Promote Your Art with Video - Three Methods

Short format video has become increasingly popular with internet users. YouTube, arguably the most well known video site, is also the third most visited site online according to Alexa's Top 500 Sites. With that kind of audience, video is a great way to show people your art and get them interested in what you do.

Whilst you could just start a video diary (known as a video blog or 'vlog') and talk about your work as you're creating it you may be better served with the following three methods that will allow you to be a little more focussed with how you promote your work.

The Video Slide Show

Probably the easiest method the video slide show allows you to collect together a body of works into a visual presentation which you could set to music or provide a spoken narrative about each piece.

From a marketing perspective you should collect similar style and themed works together in separate slide shows so that you can use each show to promote your work to people interested in that kind of work. This will give you a selection of slide shows that you can pick and choose from for different markets.

If you're not that experienced with video editing or would just like a slide show that really stands out from the crowd then try Animoto. This site will let you make an unlimited number of highly professional, short 30 second slide show videos set to music for free. If you're willing to pay a few dollars you can create longer shows. The site is very simple to use and the resulting videos can be uploaded to Youtube and many other video and social networking sites.

The video below, of my own cat artworks, was created with Animoto and is a sample of a paid video. The only difference from the free version is the length of the video. Once you have your video you can use it as much as you like for no extra cost.


Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

Aside from the excellent and dynamic video presentation, all music used on the site has been cleared for public and commercial use so there's no fear of copyright infringements here.

The Video Demonstration

People really appreciate art even more when they can see how it was made. If you have access to a camera and some editing software then filming yourself as you work isn't as hard or pressured as it sounds.

Simply point a camera at your canvas, work space or wherever it is you're working and forget about it (check every now and then to make sure it's still filming). If you're using a digital camera I'd recommend stopping the camera every fifteen minutes and starting again just so you create a series of shorter clips rather than one big clip. Shorter clips are easier to edit together.

Once you have your footage you can either select key points from the footage, that show major changes/stages and edit those together or, you could speed up the footage and show the entire process from start to finish. Either way you'll want to edit together footage that runs for no longer than 10 minutes (which is about the maximum attention span of most video site viewers).

When you've edited your footage together use your editing software to add your own narration explaining what's happening in the vision. You don't have to explain every detail but perhaps highlight some of your choices or specific techniques used.

The video below is one of my own artworks being created from beginning to end using sped up footage with my narration over the top.



As you can see I never once talked to camera whilst creating my artwork. As well, the above video was shot with a cheap web camera - you really don't need to go to great expense to start with video.

The Artist Profile

If you're a little more confident with the camera and really know how to edit video reasonably well then creating a video profile about you and your work is a great option. A video profile is especially useful for embeding into an online biography page if you have one.

Also a video profile can be a great compliment to your other slide show and art demonstration videos. In fact once you have a good collection of videos you could compile them all into a DVD that you could give away free with each artwork sold.

A video profile is a little harder to put together. You need to plan what you want to include and think about what it is that you want people to know about you.

Whilst you may not have to go so far as a storyboard you will need to plan various shots and select a few of your best artworks to include. Again you want to limit the length of your video to about ten minutes.

Below is an example of a video profile I created for myself. As you can see there is a lot of information crammed into three minutes of video because I made this for an art site that had a three minute limit. However keeping things to three minutes or under is considered ideal in online video and you really can say quite a bit in such a short length of time.



If you're not used to speaking on camera then I'll let you in on a secret... neither am I and I've been speaking to camera for more than 150 videos. You feel silly but, if you can wrap your mind around the idea that the person your talking to is inside that camera and is a great listener, you can rattle on for hours with your usual conversational style. Just remember your plan for what it is you want to say and start talking about that. Edit it later. For the above video I left out a lot of me talking to camera - and used a lot of the audio for my voice over.


All of these three methods are a good way to get your art seen online without people feeling like they are being 'sold' to.

People who like art will love a dynamic slide show set to music. People who are interested in the creation of art will tell you they appreciate seeing the behind the scenes work. Finally those that don't know you will really find a video profile an easy and quick way to discover what you and your art are about.

Whichever method you decide upon be sure to include with the video a link back to your web site (if you have one). The point of using video is to try and attract visitors from highly popular video sites to your web site where people can learn more about what you do and, hopefully, sign up to your newsletter/mailing list (if you have one) or inquire about making a purchase of your art.

Promoting your art using video isn't as hard as you might think. Each of the above methods can be used for a specific purpose and all will make a great addition to the promotion of you and your art.