I've got a new Zazzle store up featuring my pencil artwork on neato products likes magnets, mousepads, coffee cups, stickers, t-shirt and poster, cards etc.
I haven't had much luck in the past with Zazzle, but I think the products are reasonably priced so I decided to give it another go.
For pencil art GO HERE AND SHOP
For watercolor and ink art GO HERE AND SHOP
create & buy custom products at Zazzle
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Artists Take Notice
This has been floating around the internet for a while...I'm not even sure where it originally came from to give the proper credit. Artists heed this warning!!
Nothing chaps my hide like artists giving away their amazing skills for free. Its hurts us..ya kno???
Every day, there are more and more Craigs List posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.
But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.
To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?
More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.
And this is not really a surprise.
In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.
So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?
Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)
Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?
If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.
But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?
Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.
A few things you need to know;
1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.
2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.
3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.
4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.
5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?
If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.
6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely.
So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them. Say NO to free art.
And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free…please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.
If you agree with the above important information, please pass it along. The more people know, the faster we can correct this problem.
Nothing chaps my hide like artists giving away their amazing skills for free. Its hurts us..ya kno???
Every day, there are more and more Craigs List posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.
But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.
To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?
More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.
And this is not really a surprise.
In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.
So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?
Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)
Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?
If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.
But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?
Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.
A few things you need to know;
1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.
2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.
3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.
4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.
5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?
If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.
6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely.
So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them. Say NO to free art.
And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free…please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.
If you agree with the above important information, please pass it along. The more people know, the faster we can correct this problem.
Friday, January 22, 2010
"Dawn" Cherry Blossom Tree Painting
This painting is on eBay for auction here
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
sweet, the holidays are over
Just like everybody else, I breathe a sigh of relief after the holidays are over. Didn't have much time for art, so now I'm full of ideas waiting to get down on paper.
2010 is starting off to be a great year for my art on ebay...selling lots of prints so far. This year will be the year I create a full fledged online store for my art. Oh yes, it will. I'm hoping if I say it enough the magic website fairies will just create one for me. ;-)
I have a major new drawing planning- a hamadryad, oak tree nymph. I'm going to try to make a thorough drawing tutorial as I work on this one, for anybody that's interested!
2010 is starting off to be a great year for my art on ebay...selling lots of prints so far. This year will be the year I create a full fledged online store for my art. Oh yes, it will. I'm hoping if I say it enough the magic website fairies will just create one for me. ;-)
I have a major new drawing planning- a hamadryad, oak tree nymph. I'm going to try to make a thorough drawing tutorial as I work on this one, for anybody that's interested!
Monday, December 7, 2009
Selina Fenech on Pricing Your Art for Sale
Great note on Selina's Facebook about pricing art for sale!
Thoughts on Pricing Art Products by Selina Fenech
There is this phenomena I have experienced myself, and day to day, see artists around me who are trying to build a career experiencing.
It's that "No matter how hard I work, I never seem to get ahead! Where does all the money go?" issue. You know the one.
I don't get it as much anymore, these days, and the reason why is that I've PROPERLY worked out the costs behind all of my products, and am now pricing my items accordingly! Yes, a lot of my products are a bit more expensive now than similar products available from other artists, but the simple truth is that they are underpricing themselves, and shooting themselves, and their careers in the foot. It's easy to do, and as a start up artist it's not such a terrible thing because you can normally subsidise your business from some other employment to keep it afloat. But the minute the change from "hobby" to "business" starts to happen, and those "Why aren't I making any money?" worries pop up, it starts to become a very serious problem.
I remember when I first started out selling merchandise of my art. How do I price things? What's fair? Well, first thing you do is go and see what everyone else is selling that sort of item for. You price based on the market around you. So, lets use fridge magnets for an example. I see others selling fridge magnets for about $3 a pop. Great, I think. If the magnet itself costs me maybe 0.80 or so cents in materials to make, I'm ahead right? So you go with the flow.
Everything is ok for a while, then you start selling products wholesale because stores want to stock them. Retail stores generally EXPECT and demand a 50% discount. They have their expenses they need to meet, and need that 50% profit to cover their expenses and make some money too.
So now I'm selling the same magnet for $1.50. Still making money right? No, actually, we're not.
We've missed a step along the way, a very important step. We haven't considered out costs properly. Just looking at material costs is a tiny fraction of the picture.
Let's have a look at the numbers closely.
We're selling the magnet at $1.50 wholesale.
Material costs are around .80c, leaving us .70c left.
In my business, I have to charge 10% tax on all goods, so that's another .15c gone, leaving us .55c
Waste- it happens. If 1 in 10 magnets is a bust for whatever reason, that's 10% of the material costs on top, so another .08c off, leaving us 47c.
I use sales reps for some of my sales, who take a 15% cut of the profits, so that's another .22c gone, leaving us .25c.
If the sale goes through paypal, they take maybe another 3% of the total, leaving us .21c.
Labour, yes, you absolutely must account for labour. What happens when you want to start employing someone to do it for you? If it only takes 1minute to make a magnet at a reasonable $16 an hour average labour rate, that's .26c labour cost....
Oh...
Whoops...
Looks like we're down to -5c now. So we're losing .5c every time we sell a magnet...
In my situation, I also have other artists I need to pay a % sales commission to... where is that going to come from?
