All About Art & Artists by D. L. Keur of zentao.com

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This year, I determined that I wasn’t going to fuss and bother about the art world, other artists and art venues.  I was going to simply do art, maybe talk art with a few peers, maybe do a few collaborations here and there, but mostly just ignore the various feeding frenzies and reactivities.

Now there’s a word — reactivities.  That’s what most art venues have going for them around the Net.  I’m not a reactor by lifeway, but an initiator. Since most of what I initiate tends to muddle the minds of some, meddle with the perceptions of many, stimulate a few and far between to pursue their own initiatives, but, by and large, meets either vacuous stares or outrage, I thought, hmm, I’ll just mosely back into my own work and pretty much ignore the Net.

Revad had other ideas.  An email from him sponsored an idea out of me:

Organic meets the fundamental principle, the result ordered chaos and chaotic order

…and that idea is generating an interactive exploration between what I’ll call an emotive, organic artist who works in zen moment (me) and an artist who sets forth from any given point to extrapolate penultimate expressions to infinity (Revad.  What we share as artists — call it our “bridge” — is our penchant for looking beyond the known to explore the unknown, for delimiting any and all boundaries, artificial, conceived, or posited.  We both like to explore how far we can go.  The way we’re doing this, no rules, no timelines, nothing but extemporaneous, fluid, interaction at whim and desire, makes our interaction supremely satisfying, and not an onus, since neither of us expect nor anticipate the other to give response.  With no expectations, no demands upon each other at all, that frees us both to play or not play as we see fit, as we feel stimulated to do so.  We each work in our own realm and domain of expression, sharing conceptuals and ideatives which then generate more explorations in ourselves.  

This is what has happened so far:

I started with “Ooo”, a sound in the matrix of real and imagined space.

Ooo, a sound in the matrix of real and imagined space

Revad answered with “Ooooo.”  He said:

My response involved the text and the sound

I never did say I like your image. The flow and movement in particular.

My first thoughts were Sputnik and Space.

Dave.

Permission to display from Revad David Riley, copyright 2009 Revad David Riley

My response was:

There’s fun.  You know I love oscilloscopic work.  Color choice is
interesting.  Warm brown against sky blue.  It’s a combination I have never
successfully melded.  Bravo.

Your turn.

Dawn

He then challenged with this, a part of his the logic and influence of circle and square installation, the complete work which can be viewed here:  http://www.revad.com/html/the_logic_and_influence.htm 

Permission to display from Revad David Riley, Circle and Square the logic and influence of circle and square by revad david riley, copyright 2009, all rights reserved

My response?  This:

Variation on a Theme by Revad by DLKeur, copyright 2009

Now, of course it is my turn to challenge again, and, this time, it’s a concept: 4 perceptions of 1 reality.  Of course, because it is my turn to drop a pebble in the pool, I included an image to go along with the concept:

4 Perceptions of 1 Reality by DLKeur, copyright 2009

Zibbet (www.zibbet.com) looks promising. I very much look forward to October, 2008, when they are due to launch.

What is zibbet? Another Australian start-up, but, unlike RedBubble (…which, in my opinion, is one of the very best public artist communities on the Net that couples social networking with art and merchandise sales) zibbet will focus on PROMOTING AND SELLING ART…or so they say.

According to Jonathon Peacock, CEO of Zibbet Pty Ltd, categories will include:

1. Paintings
2. Photography
3. Drawings
4. Mixed Media
5. Digital Art
6. Prints
7. Jewelry
8. Ceramics and Pottery
9. Glass Art
10. Sculptures
11. Other Handmade Items

Features and Benefits will include:

• Member accounts/shops will be FREE.
• Member shop appearance will be fully customizable, with the ability to include a photo, a bio, and even YouTube videos of your choice.
• When a member names their shop, that shop will receive a personalized web address.
• Zibbet will handle all payments on your behalf and will forward you your earning in the first week of every month for the previous months earnings. (Zibbet retains a 20% commission of your asking price.)
• Members will be provided with detailed shop statistics, such as number of visits, number of times each individual item has been viewed, how many people have added a member as a ‘favorite seller’, and how many people have added a member’s item to their ‘wish list’.
• Members will set their own prices, of which zibbet receives their 20% commission.
• Shoppers will have the option to make a private treaty offer for an advertised work which the member can accept, decline, or counter.

