Friday, April 29, 2016

Behind the Scenes of Shake a Tail Feather Collection - answering a few art licensing questions

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Answering a few of your questions

 

Happy Friday Creative Souls!
One of the most popular emails I get from all of you is how do you create art for licensing. I have done a couple of posts so you can get a peek behind the scenes of how I do it. (links at the end of this post). Here we are taking a peek behind the scenes of my "Shake a Tail Feather" collection. Please realize, there is no one way to do this! There are as many ways as their are artists. I know artist who paint complete paintings and do not set up mock ups or patterns. They may pull icons out of the finished painting.  I personally like having a lot of icons (a single rooster is an 'icon') to create different image combinations with. So I will paint in steps, then scan in the art after each step. Example: Paint the rooster first, scan in the computer, paint the background, scan in the finished painting. Sometimes I just paint a background to use.

Another question is how much work do I need to have before I get into licensing?
Gosh, there isn't a magic number. You could be a stunning floral painter and only need just a couple of paintings that catches a manufacturer's eye. I lean towards having several images and/or collections. That to me says you are serious, have more than one image to sell/make money on. Everyone including you wants to make money from your art. I think I had around 12 art collections before I started approaching agents. I also set up an art licensing website. It was my personal comfort level.
Finishing touches in Photoshop

Do I worry about not having just one style?
No :-) I primarily work in watercolor and acrylic. They dry fast! Some say I have a couple of styles. Some say that they can tell that all of it is my work. I like the idea of being able to offer a manufacturer a wider variety of art for their products. 

Watercolor sample image

What programs do you use?
I am a Photoshop girl!, since I create my art by hand (not on the computer). I scan it in to the computer at high resolution, so that the image can be around 36 or more inches at 300 dpi. I may work in Illustrator down the road, right now I use Illustrator for logo design, some t-shirt design etc. depending on what my client needs. I use InDesign for magazine layout, newsletters and it works great for billboards etc.


Sprinkled through this post I am showing you some in progress photos of how I paint the "icons" first. Above, I lightened the dark brown background to get a different feel/color to the painting.
• Find more painting steps in this post here
• Find out about building a portfolio and what a collections means to me here
• More behind the scenes photos, Patriotic collection here

One of the Shake a Tail Feather portfolio pages.

Thank you all for your social media shares and emails. The art licensing community is fabulous! Looking forward to hearing your comments about how you create art and licensing experiences.


13 comments:

  1. Always great to hear from "herself" Annie! Great Post filled with helpful ideas and commentary. Love your examples and thoughts. Keep the good work up. Love reading here... :) Jo xoxo

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    1. Happy Friday Jo! Hey, do you get my response to you when I post on the blog? Thanks. People have been asking about it.

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  2. thanks Annie, this was very interesting, I may need to pick your brains about Licensing if you wouldn't mind. :)

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    1. Hi Michelle!
      Sure, email me what you have in mind info@AnnGraphics.com

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  3. Thanks for sharing Annie.....this is very helpful and useful information for me and I'm sure to many other artist. Much appreciated. 🎨👍

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    1. Hey Kandyce!
      Great to "see" you! Thanks a bunch for stopping by the blog.

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  4. Thanks Annie you are always full of great advice. Ciao

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  5. Deborah!
    Waving hello back! Thank you for stopping by the blog <3

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  6. thanks for sharing, really like your rooster collection!

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    1. Hi Artistretreat ;-) Thanks so much, this collection was a lot of fun to do <3 Great to "see" you!

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  7. Thank you for sharing how you build a collection ~ so helpful! I'm going to buy you a cuppa' :)

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    1. Tara! Thank you so much! I sent you a thank you email with the wrong name - I didn't get what PayPal was telling me?! I really appreciate your support. <3

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    2. YES! Thank you ~ My paypal has my husbands name as the account holder :) I keep referring to your collections info as I work on putting together my own; thank you for sharing so much!!

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