1. Duke University
Durham, NC • Private
In-State Tuition
$55,695
Enrollment
6,596
What is a Fine Artist?
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a fine artist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $29.65 an hour? That's $61,680 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 1% and produce 500 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Fine Artist Do
Craft and fine artists use a variety of materials and techniques to create art for sale and exhibition. Craft artists create handmade objects, such as pottery, glassware, textiles, and other objects that are designed to be functional. Fine artists, including painters, sculptors, and illustrators, create original works of art for their aesthetic value, rather than for a functional one.
How To Become a Fine Artist
Most fine artists earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree in fine arts in order to improve their skills and job prospects. A formal educational credential is typically not needed for craft artists. Craft and fine artists improve their skills through practice and repetition.
Fine Artist Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of graphic designer you might progress to a role such as designer eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title senior designer.
Fine Artist
Senior Designer
6 Years
Creative Director
5 Years
Marketing Manager
5 Years
Owner
7 Years
Co-Owner
6 Years
Marketing Director
7 Years
Show More
Average Salary for a Fine Artist
Fine Artists in America make an average salary of $61,680 per year or $30 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $106,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $35,000 per year.
Average Fine Artist Salary
$61,680 Yearly$29.65 hourly
What Am I Worth?
Roles and Types of Fine Artist
There are several types of fine artist, including:
Artist
Role:
As the name implies, an artist is a wide term for occupations like web design, fine arts, crafts, animation, desktop publishing, and video game production. Artists work as an animator, fine artist, and web designer, depending on where you work and what you will do. Either way, you are expected to design interactive animating experiences, micro-sites, and website content. You will assist in sustaining the art production pipeline and decision-making process.
You are also in charge of setting up feedback and debugging systems, handling technical aspects of digital campaigns, designing projects and working with team members to achieve the project's excellent overall success. All of these will make you deliver excellent artistic projects. You will also ensure project submission by the project manager, evaluate it, and review the sources. Plus, you will often need to supervise and work with a team to ensure project success.
Wide knowledge of 3D Max, Maya, graphic programming languages, photoshop, and texturing is required as an artist. An outstanding ability to create, knowledge of modeling, lighting, special effects, and good organizational and communication skills are also required. The yearly salary of an artist is $48,560, and you will earn this with a bachelor's degree in art or other related fields.
- Average Salary: $68,690
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Graphic Artist
Role:
Also called Graphic Illustrators, a Graphic Artist has excellent artistic and computer skills. You will be creating artwork for different graphic projects, like posters, advertisements, and covers. You may also be tasked to use a specific art style even though you have your own. The important thing to do is be able to deliver the project or company's message through your artwork.
As a Graphic Artist, you need to have good analytical skills, great communication skills, and, of course, excellent artistic ability. You will need all these skills for you to perform well as a Graphic Artist.
You can earn an average salary of $47,306 per year as a Graphic Artist. With a 3% job growth rate, you can also explore other roles and further your career. You can be a Graphic Designer, a Designer, and a Design Manager. This is only one path; there are other possibilities when you start as a Graphic Artist today.
- Average Salary: $54,900
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Technical Illustrator
Role:
Technical illustrators create drawings that show how parts work together. You create these drawings using digital technology and usually work primarily in some engineering field (as that's where stuff gets complicated and needs your skills to help create clear examples).
You can become a freelance technical illustrator without an illustration degree. Many artists in the industry aren't illustration graduates, and most clients will judge you by the quality of the work in your portfolio-not by the degree or diploma that you might or might not have on paper.
Technical illustrators are in demand across various industries, but it is usually up to the illustrators to create this demand. It is the virtue of this demand that the salary paid for this role is relatively high. Technical illustrators in the US typically earn $65,384 per year or $31 per hour.
- Average Salary: $52,828
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
States With The Most Fine Artist Jobs
Mouse over a state to see the number of active fine artist jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where fine artists earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.
