Archival Arts Impressions

  Time to dig out those pieces you painted and get them digitized!  From January 3rd - 31st 2023, we are offering 20% off your scans when you digitize your art with color correction and a proof. 25% off regular pricing if you are a wholesale customer. (Wholesale customers are those who have a business relationship with us and order scans/prints on a monthly basis).  Make an appointment to drop off your art today! Click to  Schedule Appointment   Other services are not included in this sale. Art must be dropped off by 4:30pm on January 31st to receive sale pricing. To be fair to other customers, we will not make any exceptions to this policy.  Hope to see you soon!!

     I know everyone has been urgently anticipating the launch of our new art marketplace. I am probably more anxious than anyone!  I just wanted to give everyone an update on the status.  After many heartbreaking setbacks, it finally feels like the site will be a reality somewhere around the end of the year.  Most of the capabilities I wanted to implement will be fully functional, ie: searching the database by many categories, choice of basic framing with 10 different colors, and prints offered in sizes proportional to the original. There will also be some very nice capabilities available for our artists whether you want to sell on the public gallery or not. You will be able to see your portfolio of scanned images, download customized files for web and shows, see orders placed on the public gallery and order prints with our new online ordering system.  (Please note that if you have not ordered anything in the past couple years, your images may not be ...

PLEASE SHARE THIS BLOG POST WITH OTHER ARTISTS!!!      Well it is almost a year after the pandemic hit and we are finally making the online gallery a reality! For many years, I tried and tried to come up with new products and services like printing on fabric, making greeting cards and designing books, but honestly these services were all very costly in both time and money and didn't profit enough to make them worthwhile. Just a few months ago, I finally realized that it wasn't new products we needed, I just needed to re-focus on the reason we are in business - to help artists sell their art and educate the world about our process. For years, many artists asked me to help them create a website. I had to decline because it takes a great deal of time to make a website and I was focused on creating products and running Archival Arts. Now I am laser focused on creating an online marketplace for our artists. But if I am going to do this, it has to be good.. really good! It has ...

     With the new year, Archival Arts is introducing a new watercolor paper that will be used as our standard textured watercolor paper. This change has been years in the making, starting when Hahnumuhle discontinued offering the 200ft rolls of William Turner paper we have been using for over 16 years. We have had a great run with Hahnemuhle papers. They are very high quality and consistently reproduce better than most other papers in the fine art reproduction market. The one complaint we and some of our customers have with the William Turner paper in particular is the flaking that occurs in the ink layer. For most prints, it is not apparent, however if there is great deal of solid, dark coverage, it is almost impossible to prevent the print from getting small specks of white due to the paper flaking. This is not really a defect of the paper as much as it is a result of the paper being 100% cotton and having a texture that lends itself to this flaking. Over the years,...

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Many of our clients are at least dangerous in Photoshop and I get almost weekly requests to teach a Photoshop class.  As flattering as that is, the truth is, anyone can learn how to use photoshops tools just by picking something you want to do and reading the topic in Photoshop help.  That will get you started but once you learn the basic tools it really takes a great deal of time, dedication and daily use to become proficient and efficient with the tools.  It took me 3 years using it 30-40 hours per week to become an expert.  I would recommend learning the tools you need to get minor things done first. One of the tools that is not well known but can be very useful is the actions palette. This tool is most useful for processing a large number of images without doing the same process on each individual image.  Let's say you have a folder of 100 images you photographed with your digital camera and you want to re-size them down to put them on your website. ...

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Archival Arts has printed and installed many large stretched canvas prints at Baltimore Washington Financial Advisors over the past few . It was a pleasure helping the owner fill their new offices with beautiful contemporary photographs that make the space very appealing.

I thought long and hard about the 3rd important factor for selling your art. You could argue that subject is important, or price which can also make or break a sale but  I had to settle on finding the right market . You can negotiate price, and some artists can make just about anything look good but if you pick the wrong market to sell your art, you can lose a lot of money. Now that you have clean, professional looking art and all of your pieces contain your personal theme, you now need to find a market that connects you with buyers who can't live without your art. Whether you decide to sell online, or through galleries or at art shows, you must first find out who your buyers will be. What type of person or business will want to hang your art? Will they be beach goers, horse riders, animal lovers or traditionalists? Where do they live? Where do they shop, eat and play? Where do they work? Answering questions about who your customers are will help you find creative ways to rea...

