Hey, lovely people~! Its LenaMoongrove here with another Tuesday Tip! Last time I wrote : A Guide to Art Programs 
I will spend today and tomorrow updating that Guide with all the programs you guys suggested! So keep an eye open for that (:
(Thank you so much for all the comments, Its really fun to read other people their experiences and its helpful too! So I suggest that you guys take a second and read some of the comments as well!
Im sorry that I couldn't reply to all of you, but, again, I WILL update the journal)

And now, for this week, welcome to A Guide to Prints and Presses.
This week I'd like to talk to you about Art Prints, selling Art Prints and printing art on other things (like T-shirts, bags, charms, postcards, comics etc.)
I will be talking about a little more technical side of Printing art instead of writing a real marketing related guide.
Getting your art out there and to the customer/ the appeal of your art was originally meant to be a part of this guide but I noticed that isthisthingstillon wrote a strong article about Selling Prints for projecteducate right here: Selling Prints: Observations and Advice
I strongly suggest you give that a read even though you might find some overlap in our articles.

So without further delay, lets dive into it~!

The Art

Obviously this is the most important thing. Making art for prints is in my opinion somewhat different from making art in general. Of course you can make a piece and decide that it'll work as a print but if you want to make a print you need to think about it first. Just like any other piece you will need to think about composition and colours because this time your piece will be hanging on a wall! So, keep in mind if you want it in portrait form or on its side. Do you want it to emit a certain mood? Is it warm and homely or cold and styled? If you just start creating art it can be anything. From sketches to chibi's but ask yourself: Is that what you want on a wall? Most people wish for more polished art. Finished art. And with that comes the judgement: Is your art good enough in quality to be sold? Ultimately thats up to you, but imagine that selling art as a print is harder than selling commissions~! Be sure you're up for it! 

Fine Art Prints

So, the first way to print your art is the most obvious one. Fine art prints.
These prints are exactly what it sounds like, a high quality printed version of your piece. Ah did I just say High Quality? Yes I did, but of course high quality only comes when you offer a high quality file to print.
Your file needs to be at least 300 DPI (dots per inch) and a size of 3000 by 3000 (and variations of this if you want a rectangle print or a portrait etc.). If you have a lower resolution your print won't be looking as sharp and crisp, it will get all blocky and vague, and you want to avoid that of course!
Still there are more things you need to think about before selling~! There are many different kinds of prints. Are you going for a glossy finish? or matte? Do you want to sell it framed? or not? 
Only make the options available that fit your piece! Some sizes won't work for your piece, it will get stretched or cropped, so do not offer those~! Thats a rookie mistake
After making your art, checking what will look good and figuring out which sizes will work for you you are ready to sell~! But... how? and where?
There are many different art sites that will allow you to sell your art as print and on a lot of other things~! You can find them below (: 

T-Shirts

Next up are the T-shirts~! Selling T-shirts with your art on it is essentially different from selling art for on your wall.
Naturally there are exceptions to what im going to tell you, some full pieces work fine on Shirts but the overall audience looks for what more styled art on their clothing.
The art you make for your prints is not always the same art you'd make for on T-shirts. So if you wish to go and sell Tees you need to think a little different. 
Play with the form, are you just going to make a picture or are you designing a shirt in total? The first is easier than the latter. 
In both cases you need to think about a few things, for example, in which colours am I going to sell the shirt? Will my art fit those colours?
If you're going to make a picture and print it on a shirt you need to make a transparent file, a square block of colour usually doesn't work as well as a sleek picture with a funny joke.
You also need to think a little more commercial, what do people want to wear? Gamer jokes? Fan art? A smart play of words with a funny illustration?
And again do not sell your art in every option available~! A dirty joke shouldn't go on a child's shirt and a sesame street illustration wouldn't sell well among adults. Think before you offer something.
And just like fine art prints (MOSTLY) wouldn't do well on shirts, art for on shirts wouldn't go well as fine art prints. (Again there ARE exceptions~! You can always try and see how it looks but be smart about it!)

On a more technical note: Your resolution still should be 300 DPI, your file still large and your mode should be RGB not CMYK.
Most sites that allow you to sell your art as shirts will offer you some guidelines for your files. 

Bags, phone cases, postcards etc.

Third in the row are the miscellaneous objects/items. Remember the art work you made for a fine art print? Well it COULD be that it will look well on some items.
I do not have much to say about this aside from the FACT that not all art is meant for every product. Just carefully check if your print will look nice on a mug or a bag. Some pieces fit better as duvets and showercurtains and others will act best as postcard or phone case. Just only offer what works. 

Charms

Charms~! Charms are a whole other deal! Like T-shirts you will need to make entirely different art for charms. Depending  on your site and which sort of charm you want to make you will get a template.
The template consist out of different layers and will automatically be the right size, form and resolution. When you make charms you need to line your piece. Full body chibis are the easiest but you can also make loose heads or half bodies if you close the lineart. Just be creative and DONT FORGET to leave space for the punch hole~! If you have to punch that in your art it will ruin everything.
Most sites will only let you order charms in large quantities, so its ideal to order a bunch of those cuties if you are going to a convention or if you have a etsy shop that sells well. If you sell sporadically you might want to look at different things to create/sell.  

Comics, Art Books, Magazines etc.

Last one~! I am NOT going to talk about panelling and the flow of comics (that might be something for another TT) but I AM here to tell you about marges and side bleeds.
If you want to print a book or comic you will notice that you will miss a bit of your art at the site where the book is bound. Logically so you need to keep that in mind when creating your comic or art. 
Here take a look at this:


Of course you will need to fill the entire page, i mean you do not want white borders right? But you need to keep all essentials (text, faces/emotions etc.) within the borders (to be safe), the trim line is where it folds and the rest is the full bleed. You can put details here and make it look nice but keep the essentials centred so it will not get lost when printing.
Same goes when you want to print art in a magazine or book. If your piece is rectangular you will need to crop it in a way that your focus point lies within the lines. To make sure it gets printed the right way.
You can imagine that not all art will work well in a art book so choose carefully~!

Places to sell your art

And to close things off I have a little list of websites that you can use to sell your art on~!

-dA: Right here~!
Prints only

- Redbubble: www.redbubble.com/
Shirts, bags, wall art/fine prints, phone cases, stickers etc.

- Society6: society6.com/
Shirts, bags, pillows, wallart/fine prints, phone cases etc.

- Etsy: www.etsy.com/
You can sell prints but also homemade crafts~!

- Teefury: www.teefury.com/
Teefury is a website that sells shirts for a limited time and it accepts only selected works but you can try your luck!

- Storyenvy: www.storenvy.com/
Shirts, bags, pillows, wall art/fine prints, phone cases etc.

- Teepublic: www.teepublic.com/
Shirts and wall art/fine prints 

- Cafepress: www.cafepress.com/
wall art/fine prints, shower curtains, shirts, covers etc.

Thats it for today~! Im sure there are many more websites that allow you to sell your art. Im also sure that there will be people commenting below with said other websites so take a look at that (:
As always if you liked this and thought of it as helpful: Share~! It means the world to me!

Happy creating!
-Kath