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All artists need a professional art portfolio. Unlike a resume which only lists your experience and qualifications, an art portfolio is visual evidence of your talent, creativity and expertise as an artist. It allows you to accurately represent and market your work, letting potential clients and buyers know exactly what you do and what they can expect from you.
Earlier artists had to carry bulky copies of their physical art portfolio with them. Today, you can create a portfolio website to showcase your art portfolio online, with professionally designed art portfolio templates that fit your art style. Your art portfolio also empowers you to not just share your work, but market yourself and gain exposure as an artist, sell original artwork or prints, take commissioned work and more. Check out these stunning examples of art portfolio websites and get inspired!
Looking for some inspiration? Check out beautiful online art portfolio websites
by top successful artists, built on Pixpa.
Pixpa’s all-in-one portfolio website builder empowers artists and creators to showcase, share and sell their work online, easily without any coding knowledge.
Top 25 reasons to choose Pixpa to build your art portfolio website
Start with professionally designed online art portfolio website templates that fit your site & style. Make it your own with our simple & powerful visual style editor. Customize further with HTML editing and CSS overrides.
Follow these 4 steps to create your online art portfolio.
Pick your photography website template
Choose from professional, responsive art portfolio website templates tailored to meet your requirements. Customise all visual elements easily to create your unique style.
Add your content
Add pages to your art portfolio website menu using Pixpa’s drag-and-drop website builder. No coding required.
Add the features you need
Expand your online art portfolio website’s capabilities. Add an online store, start a photography blog, use client galleries, and do much more.
Promote your art portfolio
Use Pixpa’s built-in SEO, marketing and social tools to grow your traffic and convert visitors into paying clients and customers.
Thinking about how to make an art portfolio website? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Pixpa’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to build your art portfolio, without touching a line of code. You can easily add stunning galleries, videos and pages to showcase your artwork and collection online.
Here are 10 expert tips to guide you on how to build your art portfolio:
TIP 1
Crafting a clear vision for your website is absolutely critical. What do you want your portfolio website to look like? What do you want your visitors and potential clients to see when they visit your website? Do you simply want a website to showcase your art portfolio online or do you sell your work to gallery owners and collectors and more?
You need to think about your art portfolio the same way you think about your artwork. Plan the look and feel you want for your website. Get inspired by these stunning art portfolio examples. Learn how other successful artists use their portfolio websites to leverage their career. Here are 40+ best art portfolios to inspire you!
Have a clear set of goals when setting out to build your art portfolio website. Once you are clear on what kind of a website you want, you can start taking the necessary steps towards creating an online portfolio.
TIP 2
Your website reflects your personal aesthetic taste, so create an art portfolio website that is consistent with your art style.
Less is always more. Your art portfolio website should be clean, minimalist and easy to navigate. This is the kind of website that offers the most user-friendly experience and encourages site visitors to explore your art portfolio.
Think about your website as a whole. Keep all the different sections and pages of your website consistent in terms of color, design, theme etc. It's fun to experiment but artists can sometimes go overboard. Don’t make a website that is so over complicated that it becomes confusing.
Always remember that, just like with art, website design is about visual storytelling. You want your website to be able to tell a story in an easy, compelling and most importantly comprehensible way.
TIP 3
Look for clean, easy to navigate and fast-loading portfolio website templates to ensure the best user experience. Your website should look good and load well on both desktop and mobile screens.
Review the features offered by your website template to ensure that you are getting everything you need for your art portfolio website . Your website should be a comprehensive tool for you to showcase your talent and grow professionally.
Choose a template that offers multiple gallery options, forms, blogging tools, SEO manager tools, that are all important for your growth as an artist..
Check out Pixpa’s extensive art portfolio website templates to find one that is best for you.
TIP 4
You want your art portfolio to showcase your best, curated work. Few excellent art pieces are a much better testament to your skills as an artist than a large number of mediocre pieces.Curate artwork that you want to feature on your website. After all, you want to make a good first impression on potential clients, buyers and visitors.
Each piece you display on your art portfolio website should fulfill a function. In other words, it should add value to your art portfolio and to the story that you are trying to tell through it.
