students.

Today I'll be visiting Felice House's painting class to do a lecture and demo about observational painting.

7 comments:

Carole Pivarnik said...

Would love to hear that new art economy talk!

slice4e said...

Yes, I would be very interested in hearing that talk as well.

Kevin Mayes said...

James, I agree with Carole and Martin. Would you consider sharing that talk with us on your blog? This is a subject that those of us that couldn't attend the lecture would all benefit from.

James Gurney said...

I think that's a great idea. I'll put that subject in the lineup for the blog, probably as a multi-part series, after I run it by a few more live audiences.

slice4e said...

Thank you, that would be great!

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Landon said...

Can't wait to hear your thoughts about the new art economy, it's obvious you have a pretty good handle on it and you are definitely an inspiration for me!