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| Brussels Griffon. Colored Pencil - 5 x 7 inches
© 2014. Anne Hier. All Rights Reserved.
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Potential
customers make a decision to order from you based upon your
portfolio, confidence in your ability to perform professionally, and
your prices. Arguably, the most most important business
consideration for business success is great and reliable customer
service. However, new clients will make their initial decision based
on your actual work – your portfolio. Even though the artist's
work product is of paramount importance, too many artists do not know
how to put together a working portfolio that helps them sell their
services. Let's discuss some of the common presentation problems:
Inconsistent
quality.
This is the most common portfolio problem and is a fatal flaw. Your
work will be judged by your worst piece. Just because you spent 10
hours on a drawing doesn't mean it is any good. Every artist has
produced mediocre work. As a result, some artwork is destined to be
a learning experience only and should never leave your studio except
via the circular file. Whatever your style, whatever your current
skill level, anyone looking at a fair selection of your artwork –
including those who know nothing about art - should recognize it was
all created by the same hand. If you plan to have a successful pet
portrait business, consistency is essential. More is not better if
there is a noticeable range in the quality of the examples shown.
No
recent work.
Life happens. Plenty of people with art degrees get out of school
and other demands take precedence over creating artwork. People
have kids, get steady jobs, join the military, and so on. Whatever
the reasons for giving creative activities a backseat, you artwork
from ten or twenty years ago is not acceptable as a sample of what
you can do today. The client wishing to have a pet portrait today
is probably not interested in a retrospective of your artistic
progress through the years. If you now have the time to pursue your
dream of being a pet portrait artist, that's great news. But slow
down. It takes time to get the rust out of your drawings skills if
you haven't picked up a pencil or paint brush in years. Don't rush
to the marketplace until you have at least a dozen quality examples
of the type of work you can consistently produce today.
Not
related to your pet portrait business.
Even though your acrylic seascape painting won first prize at the
state fair, it has absolutely no relevance to your pastel cat
portraits (although you can legitimately add “award-winning
artist” to your bio information). Consider your potential
customers. They are already pre-qualified. They have decided to
commission a pet portrait and you are in the running for the work.
Your job is to close the sale and secure their business, not confuse
them with subject material or media unrelated to your portraits.
The average person already thinks artists are eccentric and
unreliable. You must convince them otherwise. Show them samples of
what they are looking for – pet portraits - not your nude figure
studies from a first year drawing class in college, ink drawings of
sports cars, or your six by eight foot abstract landscapes.
Too
many pieces.
Plenty of blogs and web sites advise the aspiring portrait artist
to have as many examples as possible. This can sometimes be a
mistake. Looking at your artwork should not be an endurance test for
the viewer. Additionally, as just discussed, all your portfolio
work should be of relatively the same quality. It is not necessary
to publish every portrait you ever created.
So how many is
too many? That depends. Where and how are you going to display your
art? Are you showing your work in your studio? As an art fair vendor?
On the web? Your portfolio needs to be specifically tailored for each
venue. If you specialize in dogs there are over 400 individual
breeds worldwide, as well as plenty of mixed breeds. If you have
been at it a while and want to showcase the different breeds you can
have a separate breed listing on your website. But, if you are
showing a portfolio in person, no more than a dozen top-quality
pieces should be shown. You want to leave them longing, not loathing.
If you are exhibiting at an art fair, the actual work you have on
display - and generally for sale, must be significantly more, and in
different sizes and price points with pieces properly matted, framed,
or wrapped. Indeed, at an art fair, you might also be working on a
piece so the public can see a work in progress.
Finally, a
picture is still worth a thousand words. If you are going to publish
images of your work on the web do it correctly. Show photos that
are in focus with no confusing backgrounds, well-lit, and with the
picture plane in alignment with the camera. You do not have to be a
professional photographer to take reasonable quality pictures with a
digital camera. All such cameras come with an owner's manual and
contain helpful information to help you take quality images. A
flatbed scanner is even better for smaller works. The price of this technology has come down so drastically
in the past few years that you really can't afford to be without one.
I have a professional high-end scanner that does resolution up to 1600 dpi.
However, for everyday use on smaller images that need no more than
300 dpi, I use one that is a combination printer/copier/scanner. This was
purchased new for only thirty-nine dollars, on sale. Never
self-sabotage. Only present work that is your best and looks its
best.
