Make Your Art Work Harder

Continuing on from yesterday's post which concentrated on just one design, today I'll talk about reproducing your paintings.

I don't know about you, but even a small painting can take me a full week to finish. (Note to self - write a blog post about the stages of a painting.) Not (yet!) being a big name artist, expecting people to pay a realistic price for my work is unreasonable. While I have had offers of £1700 for a painting in the past, the usual going rate is around £250 and often a lot less just to get some money coming in.

That's not strictly true though - the usual state of affairs is that the painting remains unsold or it's a gift or the good lady claims it as hers as with the following examples:

Gift

Claimed by Mrs Gelert Design

Now, what happens when a painting has mass appeal? Once it's sold it's gone and an opportunity missed, so what to do to make this piece keep working for you even after it's left your hands? Well, get it reproduced of course! You could do very well for yourself if you picked up a contract with someone like Athena, Hallmark, Ikea or even Wilkinsons, but this post will concentrate on doing it for yourself.

If you're sending your work to a printer digitally, be sure to convert the file to CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK) and don't leave it as RGB (Red Green Blue) as the colours won't be true even though they look fine on your own screen. Check out these 2 examples:

CMYK

RGB

The first is the original, the second is a greeting card print that used RGB instead of CMYK. You can see there's a lilac tinge to everything:/ So make sure you've got your CMYK sorted and save yourself some money!

Prints are great, but don't simply get copies run off at your local copyshop! Ensure you're going to a proper fine art printer who will give you good giclee prints on acid free papers etc. The problem with prints is that they can be quite expensive to get made if you're on a budget. Plus the buyer has to factor in the cost of framing. If you believe in your work, then by all means get your limited edition prints run off, but don't stop there! As I said in my last post, the possibilities are almost endless:

Again, there is an initial outlay so it comes back to the suitability/popularity of your painting. You might want to consider other, cheaper options in the first instance to get your work out there and help gauge the public reaction. If they prove popular you'll soon be well on your way to making the money you need to get your proper prints done! You can go to a printers such as Vistaprint and get a whole range of items made up featuring your work - keyrings, coasters, mousemats and magnets.

Personally, I've yet to come up with a painting that I think would be popular enough to reproduce in this manner. I tend to paint the landscapes and castles of North Wales. Perhaps reproduced as the merchandise above they would prove popular in the CADW giftshops. It's something I've been meaning to get round to doing for a good 2 years already - maybe I'm just scared of rejection!?

So for now I've been investing in cards. Vistaprint and Moo are worth investigating to get small runs or greeting cards and postcards made. Here's a selection I currently have available in my Etsy and Folksy shops:

Cnicht

Dolbadarn

Dolbadarn

Rhos Quarry

Another avenue is the ACEO. It's beyond the scope of this post to explain what ACEOs are, so follow this link for a fuller description: Artist trading cards. As an ACEO is just a small painting, these too take me far too long to produce to be cost effective as one-offs so signed and numbered prints are a good way to go. They have to sell for just a couple of quid each, but I had 100 of each of mine printed for just over £20 in total. They've paid for themselves already and I still have plenty left - pure profit:-)

Cnicht form Croesor

Dolwyddelan

Cove

Hill Farm

South Stack

Again. all available from my online shops.

I hope this has given you some ideas on how to make your art work harder for you and fulfil it's earning potential. Just remember - you have to speculate to accumulate.

Making your art work for you

Everyone recognises Van Goch's "Sunflowers" or "Starry Night", but is that because we are familiar with the paintings themselves or because we are bombarded with reproductions everywhere we look?

T-shirts, mouse-mats, mugs, calendars, badges, ties, scarves, calendars, notebooks, clocks, keyrings, cards, jewellery, phone covers, posters, prints, clocks, stickers, coasters, magnets, tote bags and even underwear are all commercially available featuring these iconic images!


I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not from a purist's point of view, but for those who wish to make a living from their art rather than live the Romantic dream, surely it's worth investigating?


There is a value (and possibly moral) judgement each individual must make, but for me it is a simple decision - consumerism wins!


No doubt every painter out there has investigated the viability of having prints made of their work. The cost is a massive factor and you don't want to be stuck with 250 prints you can't sell.


My first forays into reproduction came in my art college days when for a printing project I produced t-shirts and album cover for a band I used to play in. Ah those heady days when anything and everything were possible and reality had yet to make inroads into our lives!


When the band New Model Army released their classic "Thunder and Consolation" album in 1989 I, along with just about everyone else, was impressed with the sleeve artwork.

Suddenly celtic art was mainstream - or at least as mainstream as counter-culture can get! This design has become synonymous with the band over the years, with fans often having it tattooed on their bodies - a membership badge for the exclusive 'fanclub'


When I began to explore celtic art further, I found the above design in George Bain's influential book Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction

Apparently it's an ancient pictish stone carving found in Meigle, Perthshire, Scotland (though I have yet to find photographic evidence of the stone)


When Gelert Design was set up late in 2009, it was all about creating reproducible products. My preferred sculpting method is carving plaster. Plaster isn't satisfactorily durable and the time it takes me to produce a piece makes it prohibitively expensive to buy. So Gelert Design is all about making silicone moulds of my carvings and reproducing them in resin. Can you see where this is going? ;)


As soon as I felt myself competent enough, I contacted New Model Army regarding a hole in their merchandise range - fridge magnets! It's all very well selling the latest band t-shirt, hoodle, and silver pendant, but the fans are an obsessive lot (and I should know, I'm one of them!), always after something else - bootlegs, a hat, a mug, socks...


I was asked to send some samples and they were immediately approved! Gelert Design had it's first wholesale order! Of course, the 'Thunder and Consolation' design was one of the most popular designs. The current range of New Model Army fridge magnets are available from their online shop

Now, New Model Army don't own this design - it was created by the pictish people after all. You may be familiar with it as it's the logo of film company Legendary Pictures, makers of 300, The Dark Knight, Where The Wild Things Are, Clash of the Titans etc etc.


While it's all very well having a painting that can be reproduced on aprons, it needs to be a design that people actually want. This will always be the problem when you want your art to work for you. I've yet to come up with my own Hello Kitty! But I have already sculpted something that is fairly popular... 


Seeing as how no one owns the design but it is associated with the band, movies, the celts and picts, it seemed a good image to reproduce a la Vincent Van Goch. I have already made the moulds and the versatility of resin means various finishes and fillers can be introduced to create a vast range.


From that one initial mould for a fridge magent, I was able to cast in bonded brass, bronze, copper, aluminium, epoxy, polyester and polyurethene!


Here's a gallery of items I have made using just that one mould  - tealight holders, brooches, pendants, and trinket boxes:

Of course, it doesn't end there! Carving the design in different sizes allowed me to produce clocks and belt buckles!

(All the above can be purchased from my Etsy and Folksy shops)


It doesn't end there of course, the design still has legs - I've made engraved glass coasters for instance. Now I just need to think of the next adaptation!


So in conclusion, reproducing art works for me. It's just a question of finding a popular design and then the sky's the limit!


I'd be interested in hearing your views for and against the argument for adapting art, and of course any ideas as to how I can use the design next:-)