Select pieces that best showcase your expertise as an artist. Also consider projects which you feel best display the length and breadth of your skillset and your range. You need to show your adaptability and versatility as an artist when it comes to different genres, themes and artistic mediums. Also do not hesitate to include pieces that would be most aesthetically appealing to clients from a purely commercial perspective, even if they are not the most artistically unique.
Keeping these things in mind, you can curate a comprehensive, appealing and commercially viable art portfolio.
TIP 5
Art portfolios are not just for showcasing your work, they are also a great opportunity for you to showcase yourself, the person behind the art. Getting the tone and vibe right is important. Strike the right balance between the professional and the personal so that your website visitors can connect and appreciate not just the artwork but also the artist.
Adding an 'About' page and a blog is a good way of achieving this. The ‘About’ page is the one section of your website where you have the full and complete opportunity to introduce and market yourself, the artist. Add forms so that potential clients can contact you directly. This can also be a great opportunity to include a call-to-action. Invite your visitors to email you directly to follow you on your social media channels. Break that fourth wall down and interact directly with people through your art portfolio itself.
TIP 6
Each artist has his or her personal art style. Leverage this uniqueness to establish a brand identity for yourself. You can create a professional identity based on your art style and artistic philosophy as well as your personal and professional goals.Your brand helps you stand out from the crowd and distinguish yourself from other artists. Think about what you have, how is your art unique and why is it desirable? Branding is a process in improving your credibility and authority as a creative professional.
A highly personalized, custom website is in itself a step forward towards creating your own brand. But you can do more than that.
A custom domain name and a personalized brand logo makes your art portfolio website look more established and legitimate for only a few dollars a year. Having your own personalized logo is also helpful because it is a visual representation of your brand. It is memorable and makes you instantly recognizable.
TIP 7
You may already have social media channels where you post and promote your art. Why not integrate these channels with your official, professional art portfolio? Though social networking platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr etc have extensive reach, they offer limited options when it comes to personalization and business optimization. Nothing beats having your own art portfolio website in terms of customizability, professionalism and overall functionality. Here are some social media marketing tips to grow your online business.
Integrating your social media profiles with your art portfolio website gives you the best of both worlds. You can make full use of the reach and ubiquity offered by social media without having to sacrifice the customizability, added functionality and security of having your own website.
TIP 8
Make full use of your art portfolio website and everything it offers. You can showcase art on your portfolio website, but you can also use your website as an all-in-one platform to grow your online audience for your art business.
Enable eCommerce and marketing features to sell original pieces, prints, merchandise and more. This way you are not just using your website as a platform to only exhibit your work but as a platform to generate revenue from your talent as well. A well designed online art store can empower you to grow your business without having to rely on any third party.
Add a blog to your website and share your inspiration, creative process, method and more. Not only is this a great way for you to express yourself, but it can also help you attract more web traffic. A blog can also be a platform for you to mentor young and upcoming artists and keep up a steady stream of content on your art portfolio website even when you are not actively working on art projects.
TIP 9
To practice art as a profession you need clients, employers and buyers for your artwork. To achieve that you need recognition. However, your work and talent alone is not enough for you to be recognized. For that, you need to market yourself
Marketing is an essential component of growing your business and it is a component that takes constant and active effort. In order to be able to use your website as an efficient marketing tool for your artistic career, you need to spread the word about your art portfolio. Link it on your social media channels, put it on your business cards, tell people about it and send out links. This way you can get visitors and traffic to your website so that you can actually showcase your work.
Apart from this, make sure you have good marketing tools attached to your website as well. Marketing pop ups, announcement bars, newsletter services and SEO tools help you turn your art portfolio website into a comprehensive tool for selling your services and artworks.
TIP 10
Marketing can be a complicated and often expensive venture. However there is a way for you to gain good organic reach and increased web traffic on your website without having to spend a lot of money or resources. Search engine optimization is an incredibly powerful yet low cost method of growing your reach and reputation by leveraging search engine results pages. SEO ensures that your website ranks well on search engine results pages and brings organic web traffic to your art portfolio.
