Artist Jane Davies lives in Vermont. She started her art career in ceramics, and eventually specialized in painting the designs on the ceramics. Now she paints abstracts and creates collages on wood panels. She teaches her techniques locally as well as all over the United States.
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Jane Davies
Her website is janedaviesstudios.com.
You can also find her on Instagram @janedaviesart.
Her 2020 workshop in Tucson is hosted by Madeline School of the Arts.
Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:
- When evaluating which aspect of your business is most profitable, compare the income that is generated to the time involved. Jane spent a lot of time licensing her designs, but after a while when there were lots and lots of freelancers out there, she didn’t get as many acceptances. When she tried her hand at teaching, she realized that she could easily book many teaching classes that were profitable.
- She first started teaching at venues that she could drive to. That makes sense when you’re first starting out and you’re learning about and improving your teaching style.
- For each class that she taught, she would analyze it after the fact and think about what she could learn from it and how she could improve it for next time.
- Teaching at a large art retreat such as Art and Soul is a great way to get a lot of people interested in your classes and to build your mailing list.
- When teaching at an outside venue, you should be doing your own marketing for your class. Don’t rely on just the venue’s marketing because most likely, you’ll be paid per student, and the more students you can get to sign up for the class, the more income you’ll make from the class.
- Marketing can include tutorials on your website or videos on YouTube. That way people can see what your teaching is like and decide if they’d like to take a class from you.
- When doing collage, Jane likes to work on wood panels because it’s a sturdier surface for adhering papers and it’s a smooth surface for making marks.
- You may do classes by planning and organizing the venue yourself. Or you may do classes where another party runs the venue and preps it for your class. Be sure and ask the right questions when looking into teaching somewhere so you know what to expect from them and just how much you’ll need to do.
- Jane offers online workshops where the student can interact with the instructor, or they can take the class at their own pace. Consider both methods when offering classes and make sure you understand the differences when you’re taking these classes.
