How to License Your Art©
Posted: Sunday, April 03, 2011
by Arlene Wright-Correll
http://www.learn-america.com
This week’s question asks: “What does licensing art mean and how can I do it?”
Answer: The word "license" means the "freedom to do something." So when you give a company a license to use your art, which means you are giving them the freedom or ability to use your art in a certain way, on a certain type of product, for a certain period of time, and with certain restrictions on usage and they pay you an whatever amount you both finally agree upon whether it might be a one time fee or a percentage of everything they sell.
There are some trade secrets that are used by many professional artists and these may be helpful to you. Though you may enjoy painting long and narrow or round works of art I suggest you paint on flat surfaces in the sizes of 18” x 24” or 9” x 12”. Once you have a design accepted the company can crop it into circles or rectangles or whatever. Why flat surfaces? Most businesses who make their living selling art related products want to license two dimensional images. This includes acrylics, gouache, watercolor and oils on paper, board or canvases. Lately they are accepting digital art also.
Make sure the art you want to license includes a full background and that it is painted to the edges. The company that buys your art will be able to crop out any background should they not want a colored background.
Though you may be an excellent sketch or pen and ink artist you will have to deal with color because buyers of licensed products want color, the more brilliant, richer and higher density the better. If you are a landscape artist make sure your work has a good focal point that allows the viewer to go into it.
Don’t offer the company you are wooing a whole lot of different selections. Remember they are probably going to reproduce whatever they buy in a series or sets or even for calendars. Take 4 of your best works and then do different sets of those four images remembering to think only in terms of 4 images that fit together and you will greatly improve your chance at getting these images licensed. With this tip in mind do not think along the lines of “niche” marketing such as painting only your grandchildren or dogs or any other kind of a certain animal even if you are very good at it. This limits you very much in the licensing market. If you lucky enough to be are able to see what that business carries in their licensed line it will give you a very good idea of what they are accepting. Even though I just gave some advice about the “niche” marketing you may have to stay generic as long as the dogs, children, landscapes and people seem to be any kind or anyone in any place. In other words if you are an abstract artist there may be little space for your works in the licensing world.
Should you be lucky enough to secure a licensing agreement make sure someone smarter than you i.e. a licensing attorney reads it over for you prior to you getting excited enough to sign it. Make sure there is a date where the licensing business has to start marketing your product, make sure there is an ending date, usually 2 or 3 years from commencement date and make sure there is an "indemnification clause" which says that the company will protect you from any lawsuits that might arise from any of their business activities which in any way relate to products carrying your art (so that you're protected if, say, a child swallows a product with your art on it and the parents sue).
Never allow them to gain the copyright for any of your pieces of art or gain full and complete reproduction rights to any of your art; or to gain the right to sublicense your art to other companies without your having to approve and sign each specific sublicensing agreement and never allow them to gain ownership of your original works of art as part of the licensing agreement. These are just a few of the many things you will have to make sure are covered.
May the Creative Force be with you!
Arlene Wright-Correll
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