Says Jonathon: “We know a thing or 2 about marketing online and offline. Considering our main income is from people SELLING their artwork, driving buyers to the site is our number 1 priority.”

Sounds good to me so far. I guess we’ll see in October.

Comparing two online giclee fine art Print-On-Demand shops for artists and photographers — Finerworks and Imagekind.


THE BASICS

Both Finerworks and Imagekind run on .asp architecture. The difference in their web interfaces is considerable, though. While Imagekind’s seems straight-forward and easy, its failures are notorious. Lots of server failures, thumbnails not showing up, gallery problems, uploader issues, deletion problems (and the resulting copyright infringement issues)…to name the tip of the iceberg, problems which are not addressed in a timely, efficient manner. (See extensive documentation on Imagekind’s forum or ask Revad at www.revad.com, a programmer who has extensive insider knowledge of the flaws and gremlins that persist even today.) Finerworks requires a little more effort from its artists (watch the tutorial). But, so far, for me, (I’m loading big .TIFs) the experience has been flawless, with extremely pleasing results.

Both Imagekind and Finerworks use state-of-the-art Epson printers.

Both Imagekind and Finerworks use museum quality archival substrates.

Imagekind offers framing (farming it out to framing shops for fulfillment); Finerworks doesn’t.

PLUSES AND MINUSES FOR IMAGEKIND

The plus side of Imagekind

• They have a BIG web presence, and it’s going to get bigger since now Cafepress owns them.

• Their print quality is excellent.

• They have a pretty open, uncensored forum for their artists, refreshing in a day when most online enterprises quash any negative member feedback. (How long this will last since Cafepress took ownership remains to be seen.)

The downside of Imagekind:

• You will struggle to get your images printed at sizes you want on the substrates you designate IF you are an artist who likes to control those aspects (I am.). Their “container” sizes are hostile to anything not “standard” and are set in concrete. So, if you want your print exactly this by this in inches/millemeters, plan to put white borders around your work so it prints inside the container sizes, then EMAIL care@imagekind.com and warn them that, yes, you want the PRINT AREA at X by X size.

• Imagekind drop-shipping is specifically designed for Imagekind promotion, and does nothing at all for the artist whose work is being drop-shipped. When Imagekind drop ships, the packages are smothered in Imagekind stickers, customer incentives to purchase more printing and framing from Imagekind (not from you, the artist whose print they shipped), customer incentives to become art sellers themselves at Imagekind, ad infinum, ad nauseum.

• Imagekind promises a lot, but doesn’t quite deliver in the area of artist promotion. A “platinum” or “pro” membership nets you a monthly or yearly bill with no perks except more space. The Platinum or Pro member artist gets no special benefits on their website or a place in Imagekind’s marketing strategies. In fact, Imagekind is big on marketing themselves…to Flickr users and to artists who want to sell prints, not to art buyers. In fact, Imagekind’s main focus seems to be selling themselves to anyone wanting to print and/or sell photos and art. Their focus is not selling prints to art buyers…except, perhaps, their “old masters” and “classical artists” print run remainders.

• Imagekind’s website design seems specifically tailored to try to siphon off an artist’s customers during the shopping and purchase fulfillment process.

• Imagekind’s shopping cart is not exactly user-friendly.

• Imagekind’s search engine is, plain and simple, B-A-D…but, then, Finerworks doesn’t have one, so…no comparison.

• Some of Imagekind’s advertising is misleading…to both buyers and sellers.

• Imagekind is big on marketing themselves through their artists, but not good at reciprocating. “No follow” is their rule for off-site links leading to an artist’s personal website…which is totally bogus because the major search engine’s no follow rule only applies to paid-for advertising. So Imagekind is doing the no-follow strictly as a self-serving function to the detriment of their artist members. In other words, everything can point to Imagekind, but Imagekind won’t point to an artist member, contributing to that member artist’s web presence. Reciprocal linking is specifically denied in Imagekind’s web programming.

