DJ Geribo

A couple of months ago, I painted a vegetable still life. I really enjoyed painting it and although I've been developing a more impressionistic, painterly style with my animal and nature artwork, for some reason I felt the desire to paint the still life in a photo-realistic way. I liked the results! Now, I have no plans to go back to this style with my other artwork, but it was a nice change and something that I wanted to prove to myself, that I could still paint in a photo-realistic style. When I was starting out, that was my goal, to be able to make the animal or landscape or other nature scene that I was painting look like it was a photograph. But as I've grown as an artist, I've decided that I want my paintings to look like paintings, not photographs. Still, it was fun painting the still lifes and I have gotten a lot of positive comments on them.

  

I don’t quite understand how my artwork has been proclaimed by some people “cute”. Is it the subject matter? Or perhaps the size of the paintings – recently I participated in a show and I displayed a series of paintings that were all 5”x7” animal paintings. But I’m thinking it is the subject.  But unless I’m painting animals that are wearing overalls or dresses and sun bonnets, there really is nothing cute about them. And I’m not painting clothed animals.  I’m a serious artist, I paint serious animal paintings. (Oil painting at left, Mustangs, is 30"x40").

When someone calls my paintings ‘cute’, I feel insulted. I feel as if they are saying, you aren’t a serious artist, see, your paintings are cute, something kids would like. I feel like suddenly, I’m not a serious artist (yes, yes, I understand this is ultimately my issue.) I’m doing this just for fun. Look how cute they are, let’s put them in the baby’s room. Not that there is anything wrong with putting my artwork into a baby’s nursery, but to me, that devalues them. They don’t want them in the living room, they put them in the kids’ room. Now, I understand that kids, many more than adults, love animals. I think that is great. I wish more adults loved them as much as I do, or at least as much as their kids do. A friend of mine who also paints animals moved to Montana so she could find other serious animal artists. We used to participate in art shows together and would laugh when people brought their strollers into our booth, exclaiming to their toddlers about the animals we had painted and encouraging them to name the animals we had on display in our booth. I called us “the learning booth”.  My friend and I got a laugh out of it – she moved to Montana where the serious animal artists live, I’m still in New England, hoping to convince people that I am, indeed, a serious artist and I paint animals.

I can’t count the number of articles I’ve read where the author talks about artists who freak out when they are asked about selling their art, or pricing it, or about making a living with their art. I have to ask, what artists?

Apparently the majority of artists are not interested in selling their work, are terrified to even think about putting a price on something so precious (like putting a price tag on your kid, there is no amount), and hate the thought of their artwork appearing anywhere but in a museum that will hopefully pick up their work and display it once the artist, who remained unknown throughout their artistic lifetime, has passed on.  Again, what artists?

I recently read another article where the author said that when they mention the word ‘contract’ to artists the color drains from their faces from fear of the unknown. Really? Are there professional artists out their so incompetent about the business side of being an artist that they will let themselves get stiffed again and again rather than draw up some kind of a contract between themselves and the customer. Really? When I started marketing my animal portraits in various publications, I only had to get stiffed once before I drew up a contract. And this was before the internet was so stock full of information that you couldn’t find a myriad of contracts to use as models to write up your own.

It is actually quite simple to put a contract together for a commissioned portrait. Why anyone would be terrified to do it is beyond my comprehension. Do you really want to spend your time painting someone’s pet, or child, or house, and not get paid for it? Protect yourself, that’s what it is all about. And you can keep it very simple: the customer’s name and complete contact information, the size of the portrait and medium, the time you need to complete the portrait with the date of completion, and the number one most important detail, half the money up front before you even begin the portrait by putting pencil to paper. That should be non-negotiable. And then, when you complete the portrait, you get the final payment. Not a week after you give it to them, not a month from now, but right at the moment the portrait is given to them, that is when you receive the final payment for the commissioned artwork.

And one more thing, make sure they sign the contract. Now you have a legal document with their signature that says they agree with everything you’ve written in it.

I don’t know who these artists are who are afraid of the business side of being a professional artist, but it isn’t me. And the sooner you accept the business side of promoting yourself and what you do for a living, the easier your life will be and the happier you will be that you are in control of making a living with your art. Otherwise, you should get an office job with a steady pay check.

I just had the pleasure of attending a David Curtis plein aire 3-day workshop that the Governor Wentworth Art Council offered its members for a nicely reduced rate. The workshop was held at the Todaro center but the intention was to head outdoors to paint. Unfortunately it was one of the few rainy weeks we’ve experienced in the last four months.

The first day we spent under the cover of the Todaro center porches. The second day was beautiful and we set up outdoors at the beach at the end of the road at the Todaro center’s YMCA camp in Moultonboro, along the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.  The third day was again pouring rain so we stayed indoors either working on changes from the critiques we had on our paintings or on a couple of projects that David brought just in case we had an indoor day.

These were my first two paintings. My subjects were seen from the front porch at the Todaro center. The foliage in NH was just starting to change so I used artistic license and added a little more red and yellows to the trees. In the top painting, there was a little shed and that became my focus. David suggested that I add a hilly area to make the landscape look a bit more interesting. There was a white fence that ran the length of the field but it looked far more interesting cutting it off part way across the painting. He also suggested I lighten up the green in the far right corner, which I did. 


On the second painting, I added a rock wall on the left (there was part of that white fence, which I decided to leave out). I just could not get the right colors for the path. When I went home I got a couple of other colors that were not on David’s list but they were colors I often use in my nature paintings, raw umber was one of these and on the 2^nd day I made some changes to the path, throwing in some grass along the edges, and I made it look more like a walking path than a dirt road for cars to drive on.