The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Pets & Working Animals => Cats => Topic started by: Buffy the eggs layer on November 26, 2011, 12:27:49 pm
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Hi Felinephile forumers,
can I pick your brains? I have recently discovered pastels and have started doing a couple of pet pics. As a result I have been asked to do some for peoples pets. The first one that I did was from an over exposed photo taken by a friend of his partners cat who died earlier in the year. the cats face was a little lopsided due to a lack of teeth and its eyes were almost closed due to a sore eye and a flash on the camera. I did the portrait but opened up the eyes and balenced the face a little and gave it to him.
Although he could see the resemblence to the photo he wasnt sure if his partner would see her cat in the picture. I gave him it framed and mounted on a sale or return basis and asked for £50 if he decided to keep it. The picture took me about 16 hours so if I deduct the cost of the paper, pastels, fixative, mounts and frame I earend about £1.50 an hour.
I have been asked to do another one for someone else but Im not sure how to ensure that this person would want to buy it when its finished. What I see in a photograph and what a person sees in there pet may not be the same thing.
Can I have your thoughts on how best to do this and your opinions on price etc?
I have attached a photo of it but the depth and texture of the image really dosent come acros in the photo. ( It looked better than that in real life.)
Buffy
Sue
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It's a lovely pic.
I don't know how to answer your question, though. Years ago, my then hubby and I bought a pair of oil paintings by a Scottish artist. Not exactly old masters, but lovely, we thought - very evocative Highland scenery with cattle in a glen in the one picture and at the water's edge in the other. We moved around for a few years, so the paintings were wrapped and boxed for a while. No matter, we could clearly see them in our minds' eyes. Eventually we bought what we thought then would be a 'forever' home, so the pictures amongst other possessions were at last unboxed and, in the case of the pictures, rehung.
Ahhh, there were my watering cattle again. I particularly liked the one with the white blaze and the white patch on its side. Like most of them, she had magnificent curving Highland horns.
One day I decided to study the picture close up. My favourite cow was a single brush-stroke of the base colour.
To this day I do not know how that artist got me to see a white blaze and a white patch on the side, and two curving horns, on that single swish of paint...
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OK you want feedback well i like cats always have so not a middle of the road opinion
i think you portrait is very good but i have not seen either the cat or the photo £50 is cheap in this day and age you would need to have a range of demonstration pictures with photos of the pets for the owners and buyers to compare and on taking a commission on get the money or a large percentage of it up front
good luck :farmer:
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we had 2 ( identical!! as one was for me and one for my brother) of our family dog and still have it 20 years later. we thought it was the bees knees tho it never really looked like her, but it was an improvement tho...lol
price depends on how good u are really but ud have to pay urself an hourly wage wud u not? keeping them small wud keep the price cheaper. ud def need a portfolio.
good luck
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A friend did one for me of my special dog, Allez. I didn't like to say to her that I couldn't see the resemblance to him but all my other friends have commented on how like Allez it is. So maybe we see the personality in photos of our pets whereas others see the actual appearance of the animal?
I agree that if you accept a commission the pet owner must see photos and paintings side by side to compare, before offering to pay you and you must take at least 50% up front.
There are a great many pet portrait artists around these days so you need to be good. That is a nice one of a cat, but if we are to help you the photograph would be needed too
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if ur worried about the resemblance of the photos in particularl to someones pet, why dont u make ur pictures - and frame them or turn them into cards and sell them like that?
i dont think iv got a foto of my gsd that looks like the way i see her. to me she is beautiful but all fotos show her as a big eared big nosed mongrel (nothing against mongrels).
i think beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
id love to see the photo too. ;)
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Hi Guys,
thank you for all your helpful feedback. I am really encoraged by your suggestions and advice plus the fact that the person that the portrait was commissioned for was so struck by the resemblance that it made her cry.
I am just completing a portrait of one of my own cats and struggling to capture her mouth just as I want it. when I am happy with it it could be used as an example of my work or turned into a print perhaps as princess piggy suggests.
I agree with Robert that £50 including, frame and double mounts is cheap and a portrait as simple as that took around 16 to 20 hours to complete. The paper costs a couple of quid a sheet and the pastels and fixative means I got a couple of quid an hour for my time.
The bigger the portrait the easier it is to work in pastels but I do use pastel pencils too, to help me to work in a smaller scale. the more time and medium I use, the more effective the end result but that means that the picture becomes more expensive.