Average Salary: Job Openings:
Number Of Fine Artist Jobs By State
| Rank | State | Number of Jobs | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 356 | $98,426 |
| 2 | Texas | 94 | $50,678 |
| 3 | Florida | 82 | $46,222 |
| 4 | Washington | 77 | $72,737 |
| 5 | New York | 70 | $74,684 |
| 6 | Wisconsin | 62 | $56,013 |
| 7 | Indiana | 58 | $54,337 |
| 8 | Georgia | 49 | $51,785 |
| 9 | Maryland | 43 | $70,760 |
| 10 | Virginia | 39 | $59,432 |
| 11 | Michigan | 34 | $56,964 |
| 12 | Illinois | 32 | $61,068 |
| 13 | Arizona | 28 | $65,026 |
| 14 | Ohio | 28 | $64,688 |
| 15 | Oregon | 27 | $72,357 |
| 16 | Minnesota | 27 | $54,957 |
| 17 | North Carolina | 27 | $51,898 |
| 18 | Kentucky | 24 | $58,642 |
| 19 | Pennsylvania | 24 | $64,973 |
| 20 | Massachusetts | 23 | $84,238 |
| 21 | Iowa | 23 | $59,566 |
| 22 | Alabama | 19 | $48,541 |
| 23 | Utah | 16 | $72,572 |
| 24 | Missouri | 15 | $57,996 |
| 25 | New Jersey | 13 | $74,041 |
| 26 | Colorado | 11 | $62,720 |
| 27 | Tennessee | 11 | $53,409 |
| 28 | Louisiana | 10 | $58,176 |
| 29 | New Hampshire | 9 | $83,282 |
| 30 | Nevada | 9 | $92,254 |
| 31 | Nebraska | 9 | $59,181 |
| 32 | South Carolina | 9 | $54,387 |
| 33 | Kansas | 8 | $57,318 |
| 34 | Arkansas | 8 | $48,279 |
| 35 | Oklahoma | 7 | $55,340 |
| 36 | Delaware | 4 | $79,885 |
| 37 | Connecticut | 4 | $83,911 |
| 38 | South Dakota | 4 | $60,951 |
| 39 | Wyoming | 4 | $57,011 |
| 40 | Hawaii | 4 | $60,183 |
| 41 | New Mexico | 4 | $58,483 |
| 42 | Mississippi | 4 | $55,620 |
| 43 | Montana | 3 | $70,344 |
| 44 | Idaho | 3 | $67,891 |
| 45 | North Dakota | 3 | $61,150 |
| 46 | Maine | 3 | $64,723 |
| 47 | Rhode Island | 2 | $84,514 |
| 48 | Vermont | 1 | $80,523 |
| 49 | Alaska | 1 | $74,825 |
| 50 | West Virginia | 0 | $64,335 |
Top Colleges for Fine Artists
2. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
In-State Tuition
$50,420
Enrollment
7,582
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
In-State Tuition
$54,568
Enrollment
8,451
4. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
In-State Tuition
$51,354
Enrollment
7,083
5. Northeastern University
Boston, MA • Private
In-State Tuition
$51,522
Enrollment
13,760
6. Boston University
Boston, MA • Private
In-State Tuition
$53,948
Enrollment
17,238
7. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
In-State Tuition
$55,584
Enrollment
10,764
8. Cornell University
Ithaca, NY • Private
In-State Tuition
$55,188
Enrollment
15,105
9. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
In-State Tuition
$15,262
Enrollment
30,079
10. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
In-State Tuition
$59,430
Enrollment
8,216
Top Skills For a Fine Artist
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 11.4% of fine artists listed graphic design on their resume, but soft skills such as business skills and customer-service skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Fine Artist Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Fine Artist templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Fine Artist resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Fine Artist diversity
Fine Artist Gender Distribution
Female
60%
Male
40%
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among fine artists, 59.8% of them are women, while 40.2% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among fine artists is White, which makes up 67.0% of all fine artists.
- The most common foreign language among fine artists is Spanish at 47.1%.
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Best States For a Fine Artist
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a fine artist. The best states for people in this position are California, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Fine artists make the most in California with an average salary of $98,426. Whereas in Nevada and Rhode Island, they would average $92,254 and $84,514, respectively. While fine artists would only make an average of $84,238 in Massachusetts, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. California
Total Fine Artist Jobs: 356
Highest 10% Earn:
$166,000
Location Quotient:
2.44
$98,426
Avg. Salary
2. New Hampshire
Total Fine Artist Jobs: 9
Highest 10% Earn:
$144,000
Location Quotient:
1.03
$83,282
Avg. Salary
3. Nevada
Total Fine Artist Jobs: 9
Highest 10% Earn:
$156,000
Location Quotient:
0.86
$92,254
Avg. Salary
How Do Fine Artists Rate Their Jobs?
Top Fine Artist Employers
Most Common Employers For Fine Artist
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Homes.com | $109,690 | $52.74 | 1 |
| 2 | Otis College of Art and Design | $86,932 | $41.79 | 1 |
| 3 | The Walt Disney Company | $84,093 | $40.43 | 1 |
| 4 | Opportunity International | $75,885 | $36.48 | 2 |
| 5 | Independent Artists | $71,381 | $34.32 | 5 |
| 6 | Zappos.com | $69,694 | $33.51 | 2 |
| 7 | AT&T | $66,772 | $32.10 | 1 |
| 8 | Artspace Utah | $62,424 | $30.01 | 2 |
| 9 | HG Arts | $61,596 | $29.61 | 1 |
| 10 | The Sole Proprietor | $61,579 | $29.61 | 1 |