“Natural Grace” Friesian Painting
Since we have been talking about creating art that people connect with enough to spend money on. I thought I would share with you my best selling image. Natural Grace has been my highest grossing image in print for the past couple of years.
Who Knew?
Truth is, it’s not great art. Oil Pastels were still a very new medium to me when I created this piece. I was just kinda playing around and I didn’t try particularly hard with it. I seriously thought of tossing the painting when I was done. My husband had to talk me into making prints of it. (Actually we debated for weeks and he finally just went ahead and did it. Hooray for Mike, that he could see what I could not.)
I started the original at the bargain basement pricing of around $500 and took it, and a couple of prints to an event. People loved it, (or they made horses ass jokes.) I sold several prints and had a few serious lookers at the original. I raised the original painting to $650. Another event more prints sales, more serious lookers at the original. I raised it to $850. This went on for half a season, raising the price to match the interest of the public. I won’t say what it finally sold for, but I am so grateful I didn’t toss the painting. The prints continue to do well. When I create 5-10 more images that do as well, I will be a very happy woman.
The 80/20 Rule.
Often 80% of your sales will be coming from 20% of your work. If you want to increase your sales you need to look at what sells and then do more of it. I’m not saying you need to make duplicates but if you take a gander at the wealthiest print artists in america today (like Thomas Kinkade, Terry Redlin or P. Buckley Moss) you’ll notice that they have one similar painting after another. They have figured out what sells, branded it (meaning just their name alone will trigger an image in your minds eye of what they paint.) and keep producing more. They get a lot of heckling for it, mostly by other artists. But I would think being multi-millionaires really takes the sting out of any bitter remarks.
For myself, I estimate that 7-10 of my prints are making the vast bulk of my print income. While the other 25 images or so sell just enough to keep them in print. I regularly look them over to see what the popular ones have in common.
As a side note.
I have a very dear artist friend, who is quite a good equestrian artist. She has a strong dislike of the Natural Grace image. So for a while after every event when it did well, I would poke her and say “I sold $ of Natural Grace this weekend”. Her usual response was “People have no taste.” I find this hugely funny. Makes me smile still, to think about it. Had anyone else said such a harsh thing to me, I most likely would have felt a little offended, (it takes a lot to hurt my feelings these days) but since it was her, I just find it funny.
I tell this to illustrate my point that even though she is knowledgable about both horses and art, she also would never have guessed Natural Grace would be such a stellar selling image. Friends, artists and collegues are not always right.
So have you figured out what the popular ones have in common?
I think this one has a bit of a romantic fantasy feel to it, and the colours are very neutral and calming. It’s lovely, and I can see why it’s popular.
Generally, head shots with a color blend background (as opposed to a realitic natural background) Otherwise no. My top selling images vary somewhat. I think it is the feeling that you are looking at an animal and it is looking back.
I plan to do a realistic Friesian painting (in wc pencils) in the near future. I think it will be interesting to see how it does compared to Natural Grace.
I’ve been thinking about this post. I’m curious to know why you decided to raise the price of your painting each time people showed interest in it, and how did you know it would sell for more when people had decided against buying it previously?
In case you haven’t already read the kitten post. I plan on addressing this in it’s own post. Really a good question BTW. It made me think.