If we assume that my pictures have enough of a resemblence to satisfy the customer can you tell me what you would pay for a portrait of your pet, framed and mounted to an overall size of say A3 / A2?
Would you be prepaired to pay the full amount up front or would you feel more confident with a non returnable deposit of 50%?
I will post the photo that I had to work from and you will see that I had to use a bit of artistic licence to turn a photo into a portrait but thats the skill I suppose.
Thanks again for all your feedback, I really do appreciate it,
Buffy
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here you go,
Buffy
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Oh Buffy that is wonderful. :thumbsup:
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Oh, that's brilliant of Polly. :thumbsup:
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Thanks you two but,
would you pay for it and if so how much.
Honest answers please I love you all too much to be offended
Buffy
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Ok, then! I'm not the sort of person who gets portraits of her pets done, so I'm not sure I am the best person to ask. But if you captured Meg-pig, or Hillie the Jersey, as well as you have captured Polly, I would expect to pay £50-£60 for an A2-sized original plus framing. Last time I had a nice print framed it cost me £55 for the frame, mount, glass and labour.
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I think I would pay about 50 pounds unframed for an A3 size. I would also prefer, if I didn't know you, to pay 50% as a deposit then the rest when it's completed. HTH.
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Thanks you two thats really helpful.
better get churning some more pictures out. I really like princess piggie's suggestion of producing a range pictures for sale rather than capturing a likeness of somebodys pet.
The price that you would be prepared to pay for a portrait that size would mean that I would be making about £2 -£3 an hour for my time after deducting the cost of materials.
Well at least now I know that I cant make a living as an artist! Better keep buying the lottery tickets :D
Buffy
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i think you would get quicker with practice, probably be able to get your materials costs down, and be able to charge more as you got better known.
all good artists take time to get going!
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i think your black and white cat is very good it depends on what the pet owner wants a picture that is a carbon copy or a portrait and paintings are not photos :farmer:
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Hi Robert,
you are absolutly right but very few people grasp that with portraiture.
When I first started with water colours and joined a class my tutor used to tease me about my tendancy to try and create an exact replica of the photo. He used to say if you want an exact "facsimilie of the photo just frame the photo"
It took me a few frustrating weeks of tring to create exactly what I saw in a photo into a watercolour before it finally clicked. The realisation that the difference between what I see on the photo and what I produce is my artistic style eventually dawned on me and I found it both liberating and exciting. Artistic style is as individual as hand writing and now I can recognise my own artistic signature.
Thats why I think the idea of producing cards and prints etc is a better idea than pet portraits. Then the buyer only has to ask themselves if they like the subject rather than getting caught up in how much like the origional photo it is.
Although I love the light open feel of water colours I really enjoy working in detail so pastels really suit me. The black and white cat that you prefer has taken many more hours than the commissioned one that I posted first and Im still not finished with it. I wouldnt be able to charge a reasonable rate per hour for that one as no one would pay it.
Thanks for all the honest feedback though guys. I will keep working on improving my work and exploring your excellent ideas.
Buffy :bouquet:
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I had a similar light-dawning moment when an art tutor told me that any artwork would be looking at only some, or often only one, aspect of the subject. It was completely liberating both in terms of how I looked at art and how I approached my own dabblings.
The thing I love about doing my own art is how it makes me look, really look, at what I am sketching or painting.
I haven't yet quite finished not forgiving stupid teachers at school who thought the only purpose of art classes was to be good at art and get good grades. They cost me thirty years of appreciating art and enjoying sketching and painting.
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Hi Sally,
thats a really thought provoking comment :) I didnt get very much inspiration or encouragement for my art work at school either. My english teacher too focussed so much on my poor spelling rather than the content of my story telling that I lost interest in creative writing. It amuses me so now, in the age of text abreviations and spell checkers to think that he must be turning in his grave!
I'm working on a pastel of one of my cockerels today and I was just thinking how much more I enjoy what I produce now than I did back at school.
It's true what they say..., I'ts a good job that childhood happens at the begining of your life,....if it happened later on you'd never survive it!
