Sitting quietly watching TV one night this week I had a surprise conversation from a guy in Berkshire who had seen my artwork on my website and wanted a chat about the possibility of doing a piece of art for him.
He’d rung me totally out of the blue, and I’d never spoken to him before.
But, the thing you forget when you talk to someone is that you may be totally fully immersed in your particular vocation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that other people understand it or know the way it may work. Infact, I was reminded about that when I saw my hairdresser this week and she told me of the process where hairdressers *rent a chair* from a salon. So, even though when you walk into a hairdressers salon you presume all the people working there are employed by the owner, its not the case, they may be free-lance and having to pay a set fee, or a percentage of their takings, to the salon, for that privilege.
Anyway, I digress….
The guy who rang me this week asked various questions, some obvious that I’ve been asked before and know the reply to “How do you decide on a price for a picture, and why are your drawings less than the oil paintings?” – “Because the drawings are a lot quicker than the oil paintings, and oil paintings cost a lot more because there is a lot more work involved and they have an underpainting of acrylics so overall the materials cost more. And those are the prices that I consider they are worth”
Then he asked me “How lo
ng have you been doing erotic art?” – that was easy, “About twelve years, although I’ve been doing commissions since I was 13 years old”
His next question was reasonably easy to answer too “Do you work from life, or from photos?” “It depends on the pose, how long you can hold it for, and where you live compared to where I live. If its a difficult pose it would be easier for me to work from photos, if you live far away it would be easier to work from photos.”
“Okay….” he said, then he asked the difficult one:
“What makes you different from other Erotic Artists?”
Oooh, that one’s got me thinking……..”Well, I think that as a woman artist I paint in a softer way than male artists, you can see the difference in the work and style. But overall I think what makes me different is that I listen carefully to the client, about what they want and are trying to achieve in their desire for a piece of art, and put all of that into the painting for them. I’ve had so much experience of doing so many diverse paintings in difference styles that whatever anyone wants, I can do.”
“Ok”, he said, and said he would go and have a think now about what he wants in a piece of art…….