PLUSES AND MINUSES FOR FINERWORKS

The plus marks for Finerworks are:

• Excellent print quality.

• Artists have complete print size and substrate control. Your art is printed at the size you choose and at the DPI you set, not resized to fit convenient “containers.”

• White label drop shipping from Finerworks is good for the artst: When Finerworks drop ships, the works look like they come directly from the artist, not from Finerworks.

• Finerworks doesn’t attempt to siphon off your customer to other products and artists like Imagekind does.

• Finerworks DOES NOT SELL “classics.” In other words, at Finerworks, unlike Imagekind, you aren’t competing with cheap remainders of Van Gogh, Degas, Ansel Adams, Warhol, Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt, Dali…sold at clearance sale prices from big art publisher syndicates.

• Your personal Finerworks‘ website and gallery is your own, not a cluttered page of branded advertising for the venue.

The down side:

• There is no real way of finding an artist and their work on Finerworks…except to laboriously click through the members listings, page by page. No search engine to speak of…but, then, Imagekind’s search engine is a notorious DOG, so they both fail there.
• Finerworks doesn’t have the big “face” or “presence.” It isn’t well known…yet. Instead of 50,000 artists, it only has a couple of hundred members. I hope that changes. I think Finerworks provides things in ways Imagekind doesn’t, and Imagekind provides things Finerworks doesn’t.

While I presently use them both, I look forward to seeing each becoming better and better. Each could be leaders in the online art world to benefit both artists and art buyers.

RedBubble: Superior at greeting cards (and I mean it.) Heavy stock, color matching is perfect, alignment is impeccable, fold is done to perfection, neither breaking the paper, nor crooked, nor not creased enough. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 as best, they rank a 10.

RedBubble is also good at t-shirts…IF the art is designed for inkjet printing. Now, occasionally, there’s a misprint, but RedBubble is quick to fix it…and you don’t have to ship back your faulty tee. Just take a digital snapshot and send to to them, and in a couple of days a replacement, guaranteed to be right, is winging its way to you pronto.

Spreadshirt.com, hands down, is one of the premier t-shirt PODS. But, again, it always is dependent upon how canny the artist is.

Calendars: I really like Zazzle’s calendars. The printing is good, the paper is heavy enough, and I’ve never had any problems with their color match…and some of my prints are TOUGH to print!

Art books: Blurb.com is my choice, right now, though there are a few problems here and there. LuLu has a nice “photobook,” but it’s S-M-A-L-L. Blurb offers a coffee table book size that’s “coffee table” sized. I still prefer a private publishers, but, hey, for POD, and hands-off sales, this is a good compromise.

Fine art prints: Imagekind. There’s also Finerworks.com. And there are a couple others that print good products. I’m not going to go into more detail than that, because each has its strengths and weaknesses as a POD and/or a web presence. Combining their good points would make a super POD, but that has yet to happen.

Dawn

Coming back after six months down time used to get well (well, almost, anyway), I moved the art reviews blog from NakedGenius over to zentao to its now permanent home. But I needed to re-skin it to match. First, though, I had to:

• catch up over at NakedGenius on the ACC art and artists forum,
• get the NG book done,
• start a weekly art magazine

…before I had space to customize the theme, fix all the links and adjust the calls, and, generally get it updated. I’m not quite done, yet, but we’re close enough to announce that art reviews will again be a regular feature here.

Omigod, it’s S-E-C-R-E-T. Omigod, it’s a CLOSED GROUP, a SECRET SOCIETY.

Ah, yes, it is, whether it’s artmesh.org, or NakedGenius.com’s Artist Collaboration Community (ACC), or any number of other private groups on the Net.

One self-declared leading lady (the one I call ‘Ms. Snits’) has, oh, so much to say regarding anything “secret,” but the plain facts are that

• the best deals are made in private (called “private treaty”),
• and the best groups are those which screen their membership to include only those who have a serious commitment to their art and respect others for theirs.

Oddly, the “secret,” private groups demonstrate much less cliquishness and much more democratic character than do the open ones…probably because they can TRUST their members, members who know that, should they violate that trust, they lose their membership, not so much for being themselves and speaking their mind, but rather by being “catty,” dishonorable, or unethical.

