Art can be an expensive thing to do, or maybe that just depends on your outlook? After all, you can make pretty much anything yourself, and if you can’t then you can find it for a reasonable price, providing you know the right places to look. From paper to paint, equipment to framing, you have to get pretty savvy if you actually want to make any profit on your work—what with most galleries today taking as much as 40%.

Below are a number of ways to cut the cost of making art; but remember, be careful not to pass them around too much!

1) Mount-board: if you’re doing oils, fine, you probably won’t need much of this, but if you’re a waterolourist then watch out; mount board can be very expensive, especially when one simple mistake means you have to buy a brand new sheet.

Get around this buy asking people who have plenty of it if they have any spare. Most galleries which do picture framing chuck out tons of the stuff every week, simply because it is too small to use. But if you are doing lots of small paintings then it’s perfect. The best part? Most of them won’t even charge you.

2) You’ve done your painting and now you want to put it in an exhibition, but how to price it? This is a tricky subject. But remember this: most people will be happy to spend between one and two hundred pounds for a painting, anything more and they will need to think about it, which could mean that they’ll be put off.

3) Frame it well for a good cost: so many artists pay a gallery crazy money for something that you can do just as well yourself; why not ask the gallery to make the frame and then wax it / paint it / stain it yourself? It’ll cut many pounds off the bill and you’ll also learn some valuable experience for future endeavors.

Right before I go there are some amazing new things on the enigin design website that you should all check out. Especially if any of you are interested in internet design!