What makes a price a price?

I've updated my website with a few new images recently and decided I ought to put the prices on the paintings that are for sale on it. Because no one is going to buy them without a price on them are they? LOL Even though a lot of the artwork there is in private collections, some in distant lands across the seas, I want to display them as an example of the sort of artwork I do and am capable of. People often see something they like there and say "Can you paint me like that one there" (but not the dog pictures, I hasten to add, before I get into trouble! LOL ) If I only put the "for sale" art up, it wouldn't be half as interesting (I think, but then I'm biased!) as it currently is........but the thing that struck me as I looked at the prices on my website is the difference in some of them. How can I have some artwork at less than a £100 next to art in the high hundreds? And I wondered if others would think the same and think that the balance of prices is uneven. But it isn't. Its very fair. The low prices are due to the artwork being either a lot easier (by comparison) or older artwork that was completed some years ago, and hasn't sold yet. Newer artwork WILL be more expensive. The more famous an artist gets, the higher the prices go. Its the way of art. So I'm not planning on my art prices going down. Infact I'm working hard on them going UP.

As well as the regular art on my website, I now have a "special offers" page. Its the page where the art is *currently* under £100. Now, that's got to be affordable, hasn't it? The artwork there may be working drawings, or practice pieces, but its still art. And some of it may appeal to you.... go and take a look and see what you think......................

I've also got the Guild of Erotic Artists volume 2 book for sale there too... for anyone who wants to buy one.... its a beautiful book, in which I am featured alongside 31 of The Guild's artists, photographers and sculptors. Each person has six pages detailing their work and the background behind their skills. Approximately A4 size, this beautiful 200 page limited edition paperback has been written, produced and published by The Guild of Erotic Artists. Whether you are interested in erotica, photography, or figurative art, this book has great appeal. With a run of just 5,000 copies, the book is a Limited Edition - a collector's item and an ideal present. Copies bought from me can be signed on request.Price £22.99 plus postage and packing.

So, I think what I'm saying here is, if you see some art you like on my website, that has a price on it that you like, contact me, before it goes..........

Speaking a different language

A woman rang me last week, wanting a painting doing of her house as a present for her husbands forthcoming birthday. I asked her the usual questions - what medium? watercolours? Oils? pen and ink? She didn't know. What size? She wasn't sure. Was I framing it or her? She thought she would get it framed. She asked how much it would be. I said I couldn't answer that without more idea of what she wanted exactly. She asked if it would be over £100 and I said "Yes". I asked her if she had a price range she was considering and she said "No". She said she wasn't sure what she wanted and asked me to go and visit her to see the property and give her some more idea of what was the best way of creating the picture as she knew nothing about art. I arranged to go and see her the next day. I arrived, she gave me coffee, we chatted about a lot of subjects and got on well enough, she showed me where the painting would hang and I worked out the size the painting would be to fit the area and told her its dimensions, then we went outside to look at the property and I gave my opinion on the layout and how best to capture it in a painting, as a watercolour, and described it to her, telling her what I would do to paint the picture, and suggesting ways of enhancing the image from what I could see infront of me. She listened and understood. I showed her a painting I had taken with me, of an old building in watercolour so that she could see my style and what I do (since she hadn't come to me through my website, and I knew she didn't know I was an erotic artist, I felt it better to show her a traditional painting rather than direct her to my website and probably shock her with my, er, less traditional work!!). She liked the painting I showed her. She asked how much for the painting of her house and I gave her a price. Her face immediately dropped, and she said very curtly that she'd be in touch. Ok, I said and came away. She hadn't rung me after a few days so I rang her, pleasantly, and asked if she had had further thoughts on the painting "Yes" she said "I don't want it". I asked pleasantly if it was the price that was the problem. "Yes, it is", she said. I said that I could perhaps drop the price a little for her, (since I wanted the job) but that I had asked her last week if she had a price range and she had said no she hadn't. I asked politely if she had a price range now? And she said no she hadn't and very curtly dismissed me.......



..... Ok, then what did I miss in that? Um...... nothing. I had checked with her first if she had a price range and she had said no she hadn't. She said she knew nothing of art, and would be guided by me. I gave her my considered opinion and she didn't like the end price. Why didn't she? She obviously had got a price in her head but wasn't going to tell me what it was. Was she expecting the whole job to be done for 50 quid? No..... cos she asked if it would be more than a £100 before I went to see her. She said she knew nothing about art. So that's where the problem lies - she knows nothing about the creation of art either. And there do seem to be two sorts of people in life - those who think artwork is a wonder to behold, that anyone who can paint a decent picture is wonderfully clever and anything they produce is awesome and to be "Wowwed" over. And there are the people at the opposite extreme who seem to think that art is just churned out easily and has no great worth, and can't understand that it involves a whole lot of talent, learning, practice, mental capacity, ability, time, and materials.

So, am I sorry I lost the commission? Yes, I am, I quite fancied doing the painting and would have made an excellent job of it. Ah, but would I have done the job for fifty quid? ER, no! I value myself higher than that. So I know my value.............. even if the woman doesn't value it!

