Short answer: No.
I’ve come across this question several times over the past few months so I thought I’d throw my opinion out there.
It is hard to do much in art licensing if you don’t want to continue to create in a certain style, theme or category. Retailers (both brick and mortar and online) want to know that if your designs do well for them, you will create more. With the speed at which everyone wants new products, the life and therefore profitability of a license – were you to get one – with “old art” would likely be limited.
For the same reason, I highly doubt an artist would be able to get an agent to help licensing a portfolio of art the artist doesn’t want to adjust or add to. There are so many artists hungry to get into this business and the agents need to work with those that will become art creating machines.
While I applaud artists for trying to figure out how to monetize what they have already created, art licensing isn’t going to be the answer unless they want to continue to create for licensing.
Here’s to your creative success!
– Tara Reed
Great information about art licensing…the good news is that artist might still be able to monetize that work through stock art. I have been earning royalties since 2004 on art I contributed a decade ago. That art has paid me in excess of $50,000.00 over that time (and still counting) from my small portfolio (less than 200 images). What I personally like about stock art is that I created what I felt like creating and then submitted it for approval (some don’t make the cut) and then waited for the sales. Some stock art sells better than others, but if you can think like a buyer (what is desirable, what is on trend, and also what could serve a broad market as opposed to a niche one … unless the niche is filling an uncovered need …) you could possibly do well in this passive income market. Personally, I am now represented exclusively at Dreamstime (I was previously an independent with what is referred to as the big 5 – agencies) but there are many stock art agencies out there to research and apply to. Perhaps this would work for some of your readers? Cheers Tara Urbach http://www.dreamstime.com/pixel-pizzazz_info#res2755