Ask HN: Is there a market for kids' artwork? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a market for kids' artwork?

1 pointjkurnia7 comments

A while ago I started a marketplace for kids to sell their artwork as a side project. It has grown organically to ~300 listings, but only about a dozen sales mostly to family and friends of the artists.

Does anyone with experience in this area think there could be a market for the art among the general public - as home or office decor maybe? Any ideas for how to reach other markets?

You can view the artwork here: https://www.kidartshow.com/browse

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Some feedback: Firstly, this is loading full res photos on the homepage, which making the site extremely slow to load. You should generate some small thumbnails so that loading times aren't so terrible when looking at these gallery pages.

I would love more of a satirical approach. I would design it to be a very professional looking website, maybe knock off christie's or the louvre's design or something. Maybe have bio's about the authors (obviously keep it safe, because they're kids). And jack up the prices to be 100x what they currently are. Do really professional sounding descriptions for each piece (maybe you can use chatgpt to do this). "Art STUFF, is a still life Simeon. It's use of bright color pastel contradicts the subject matter of the piece and causes the viewer to consider the actual tools of the artist versus what the stereotypical tools that Simeon finds being pushed onto him." Or whatever...

Maybe professionally frame the pieces (or photoshop them to look professionally framed).

This seems like a fun side project. I'm also in the kid's market. I'd might be interested in partnering in some way if you're open to it.

Thanks for the feedback. That's a really intriguing idea. It would be interesting to test once the site has more traffic.

Optimizing the images is definitely on my to-do list.

Feel free to reach out about partnering. I'm at julia (at) zidisha.org.

You've already answered your own question: the target demographic for children's drawings include the family and friends of the kid who drew them

Children's drawings are more exercises for a child to explore the media and have fun with it. Things that one looks for in visual art, such as composition, form, and general aesthetic quality, are typically not found there, and simply cannot be expected. It's going to be a hard sell for anyone: why spend $5 + shipping for a child's pencil sketch when one could spend a nickel to print any image they see online? Or a few dollars more for a large, high quality poster?

In other words, putting a price tag on children's drawings and expecting someone who isn't related to the child to buy it is going to be difficult to do. It also might set up unrealistic expectations for children and their art. It would be better for kids to trade their pictures with friends or hang them on the fridge for free

Yes, my hypothesis was that the works would be attractive because of their lack of professionalism, not in spite of it.

Why would that make the works more appealing?

Kids' art has a fresh, innocent style that can be very uplifting and is hard for an older artist to replicate.

Art's value stems from exclusivity and the pretense of meaning, which necessarily get cultivated by a coterie of critics vouchsafing for each other. Kid art would seem to defeat all that.

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