Rising prices

I went out for dinner to a friends house the other night. Its a house I go to regularly and always get pleasure from seeing the artwork on the walls there..... partly because one of the drawings is mine, and hangs prominently on the wall there. Its not an erotic one, just a vanilla one. And there was also another painting there, in the same room, done by an artist I've known for some years now and see occasionally. Its a lovely painting of his, with beautiful ethereal blues and hazy purples and I always take pleasure in seeing it again. And by coincidence I had been in his company the day before. He's a nice guy and we always have a how-are-you-what-are-you-doing-at-the-moment? type of chat. I had mentioned to him that I've finally found my niche in the artistic market, since I had last seen him, and was painting erotic artwork nowadays. He did the usual man thing of wanting to know my website address so he could view it!! Women generally go quiet and men generally ask for my website when I tell them I'm an erotic artist!! He also gave me a piece of very useful advice - about raising the prices considerably on my artwork - he said not to be scared of putting a high price on my artwork. He knows, as well as I do, that a higher price may put some people off and lose a sale, BUT it can also attract a different type of buyer. Someone who is looking for an investment, and knows the price will increase in value over time, as an artists profile is raised and the artist becomes more of a commodity. And later on, whilst eating dinner with my friends, who had no knowledge of this conversation I'd had with my artist friend, they jokingly made reference to them helping me to raise my profile, because they know that the picture they have on their wall will increase in value. Certainly, the price I charged them for it all those years ago when I did it, would certainly have a lot different price on it now if I did it. They know they have an investment already. That's good to know, that that's how they view it.

And on to what I'm painting this week - I've almost finished the first erotic landscape of New York and am delighted with how its going. It's been a slow process because it's been painted in oils, and I have to keep waiting for various areas to dry before I can do the next bit. I started off with an acrylic under-painting, then built up the colours of the sky, and the river before starting the detail of the skyscrapers. I realised soon after that that the sky needed to be darkened to make the skyscrapers stand out more, so I did that, and then put in the mid-tone underlighting of the buildings ready for the actual "lights" to be painted on top of. Then I was ready to put in the detail of the erotic couple, I knew that I would spend a lot of time getting them to look right, but they also needed to be subtly hidden within the buildings too. It was clear that the area they reside in had to be dulled down in colour and tone, so that the viewers eye wouldn't go immediately to it - so that's what I did. And ...... then........ the BIG and MOST important part of the painting - putting on the lights of New York! - they all had to go on in one painting session, so that they would look uniform in shape and colour and style. Deep breath....... and on with it............ and at the end the whole thing had that "WOW" factor - suddenly, the whole thing has come alive, and at the same time, the judicious use of lighting has simultaneously, hidden the erotic couple too!!!! Yay!!!! I'm really happy with it, and have almost finished it - just have to wait for this part to dry before I put the highlights on the water, and then spend time just looking at it and correcting any glaring imperfections, and it'll be done. Just got to think of a title now.......... I've got a few ideas already, I'm just mulling them over to see what feels right.......

Come on down, the price is right

I went to Birmingham today and made my usual visit to my favourtie art gallery there. A big flash prestigious gallery with a myriad of gorgeous paintings and price tags that always shock me. Today they had a sale on so I was pleased to note that one particular painting which had originally been priced for sale at £24,000 was now, wait for it - ONLY - £12,000. Wow! What a bargain I thought and wondered how much of that the artist would actually get, if someone was daft enough to pay the price. They'd be lucky to get a few thousand pounds for that - the rest going to pay the gallery costs, which must be high, situated where it is. But it was exactly the same painting that was apparently "worth" £24,00 one day and £12,000 the next. How can that be???? But then an artist has to get into a presigious gallery to be seen, to get their name known, so that people have heard of them, and want to buy their artwork because they think it must be a better painting because its hanging in a big frame in a showy gallery, when the work is probably just the same as it was before-hand when they were selling it for £400 in smaller venues. The public think they're getting a better painting because they've paid a lot of money for it, and boast to their friends that it cost so many thousands of pounds. But I suppose, the artist needs the big promotion a prestigious gallery will give them, so that it improves their profile, and they get a following of admirers who collect their work or who give them good commissions. So, in this roundabout of artist-gallery-buying public do we all need each other? Does it improve the art? Or just the price of art?

There was actually one particular painting there that I was very enamoured with, and for once it was a contemporary one. It was basically mid blues with a patch of bright turquoise in the centre with three lines of bright red running horizontally through it. I was really drawn to it, because I always am to turquoise, and kept going back to it as I toured the gallery. It had life and vibrancy and I kept wanting to look at it. I almost bought it and might yet regret that I didn't. And that's the way to buy art - because it "speaks" to you and you want to own it so you can look at it forever more, not because the frame matches the decor of your living room, or what the current fashion dictates. I was horrified to hear of a woman once who toured an art exhibition with a piece of her dining room wallpaper in her hand searching until she found a painting that matched it!