This is a little habanero pepper, compliments of my neighbors who have an amazing garden. I will not be eating this, not being a hot pepper person, and will give it back when I'm done drawing it so it can be enjoyed by some crazy person who
does like these things.
Anyway. This is a simple piece, done like the caramels from before, with one object and a long shadow. This is about 2 inches (life size) on a 4 x 6 piece of Stonehenge.
I'm using the Lyras, and although I like them, the colors aren't popping for me. The range of oranges is rather limited (although I've also used some reddish pinks and a lavender and yellow). So I think I'll get out the Polychromos and see if I can bump it up some.
*Self-promotion alert*
I redid my
shop page on my website, and turned it into a blog. I've put links to my shops on
Imagekind and
Zazzle, as well as my other new blog just for these little pieces -
Small Drawings and Paintings. (Some of you may remember I used to have another 'pencil blog', but I put that one away in favor of this new one.) It needs a tweak, and I'll be adding things, but for now its 'there'.
**I've edited this part - see end of post
I will just put originals on the Small Paintings and Drawings blog. I'm trying to figure out how to price things. Right now, I have the caramels listed for $50 each, which I know is fair - but whether people are willing or able to cough up that much these days for a small piece remains to be seen. After all, I'm not
Duane Keiser. Most likely those of you reading this blog (I'm assuming most of you are fellow artists) know exactly how much work goes into even a small colored pencil piece - but does the general public? Do they not value art so much if it isn't a) an oil painting, or b) really BIG? I'm torn between giving them away (not literally - I mean just undervaluing them) just to sell them, and holding my ground and asking what they're worth, at the risk of not selling them at all.
How do you all price your work? I like the 'so much per square inch' method - it makes sense, and makes it easy to explain to people why a piece costs what it does. It also takes the emotion out of it.
Let's try a '$3 an inch' formula: for a 5 x 7 piece (35 square inches) that works out to $105, which is in keeping with what a lot of artists charge for that size work.
So a 4 x 4 inch piece would be 16 square inches, or $48. Which I've rounded up to $50. I guess one could argue "well, you left a lot of white space" (implying the price should be less) to which I would give a pithy artist's reply like "the white space is part of the composition, and necessary". I don't know. Thoughts?
The other thing is that these are not framed. If they were, the price of framing would be added on. Then, if they were going into a gallery, the price would have to double for the artist to make the necessary profit - which then gets us into being consistent with pricing, no matter where the piece is being offered for sale.
For example, if one of my little caramels was being sold in a gallery, and framed, and the gallery had doubled my price (for their commission), it might be up to $150 (allowing $50 for framing). So really, I should be charging $100 for an unframed piece that size, so that the buyer knows how much to expect to pay for one of my pieces, wherever he finds it. It would just mean that I would obviously make more of a profit if I sold it myself is all.
Hmmm.
Then there are the pieces you enter in shows. Show fees are typically $50 or so per entry. Then if you also have to ship it, that's another however much for crating plus shipping back and forth. And also insurance if you spring for that. It adds up! (and yes, I've
mentioned this before, you're not imagining things).
Here I was just going to show my little work in progress, and I got off on quite the tangent, didn't I?
I would love to do 'ready to hang' colored pencil pieces, but am not a fan of how to make them that way - it involves a lot of fixative and adhering to a ready-to-hang board and a lot of varnishing. I can't inhale all those fumes anymore (having lived in a cloud of Crystal Clear in my studio for most of art school - now I can hardly stand a whiff of a Pantone marker or Sharpie).
So back to my little pepper and my pencils. At least until Project Runway comes on. Who will go home tonight? The suspense ...
**edit~
After pushing the "publish post" button and having a bit of a think, I decided to change my pricing to $2.50 a square inch (because, after all, like I said, I'm not DK.)
I am also not a super award-winning artist (yet). And I do tend to leave a lot of white space.
So I've changed the price of the caramel drawings to $40 each. And subsequent pieces will be priced accordingly.