The handful of artists I know tend to do brisk business in commissions at cons, so I don't think those are mutually exclusive. Online, you have to wait for the potential buyer to come across your site. At a con, they just have to glance in the direction of your table to receive the pitch.
I suspect that prints are also easier to sell at a convention, where you can say "I want that" and have it in your hand in moments, than online. It's not that online print sales don't happen; it's just that I imagine there'd be a strong tendency to consider clicking "save image" to be good enough to satisfy the "I want that" impulse.
That said, all of this mostly applies to the dealer tables, rather than art show/auction aspects of such events. And it's also possible that some of my impressions above are mistaken, as I'm not an artist and am going by a pretty small sample size. Still food for thought.
The handful of artists I know tend to do brisk business in commissions at cons, so I don't think those are mutually exclusive. Online, you have to wait for the potential buyer to come across your site. At a con, they just have to glance in the direction of your table to receive the pitch.
I suspect that prints are also easier to sell at a convention, where you can say "I want that" and have it in your hand in moments, than online. It's not that online print sales don't happen; it's just that I imagine there'd be a strong tendency to consider clicking "save image" to be good enough to satisfy the "I want that" impulse.
That said, all of this mostly applies to the dealer tables, rather than art show/auction aspects of such events. And it's also possible that some of my impressions above are mistaken, as I'm not an artist and am going by a pretty small sample size. Still food for thought.