Art Work I’ve produced so far (Constructive Criticism encouraged)

**kingcreaky** · 06-03-2013

Originally Posted by WandrinAndy

That's great stuff you've made there FiveTide!

Must say I particularly like the Kneeling Girls, they remind me of something similar I did with copper sheet back in high school days......

reminds me of somthing I did in schooldays aswell

excellant work david. If I hadnt spent all my money on a cnc machine id definately buy
Fame

easily my favourite.

Dont want to offend either by putting a value on it.

keep us posted with these creations... would be good to see more work from other members aswell.

**martin54** · 06-03-2013

David, putting a price on something like this is always going to be difficult, it is with any sort of art but you could start by pricing them as a normally manufactured item & if your happy with what that works out to then sell them at that & if your not because it is artistic then add a bit more on.
You might have to bump your labor rate up a bit though as your working from home & won't have a lot of the usual stuff required to work out a labor rate.
As for the design & toolpath creation side of things if you intend to stick with 10 of each piece then just divide the time it took by 10 to give you a price for this part of the process that you can add to the other costs.

**D.C.** · 07-03-2013

You could always check to see what similar work sells for on craft sites and similar places

wood on Etsy, a global handmade and vintage marketplace. carving&view_type=gallery

Folksy - Search results

A list of some other similar UK sites:
UK Sites Like Etsy

As for honest artistic feedback, Greenman is always good, the sitting men, standing man, theo and girl 2 are really good, girl kneeling one looks like she has a huge blister on her arm which is a bit freaky and I have no idea what is going on with the blue paint on top of your knots, is it a symbol with meaning that I'm not aware of?

**Fivetide** · 10-03-2013

Thanks DC those are very helpfull and thanks for all others feedback I have 4 more to add I'll post here first .. just whittleing away lol

**martin54** · 11-03-2013

One thing to remember when working out what to charge is where you intend to sell & how, reason I say that is because some people selling on the internet will work on volume alone & if your only going to produce a limited run of each item you don't want to be selling at the same price as the guy that is mass producing something.
Have seen some of the prices people charge on the auction sites & they must be working for nothing or next to nothing, sure some of them don't think about a lot of the costs involved & look purely at material cost.

**Fivetide** · 11-03-2013

Hi Martin looks like you're another one of those late-night workers. That's me all over, I tend to keep some stupid hours. Anyway yes you make a very good point there, and it just so happened that on Friday I was going through a handover former mates company as he's going on holiday well actually years now in South Africa and I'm looking after his callouts related to IT. Anyway I met a guy at one of the companies he looks after who specialises in marketing on the Internet and we were discussing this exact same problem. One of the problems with art is that it tends to be I'm searching for the word but is a personal thing whether it's disliked or liked. Oh yes subjective. So market response to showing people your work often lets you know the types of people that like it, and those that don't really give you much feedback because it's not their kind of art. So for instance , the girl next door she is in her early 30s and thought that the figure carving was brilliant whereas her husband was indifferent, so I'm starting to realise my audience. Getting back to the marketing guy he did have some quite interesting things to say such as if you sell a piece on eBay for say £50 then you'll be lucky if your sell any piece again over that cost because there is ability in eBay to trace back what people are selling products for. And as you said mass production is a different ball game compared to what I do. So we spent a coffee talking about similar types of products that his company worked with. One of the suggestions is like a lot of artists to sell limited amounts of prints copies of your work. In my case I have the opportunity to sell castings of my carvings and I can limit them to a certain number. Although none of this is set in stone, there's a chance that you can make money out of the original and therefore make the original worth more. There's also product placement, an example of which he was saying someone had sent some baby clothes to the Princess of Wales which she was photographed looking at and admiring them, there was a big search to find out who had produced them and it turned out to be some old woman who had handmade them. But if it had been an up-and-coming small business they would probably have been swamped by orders. Also entering art into competitions and hopefully getting positive criticism through the competitions can help. There was an artist who was unknown who had entered the Turner prize and was in a small section of the BBC's culture show, those that didn't quite make it. But to not quite make it is a massive achievement when it comes to something like the Turner prize and can be seen as may be an up-and-coming artist that is collectable. He was also talking about the fact that even in harsh economic times people still speculate on things like art. The logic being that it can be quite cheap to invest in especially if you buy something because you actually like it but it could turn out to be worth a hell of a lot more later on when people have much more money to spend on acquiring pieces of art. He's put me in contact with one of his clients that specialise in local arts and crafts website he's working on at the moment to help them sell online so when I have a few more pieces because I am try to vary the types of work I'm doing I will show them my work and hopefully they may have people who will buy this type of art and also they have been doing it for 25 years so they may also be able to tell me what I could reasonably expect to sell things for.
So it was good meeting the guy and him sharing his ideas, just like on the forums.

**D.C.** · 11-03-2013

Martin makes a good point, after all you can make millions by chainsawing a shark in two...

**Fivetide** · 11-03-2013

Originally Posted by D.C.

Martin makes a good point, after all you can make millions by chainsawing a shark in two...

Hmm that gives me an Idea !! carve something out of a dead sheep lol !

**martin54** · 11-03-2013

David, I have trouble sleeping sometimes for a number of reasons I won't go into on here which explains the late night/early morning activity on forums sometimes lol.

Sounds like you may have found someone who may be able to help, just keep an eye on what they ask you to spend in order to possibly sell something. Your right in that it is subjective & people vary enormously so finding your target market can be a bit of a minefield, having someone who knows about art & how to place it should help. I know from my work designing signs & vehicle livery how difficult it can be even though what I do isn't art.
Course it's not all subjective, once you have made a name for yourself you can sell any old tat at silly money & people buy it just because of who produced it regardless of any like or dislike for it lol.

**Fivetide** · 13-03-2013

I've added a couple more new pieces to the gallery and tided up the website a bit. I'm now replicating these two using other woods to see what they look like. I'll post them whenI finish.. takes bloody ages to finish them off lol !