Skip to content

The behind the scenes stuff

A lot of people think that artists just paint pictures. But there’s so much more to it than that.

There’s the part where artists have to show that they are competent at what they do so that people have an idea of what their talents are. Then there’s the conversations artists have with perspective clients, either by phone, email, or face to face, where they have the dialogue about the artwork the person is thinking of having done as a commissiondrawing paper (2). There are always lots of questions, because then I know exactly what the client wants, and how they want it created. And what their budget is for the work, and if there is a deadline.

When all that is sorted out, there is usually a 20 per cent deposit to pay to show good faith from the client to the artist.

Then the artist can start on the artwork, and will usually keep the client up to-date with details so that they know how the work is progressing.

When it’s completed, then the client will want to view it, and in some cases might request some small (hopefully only small !!!) changes to improve on the picture. I will make those changes so that the client is fully happy, although on a couple of occasions have explained to a client that the changes they are asking for are not viable and won’t improve the picture, infact it might make it worse, and they have seen the sense in my explanations and artistic knowledge.

And then the payment is completed with the balance owing. And only then when the artist has been paid in full will the client receive the artwork they have paid for. Job done.

And everyone is happy.

Except in some cases, and this one is a case in point that I am dealing with this week, there are variations on that working practice that have to be done.

The work that I have done (that I currently can’t talk about, but hopefully will be able to, soon!) is 14 images, all of which have to match each other, and two in particular have to match in colour and size, even though the working photos weren’t the same size, so I had to make some changes that aren’t obvious to the viewer to make the images fit the size it had to be. The other images had some artistic licence in them too, in that parts were missed out, to make the overall image look better. I am happy with the results, and hopefully the client will be too.

But as well as that, the client wants the Quote and the Invoice phrasing in various ways, to suit their business needs. I have phrased the invoice in the way that I would normally do my invoices and added other bits as the client has requested for their records. But I expect that I might have to put in something that I haven’t considered yet!

I enjoy all these communication aspects, and wanted to share them with anyone who thinks that an artist only paints pictures all day…..!

6 thoughts on “The behind the scenes stuff”

Comments are closed.