And all year long in my business I have to buy packaging supplies for posting, pay for advertising, buy art supplies, service printers, pay for all these other expenses that don't directly pay for themselves like product materials do. All these day to day running expenses have to be paid for somehow. You need to be making enough profit with each and every sale to cover all those other day to day expenses of running a business. Every product you sell should make you a CLEAN profit (after all those other expenses for the product itself I just talked about!) of at least 30%, or you're in the red and your business will never get ahead.
I look around the internet, from the amazing handcrafts on Etsy to beautiful jewellery and art prints coming from fellow fantasy artists around me, all selling for a pittance, and I want to grab people and shake them and yell "You're paying other people to take your work!!!!"
Because this is what so many actually are doing, at the prices they sell at. Not only are they undervaluing their product, they are undervaluing their ART. The artwork we create as a thriving and inspired fantasy and fairy art community (and other genres as well out there!) is a beautiful, unique thing of GREAT VALUE. And we need to start treating it as such, before I see any more of my collegues out their wring their hands in financial stress and say "I just can't do it anymore, I'm it giving up", and give up not only the business, but the art itself. That's the saddest thing I have seen happen, on more than one occasion.
Our fans and customers might love a bargain, but they probably also don't want to see us sell ourselves out of business.
Someone told me once, when someone buys an art print from you, they aren't paying you for the paper, or the ink. They are paying your for an artwork. An image they've fallen in love with. As artists, we need to stop charging for the price of the paper, and start charging for the price of our art.
Thoughts on Pricing Art Products by Selina Fenech
There is this phenomena I have experienced myself, and day to day, see artists around me who are trying to build a career experiencing.
It's that "No matter how hard I work, I never seem to get ahead! Where does all the money go?" issue. You know the one.
I don't get it as much anymore, these days, and the reason why is that I've PROPERLY worked out the costs behind all of my products, and am now pricing my items accordingly! Yes, a lot of my products are a bit more expensive now than similar products available from other artists, but the simple truth is that they are underpricing themselves, and shooting themselves, and their careers in the foot. It's easy to do, and as a start up artist it's not such a terrible thing because you can normally subsidise your business from some other employment to keep it afloat. But the minute the change from "hobby" to "business" starts to happen, and those "Why aren't I making any money?" worries pop up, it starts to become a very serious problem.
I remember when I first started out selling merchandise of my art. How do I price things? What's fair? Well, first thing you do is go and see what everyone else is selling that sort of item for. You price based on the market around you. So, lets use fridge magnets for an example. I see others selling fridge magnets for about $3 a pop. Great, I think. If the magnet itself costs me maybe 0.80 or so cents in materials to make, I'm ahead right? So you go with the flow.
Everything is ok for a while, then you start selling products wholesale because stores want to stock them. Retail stores generally EXPECT and demand a 50% discount. They have their expenses they need to meet, and need that 50% profit to cover their expenses and make some money too.
So now I'm selling the same magnet for $1.50. Still making money right? No, actually, we're not.
We've missed a step along the way, a very important step. We haven't considered out costs properly. Just looking at material costs is a tiny fraction of the picture.
Let's have a look at the numbers closely.
We're selling the magnet at $1.50 wholesale.
Material costs are around .80c, leaving us .70c left.
In my business, I have to charge 10% tax on all goods, so that's another .15c gone, leaving us .55c
Waste- it happens. If 1 in 10 magnets is a bust for whatever reason, that's 10% of the material costs on top, so another .08c off, leaving us 47c.
I use sales reps for some of my sales, who take a 15% cut of the profits, so that's another .22c gone, leaving us .25c.
If the sale goes through paypal, they take maybe another 3% of the total, leaving us .21c.
Labour, yes, you absolutely must account for labour. What happens when you want to start employing someone to do it for you? If it only takes 1minute to make a magnet at a reasonable $16 an hour average labour rate, that's .26c labour cost....
Oh...
Whoops...
Looks like we're down to -5c now. So we're losing .5c every time we sell a magnet...
In my situation, I also have other artists I need to pay a % sales commission to... where is that going to come from?
And all year long in my business I have to buy packaging supplies for posting, pay for advertising, buy art supplies, service printers, pay for all these other expenses that don't directly pay for themselves like product materials do. All these day to day running expenses have to be paid for somehow. You need to be making enough profit with each and every sale to cover all those other day to day expenses of running a business. Every product you sell should make you a CLEAN profit (after all those other expenses for the product itself I just talked about!) of at least 30%, or you're in the red and your business will never get ahead.
I look around the internet, from the amazing handcrafts on Etsy to beautiful jewellery and art prints coming from fellow fantasy artists around me, all selling for a pittance, and I want to grab people and shake them and yell "You're paying other people to take your work!!!!"
Because this is what so many actually are doing, at the prices they sell at. Not only are they undervaluing their product, they are undervaluing their ART. The artwork we create as a thriving and inspired fantasy and fairy art community (and other genres as well out there!) is a beautiful, unique thing of GREAT VALUE. And we need to start treating it as such, before I see any more of my collegues out their wring their hands in financial stress and say "I just can't do it anymore, I'm it giving up", and give up not only the business, but the art itself. That's the saddest thing I have seen happen, on more than one occasion.
Our fans and customers might love a bargain, but they probably also don't want to see us sell ourselves out of business.
Someone told me once, when someone buys an art print from you, they aren't paying you for the paper, or the ink. They are paying your for an artwork. An image they've fallen in love with. As artists, we need to stop charging for the price of the paper, and start charging for the price of our art.
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