Would you be willing to post a pic or two of your art work? I bet most of us smallholders are a crafty and creative little bunch.....we have to be to make ends meet! ;D
Buffy
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I also do pastel portraits of animals. I think the secret of capturing the animals personality is to indroduce a subtle element of characature. Not so it looks like a cartoon but so that you exagerate the distinct characteristics of the individual animal and the breed. I did the horse just before he was put down, so I tried to give it a poetic effect of the horse plodding off to horsey heaven, giving a last farwell glance over his shoulder. All I can say is the owner was delighted with it, so thats good enough for me.
I normally charge £500, so I think £50 is much too cheap. If you do a picture for someone you can still keep the copyright and sell prints and cards of the same picture. With the prints you can get more money for each one by sighning them and calling them "limited edition". Decide how many you think you will sell, (e.g 50) and number each one 1/50, 2/50, until you get to 50/50. Obviously you dont need to print 50 all at once as long as you keep track of which number you are on! You could charge £50 for a limited edition print, or £75 if you put it in a frame. Hope this helps.
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WHAT! £500 - well, I certainly wouldn't be able to spend that on a portrait of any of my dogs and they are all very precious to me, no matter HOW good it was. I have a friend who does this and she charges £50 for hers - she gave me one of my Champion dog last year as a birthday present, but it's only worth that to me - not to anyone else. They aren't van Gogh's!
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i am not in the market for a pet portrait but the photo we had taken professionally at hatfield cost £75 signed as well
i liked the horse portrait but not the saddelback
buffy what happens to us as children does mould us for the rest of our life's children are the cruelest people that god put breath into gangs of feral kids wandering there neighbour hood just looking for there next victim to terrorise :farmer:
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Gosh what a facinating thread I have started!
I love your approach to your work Rab and I think your pictures have a wonderful story telling quality to them. I found myself as interested in the detail of the setting as much as the subjects. Thanks for posting them and for all the info on the printing. I dont know where to start in terms of reproductions of my work but Im sure that I will get faster and better with practice.
I have a beautiful pastel and crayon portrait of my horse by an artist called valerie serle which cost about £500 a few years ago. I agree Doganjo that many people dont have the money for an expensive portrait of a much loved pet but I can honestly say that the portrait brings me so much pleasure that its definatly been worth the investment.
I suppose what appeals to a customer and what appeals to the artist can be two different things and price / value is very subjective. I would like to think that one day someone would pay me what they pay Rab. Not just because I could do with the money but because I would love to think that someone would get such pleasure and value from my work.
Thank you to you all for your contributions to this thread. Perhaps we should have a gallery of smallholder art!
Buffy
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I forgot to say before Buffy, I never take a deposit because I wouldnt expect someone to pay for something they didnt want. Every now and then I do get left with unwanted pictures so I just put them in an art gallery. They are not a problem to sell and go for the same price or more, but I can loose out a little because the gallery takes commission which can be up to 33%. I quite often do pictures with out being commisioned and sell them in Art galleries so it isnt really an issue. Most of the pictures I do are not commisioned to express an owners attachment to their pet. Some people just like art and like animals as a subject matter. As far as I remember, the saddleback pig was a retirement present and the manx sheep was a holiday souvineer. This one is my own Wensleydale ram, I wanted to draw him just before his first shearing, because I knew his wool would never get that long again.
I also forgot to say that when artists sell prints of their work they usually call them "giclee prints". I think giclee is just French for Inkjet, but it sounds more arty!?! The main thing is to make sure it's done with the paper and ink that doesnt fade in sunlight. You can print them at home or get them done online.
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Aw,
hes lovely ;D Thanks for the info and the food for thought. You have got me thinking about my work in a different way and I feel inspired to play around with my subjects as part of a composition.
I have a friend who sells his work through ebay rather through a gallery and seems to do well from it so perhaps origional artworks are more desirable than pet portraits.
Here is one that I am currently working on. Its a picture of Bertie one of my lovely Croad Langshan cocks. Still a bit to do on him and a chance to play around with the background ???
Buffy
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I really like Bertie. I am sure there would be a market for something like that.
Sally
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I really like Bertie. I am sure there would be a market for something like that.
Sally
I agree - it's a cracking picture, full of personality but leaving enough to the viewer's imagination and interpretation to be interesting. As someone said earlier, limited edition prints could be the way to get the return up. And you can always offer the original for sale as well.
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Thanks you two,
a couple of forumers have contacted me to enquire about portraits so Im looking forward to tackling those once bertie is finished. Still not sure about price but I agree with Rab that I wouldnt expect someone to pay for something that they didn't want.
Buffy