A really good way of optimizing your art portfolio website is simply choosing a well coded, fast loading template which is what search engines favour. Other methods include going for clean URLs, automatic sitemap, image alt tags, 256-bit SSL certificates etc. See our complete guide on how to optimize your website for search engines.
Consistency is the key to growth in art and other creative disciplines. Let people know that you are constantly and actively working to perfect your art and grow as a creative professional. Don't let your portfolio get stagnant. You need a steady stream of new and unique projects for your art portfolio website. Update your art portfolio regularly with new projects, collections and collaborations.
In case you don’t have any new art projects to upload you can always add blog posts and other content regularly to make sure your art portfolio website stays constantly relevant. It's a lot of work, but that level of dedication will help your clients and potential buyers know that you are serious and passionate about your work.
What are the necessary elements that any art portfolio covers? How does one create the perfect art portfolio online to stand out from the crowd? Here are some things you should consider including in your art portfolio website.
The ‘About’ page is your opportunity to provide a personal story and connect with your audience. The age old wisdom is to let your art do all the talking but that doesn’t quite help with branding and marketing does it? People want to see the face of the artist behind the art and you can do exactly that on your About page. A short bio and a good headshot are essential. Some notes on your artistic background, qualifications and experience can also be good additions.
Your artistic philosophy is the basic rationale behind your work. What compels you to create art and why do you make the kinds of artwork that you make? Talk about your inspiration and the other artists and artistic movements that you allude or refer to in your work. You can talk about the main themes and considerations behind your artwork here as well. This section gives you the opportunity to explain your work and your inspirations. Check out this article on how to write the perfect artist statement.
Add extensive galleries featuring your best curated work. Include different kinds of artworks to appeal to a wide demographic of buyers and clients. You can also include behind the scene pictures of the pieces being created and share the creative process and inspiration behind the work.
Include a section where you can talk about the awards and recognitions you have received. This section can also hold a short, downloadable resume. At the end of the day, the main purpose of your art portfolio website is professional development. Showing that you are an established, talented and recognized artist helps you get more commissions, sales and other jobs.
Why rely on third party vendors and auction houses to sell your work when you can take control on your own? With your own online art store, befitted with best in class eCommerce features, you can sell original artwork, prints and merchandise from your art portfolio website itself. This turns your portfolio website into a source of revenue and a great starting point for expanding your business. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to build your ecommerce website in 2021.
Make sure you have a contact form on your art portfolio website so that potential clients or buyers can contact you directly. No one likes jumping through hoops to contact someone. Your art portfolio website is supposed to simplify the process of reaching out to clients and buyers in the art world. Being able to talk to people directly empowers you to put yourself out there and take control of your art career.
An art portfolio includes an artist’s best curated work which displays your exact skill set, expertise and the genres and mediums in which you work. It is an important professional tool that lets you share your work samples and resume as an artist in order to gain more exposure and business opportunities.While earlier it was common to carry big, bulky, physical copies of your portfolio, these days hosting your art portfolio on your own custom website is easier and enables you to reach a wider audience.
The easiest and most cost-efficient way of promoting your website is through search engine optimization (SEO). Through Pixpa’s built-in SEO manager you can make your website rank higher on Google search results and gain more organic traffic.You can also use social media integration features to share content from your portfolio website directly through social media channels.
Your art portfolio should include your best curated work, your artist’s bio and philosophy, a list of your awards, recognitions and qualifications, and a contact form to enable buyers and clients to contact you directly. You can also include an online art store so that you can sell your work through your art portfolio online.
Yes! With website builder platforms like Pixpa you can create your very own custom art portfolio website without touching even a single line of code. Pixpa’s intuitive drag and drop visual editor and powerful web design tools enable you to customize each and every aspect of your website at the drop of a hat. All you need to do is pick out a template, add pages, galleries etc and customize your website to your exact preferences and requirements. No coding required!
Creating your own art portfolio website is more affordable than you think. You can start building your art portfolio website with Pixpa’s 15-day full featured trial for free. No credit card required for sign up. Pixpa’s all-inclusive subscription plans start from as little as $7/month with no hidden costs. All plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee and offer unlimited bandwidth, SSL certificates and 24/7 support.