SlackerBabbath
Thinker
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2013
- Messages
- 209
You guys are amazing!
Special mention to Slacker Babbath.
I dabble in painting and photography. Here's my Deviant Art gallery:
http://orphia.deviantart.com/gallery/
Cheers.
Looked at your stuff, I really liked your 'Still Life' painting and your photography is stunning, I especialy like the 'Water' series. (I'm a big fan of light reflected on water)
Seems almost everyone here has a deviant art account, here's mine.
http://slackerbabbath.deviantart.com/
Well... in a way I kinda have. Most people who are just getting into it would probably spend something like a couple of hours painting every few days, I sorta got a bit obsessed with it and for quite a while spent at least 6 hours a day, (often 12 hours) almost every day, paintng picture after picture after picture. So I've probably put something like the same sort of time into it as someone else who's practiced it for decades.
I've sold a few, nothing like enough to make a living from it yet though... but at least I'm more successful than Van Gogh (he only sold one painting in his lifetime, and he had the advantage of having a brother who was a major art dealer)
The problem is, to make a living from it, the price of the paintings have to reflect the amount of time you spent painting them, which means that they often have to be quite expensive, but very few people spend that kind of money on an artist who's relatively unknown. And to get any kind of a reputation means that you have to put a lot into promotion and exhibiting, which costs money, which I don't have to spare.
Most galleries and exhibitions charge a nominal fee just for you to hang your paintings, then if your paintings sell they take a commission from you, usualy about 25%, so that all has to be taken into account when pricing your work too. That's one of the reasons that I got into portraiture because it's something that people approach you with a mind to commissioning something, whereas a landscape for example is more like something that you paint first then spend time, effort and money putting it in a place where someone will see it and hopefully buy it.
It's worth remembering that galleries aren't your only choice. Try approaching some cafes and restaurants with your prints, ask if they will display some with price tags on and offer them a commission per print that they sell.
Yeah, looked at the Limited Editions, very nice.
Have you ever performed on stage as a poet? I'm just thinking that you could combine the video stuff with the poetry if you could do some live poetry readings while having your video stuff projected at the same time. I reckon it would make for a very interesting experience in sight and sound. You could even make a DVD of your video stuff with a soundtrack of you reading your poetry over it and sell copies at your performances.
Oh, bad luck.... still, at least it gives you time to sit and compose more poetry.However, I fell on our stairs at the beginning of December and broke my ankle, and I'm still laid up waiting for ligaments to heal, so absolutely everything is on hold for now.
By the way, here's another of my portraits, it's called 'Seeing the Light and it's a portrait of a poet friend of mine called Phil Evans who performs under the name 'Fil Evo'.
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