More Art Secrets... Revealed!
This year I’m posting three times per month (proudly still on schedule in July!): WORDS on the 3rd,
PICTURES on the 13th, and SOUND on the 23rd which has turned into a podcast.
Here’s your monthly dose of PICTURES.
I like to pull back the curtain on art-making and running a creative business. Not because it all comes easily to me, but precisely the opposite: because it was shrouded in mystery and took me 30 years to find my way in. I want your path to be shorter and simpler so you can spend more time making art and less time fretting about whether you have a right to make art. You do.
You can also ask others to make art for you.
Today I’ll walk you through a painting I completed a few days ago for some friends, with a timely — and timeless — message. And we’ll look at how that fancy word “commission” works in real life. Follow me! 👇🏽
“We Take Care” by Pam Consear, acrylic on canvas, 20” x 26” (on my studio easel)
If the painting above looks vaguely familiar, that’s because my friends saw photos of the mosaic mural below that I shared in February and asked me to create something for their dining room wall on the same theme. They liked how it reflects their family’s ethos. “Woo-hoo!” said I, “I’m on it!” (Paraphrasing.)
Mosaic mural at a school in San Luis Obispo, created in Jan. 2020 by All Hands Art and about 500 pairs of hands. You can watch that process unfold here.
This is about how detailed I make my sketches when they’re just for my own use. It actually took about a month of pondering to figure out how to translate the 5-panel mosaic design into one small frame.
Blocking in shapes. I decided I like the seated child partially out of the frame.
Since I always draw framing lines at the edge of my doodle pages, I did it here, too, just for fun.
Adding more detail and trying to figure out colors for the large areas.
I’ll end up painting — and painting over — those small hearts a bunch of times.
It’s handy that I have an old school globe in my studio.
The child is modeled after my friends’ wildly imaginative daughter — leggings, sneakers, and all.
The word placement took several attempts to work out. “You can always paint over it” is my motto.
Shapes and colors are in place; now it’s just a matter of details.
So close!
I had fun hanging her shoes out of the “frame,” and giving her the semblance of fingernails and sun-glinted hair.
Where to write “each other” was the stickiest problem of the whole painting. I think it worked out.
This artwork is going to live in Denver, hence the ❤️ in the Rockies.
Next challenge: How to ship it safely to Colorado? Fortunately, we’d just bought a mattress that came in an ultra-sturdy box.
Folding-flap package design inspired by a recent order received from BookShop.org.
It should arrive at their home today! (The blue scribbles are just on the photo, not the package. 🤓)
Why Photos of Packaging?
Why am I ending this by showing you a cardboard box? Because selling artwork involves imaginative thinking beyond the edges of the canvas. Like finding or constructing appropriate containers to mail the things you make, or figuring out how to get them to market. (I wrote about that conundrum here.)
Unpacking the Commission Process
On-demand artwork requires good communication throughout, starting with, “What are you envisioning? What size/shape? What colors do you love or want me to avoid? Any special details?” That’s how simple the fancy-sounding word “commission” really is:
It starts with a request or a question for the artist. (Could you do this?)
Then we dig into the details until we’re in agreement about the dimensions, the materials, any specifics about the design, the timeline, and the cost.
Then there’s the actual doing of the work — making the thing.
And finally, the delivery of the artwork, by whatever mode.
Communicate and Delight — Oh, And Also Defy Stereotypes
I like to check in and show my clients photos along the way, to make sure I’m on the right path and to let them know where I am in the process. If it were me on the other end, I would want that! Plus, how horrible would it be to do a bunch of work, and when it was delivered, to find out it wasn’t what they expected? Ugh.
Communicate and delight; those are my goals, whether it’s a commission for a 26” painting or an 80-foot-long mural. My secondary goal is to reverse the reputation artists have of being flaky, brooding, and hard to pin down. 🤪
That’s a piece of how I take care of myself and others while making this 🌎 a more beautiful place.
- Pam
P.S. I’m thinking of having prints made of this painting. Let me know if you’re interested. (With or without the heart-over-Denver.)