Factor 2: Branding  Any marketing expert will tell you that branding is very important when selling a product. Some people think that branding is only for large companies to brainwash people into buying their product.  But what exactly is branding? " The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other product" (http://www.entrepreneur.com)  Your brand as an artist is what you want people to "feel or perceive" when they encounter your art.  This feeling will drive all the decisions you make when creating marketing materials and this feeling comes directly from your art. You can also use your brand as inspiration to create new art. Let's say for example you are a book illustrator and your style is colorful and whimsical. Those two adjectives should describe everything potential clients see from you.  Your font should be whimsical, your layouts for postcards and brochures should be colorful ...

     For over 15 years, I have been studying both the local and national art markets to find out what drives art sales. These two markets are very different in many ways but I have found 3 factors that play a big role in selling art in any market. This will be a 3 part blog.      Factor 1: Craftsmanship   is one of the most obvious factors that separate artists who struggle with sales and those who sell volume.  There are many words you can use to describe craftsmanship: clean, skilled, polished, professional and quality are just a few. Craftsmanship is a planned process that eliminates mistakes and distracting, sale killing, defects.      The idea starts with using materials that will stand the test of time. This can mean using marine grade panels instead of cardboard canvas panels. Or maybe using hardwood stretchers instead of pine. Using quality materials tells your buyers you are serious about your craft ...

It has been quite a busy year here at Archival Arts! As many of you know, we have had a great deal of changes this year including new employees, a printer upgrade and now a new scanning/capture system. In addition, we have added new waterproof mounting boards for canvas prints and soon we will have an update to our web gallery. So why all the changes?  After discontinuing the fabric printing last year, I decided to re-focus on our core business this year and implement new technology to make our process even more efficient. Our new Epson 9890 has increased color gamut and printing speed for watercolor prints - an upgrade that keeps us on the leading edge of printing technology.  Even more important is our new Phase One 80 megapixel digital capture system. This "Rolls Royce" of digital cameras has replaced our Betterlight scanner.  You will not notice a difference in print quality but you may see quicker turnaround times and less proofs on our end as we perfect our work...

     We have been long anticipating the release of HBO's "Veep" season 4 to see the prints and framing we worked on for about 3 months last fall.  Finally, the new season has started and we are proud to say most of the art on the walls was printed and framed by Archival Arts.        It all started when a production assistant for Veep found us on the internet last summer and called to see if we could print a large number of prints on canvas and watercolor paper.  Soon after getting started, we met Jennifer, one of the set decorators, who was surprised we did framing and could turn jobs around very quickly.  For the next few months we provided a great deal of art prints and framing for both the built sets and location sets.  It was a great challenge for us but everything went very smooth and the results are very pleasing.  If you compare the sets from the first 3 seasons, you can see a great improvement in the quality of art o...

One of our regular customers, Edward Williams, has been a very active advocate for local artists in the Catonsville area and Baltimore. His newest endeavor, Paradise Festivus, will be held on April 25 from 2pm - 7pm.  Booths are still available if you would like to be involved.  Please spread the word!   Edward has also created ArtsVille second Sunday's during the summer. Check it out! If you are interested in selling you art and prints contact Edward Williams at  CatonsvilleArtsProject@gmail.com

Hello All!  I have been promising a print sale in February and this week seemed to be a good one to do it. With all the cold and snow, at least everyone can order prints with just a phone call or email . You can also upload images and order through our Upload Page .  This week we are offering 15% off any paper print , (watercolor, smooth watercolor, poster or lustre). For those who receive wholesale pricing, you will receive an additional 10% off paper prints. If you need more than 10 or 20 prints, we will work out quantity pricing. Stay safe and warm! hope to see you soon.