This subject comes up time and again: pricing your art.

Here’s a simple, easy way to figure out if you are charging too much or too little. Does the matting, framing, and glazing cost more than the art? If so, you are charging way too little.

PRICING ORIGINAL ART

This is, by far, the toughest pricing for new artists to calculate. Do you go by the time it took you to create it? Do you go by how much you like it? Well, I suppose it all depends on where you are going as an artist. Are you strictly a “hobby” painter or are you trying to make a living at this? Are you painting the same scene over and over, doing one in an hour…fifteen minutes? Are you pouring your love and care into the work?

Simply put: If you value what you do, charge accordingly.

HOW TO CALCULATE A GOOD “BASE PRICE”

To get a good base price, start with “overhead and operating costs,” add in “resources,” including time and effort. Add in creativity and “how many are produced in one year.”

Overhead and operating costs are the costs of:

• the room where you work,
• including the utilities it takes to keep that room habitable.

Resources, not including human resources:

• the supplies to create the work, times two,
• the gas, travel expenses, server fees, and any other expenses associated with making, marketing, and selling the work.

Human Resources:

• the number of hours it takes to produce that art,
• the number of hours it takes to sell the work.

And the Base Price is:

Calculate how many works you create in one year, how much it costs you to produce those works (operating expenses, overhead, resources, and marketing expenses), plus how much you value a year’s worth of your time and effort (labor). Divide the number of works into that total. That’s your base price.

That’s the minimum that the original piece is worth, less copyright.

Now, add in the aesthetic value of the work and the rank you hold as an artist (how famous and successful you are).

When you sell the original work, don’t sell the copyright, unless you can figure out how much copies of that work will generate over the work’s lifetime.

OPEN EDITION PRINTS

Let’s take that work of art and make an excellent digital copy of it for sale as prints. Are you going to sell these copies as open editions or limited editions? Lets talk open editions sold through a POD, since that’s what the majority of you are doing. (Word to the wise: Use a POD that lets you set your own markup.)

Price your open edition print so that it is at least twice the COGS, or “cost of goods sold”, and certainly more than it costs to frame, mat, and glaze it. What are the COGS? It means the cost of producing and marketing the print.

• How much does the POD charge to produce the work? 8.99 on the cheapest paper and $189.00 for canvas? Set your price at least double that.
• How much do you pay a year for space and marketing these prints. Divide by 100, and add that into your price.

Next, calculate what it will cost the customer to frame, mat, and glaze the work.

• For non-archival paper, work from the “cheap end” when pricing framing for the low end print. Figure your local Wal-Mart frame, mat, and glass are going to cost the customer somewhere between $7 and $99, depending on the size.
• Work from the “high end” for museum quality. If it is a museum print quality on archival paper or canvas, the framing and matting should be “high end” conservation materials with museum glass (UV and non-glare) or UV protection Plexiglas^®. This means, of course, that the framing, matting, and glazing are going to start around $100 for a small print and go up from there.

Your open edition print should cost at least double its COGS, 1% of your marketing fees and subscriptions, and definitely more than it costs to frame, mat, and glaze that print.

I just love (NOT) art forum tyrants who expect the forum members to “keep it genteel, friendly, pleasant, and polite,” but they themselves can and do rip whomever and whatever a new one at whim and will…without even finding out first if their self-declared “august opinion” is actually on-target.

The latest was a rip-snorter concerning a new art website/POD being launched by a nice lady who started by doing it for herself, then for friends, then, when asked, for acquaintances, too, until it grew to require an actual biz model. Good for her. Now if we could just get Miss Snits (and her cliquey cohorts) to get off her high snooty patootie throne. It’s getting stinky. At least turn on the fan, would you?

The Net.  It’s become a realm prowled and terrorized by shysters, opportunists, and sanctioned thieves…sometimes called “affliate marketeers.”  So it’s time to reevalute. It’s time to pull everything and put it under lock and key.  I’ve had more than my fill when what are supposed to be legitimate companies promote flagrant violation of copyright and intellectual properties ownership, never mind sanctioning violation of personal integrity and identity manipulation.