Car Art question (artist input requested!)

Ferget it...

 

Thats nothing to be ashamed of, I think it looks good. Believe me I would tell you if it sucked.

 

dude me and kirk were just talking about this after he saw the drawing you made of my car on that case of oil in my garage! You can draw preety damn good. id say 5 bucks a drawing is very fair and most of thr cars you will be drawing are nice ones any way so i know they have 5 bucks to spare hell i know even i do ill be your first one for 5 bucks! hell even 10 is worth it i think. cartoons are cool cars are cool and a cartoon version of your own car is even cooler!!!

 

FWIW, I think you have a real talent.

Even that drawing is not as simple as some would suggest.


Rich

 

I think it's good to have an answer ready when you are asked, don't be ashamed to ask what you think it's worth. I think it's probably about right when more than half will agree to the price... If everyone goes for it it's probably too cheap, and if no one does, well you see what I mean. My price has gotten to a pretty fixed point that way and it seems to work. It's hard to price talent.

 

FH,
Most caricature artists I have seen work charge anywhere from $15 to $25. That is on nice heavy paper. I think your stuff looks good, remember everyone is their own worst critic. I would think somewhere in that range is fair. People pay $20 for a T-shirt and don't think anything about it, and it is just like everyone elses. An original should be worth at least that.

Good luck,
George

 

Hey Greg... how's your imagination?

As in: If I had you do a drawing of my '55, could you pretend that it had a tunnel ram with dual holleys?

 

I LOVE CARTOONS! YAY!

Very fun and cute drawing indeed, and definitely a crowd pleaser. I always price based on supplies, time and complexity. I try to not undersell myself, but also realize that the type of artwork I do will never command huge money so I charge what I think is affordable to my audience while still being worthwhile for me.

I charge more for commissioned work then I do for things that I did on my own for fun, mainly because I have less control over the piece and more time involved getting the concept sketches done. For a commission, I may have to do 3-5 drawings first before the customer picks one, so I figure that time into the price.

Another thing I consider is the "atmosphere" where the pieces are sold. It's a huge difference selling at a gallery (they get a cut) than it is at a street festival or other "casual" show. People at street festivals don't usually have $500 clams, so I bring smaller pieces, prints, notecards etc so I can sell they something they can afford, and hopefully get a commission later.

In this case you have no overhead per se, supplies are negligible, so I'd say you should price in the range of what something similar would cost, say like a caricature. If they want something bigger or more complicated or colored in, charge more. You could have a little easel set up with prices listed, so people know what to expect.

The bottom line is charge SOMETHING. Also get some business cards done up, vista print (online) does nice cards for next to nothing. That way you can get some repeat business from happy cruise night customers.

I want you to do one of FAYE!

Stacey

 

the 15 to 20 dollar price range sounds fair. mostly for something that you can do on the fly while you are there.
My stuff goes for anywhere from 100.00 to 200.00 a shot. But I do everything in my studio and end up having anywhere from 5-15 hours in each.
Price stuff like I price tattoo work. It's all by how long it takes. It's funny how (at least in the tattoo / art world) that someone will bitch about the price of a 150.00 dollar tattoo that is forever but walk in with 130.00 dollar tennis shoes.

 

People are willing to shell out 10 bucks for a Tshirt or a CD pretty easily in my experience. Have one rate for a line drawing, another for a rendered drawing. When you've done a few, you can adjust the price up if you discover that it needs to go up to be commensurate with the time you spend on the piece. Break it down to an hourly wage if you have to.


But listen to this: NEVER do it for free. (That is, unless you wanna do one of The Heap for me. Then it's okay.)

1) Your time and talent are worth something.
2) If it costs a little, then people know that it's worth something.
3) People take advantage of artists, and everytime you give something away, it just reinforces the behavior.

You wouldn't wrench on someone's car for free would you? (If the answer is yes, I have some work for you )

 

Charge $1.00 a minute and you can't go wrong.

Practice up and try to make them take 10 minutes to draw, TOPS, and charge $10.

Add color for $20....take 20 minutes to draw it.


As you get faster and faster, you keep the price the same and make more money.

I'd keep it simple though. Don't offer too many options....I've found at street festivals and stuff that people are kinda dumb sometimes (bless their hearts)***..... Too many options confuses them.

Good luck,
TINGLER




*** saying "bless their hearts" after tearing someone a new asshole is a southern way of making fun of people and still feeling good about yourself. in case you were wondering.

 

Ridin' down the highway
Goin' to a show
Stop in all the by-ways
Playin' rock 'n' roll
Gettin' robbed
Gettin' stoned
Gettin' beat up
Broken boned
Gettin' had
Gettin' took
I tell you folks
It's harder than it looks

It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
If you think it's easy doin' one night stands
Try playin' in a rock roll band
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll

Hotel, motel
Make you wanna cry
Lady do the hard sell
Know the reason why
Gettin' old
Gettin' grey
Gettin' ripped off
Under-paid
Gettin' sold
Second hand
That's how it goes
Playin' in a band

It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
If you wanna be a star of stage and screen
Look out it's rough and mean
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
Well, it's a long way
It's a long way, (they tell me)
It's a long way, such a long way

- Young, Scott

 

That song is such a JAM!
How apropos.

 

Here's my unofficial take on this.

You might not be a great technical artist. That is - you couldn't do photo-realistic copies of any given subject. But in order to be a goo cartoonist - you don't WANT to be that kind of artist - you'd just end up over analyzing the subject matter.

In terms of cartoon style art you are damn good though. Not just judging by this post alone. I saw some of your other stuff a long while ago and it is really cool in it's own kooky way.

I am an anal retentive bastard - and all of my attempts at cartooning tend to end up looking part real - part cartoon (more like comic book heros than cartoons). I fuckin' HATE the way I "cartoon". I can't let go of the details...

My brother is exactly like you. Never draws, and when he does he treats it like a doodle. If it sucks - no biggie, trash it. He can cartoon like Walt fuckin' Disney himself, but he acts like it isn't valid....

I say bullshit. Cartooning is an artform all it's own. Kinda like pinstriping. I know a ton of people who can draw well - but of those people, none can 'stripe. It's not that they don't like pinstriping or that they are dismissing 'striping as an art form - they just can't do it. (and they probably can't cartoon either).

And...just like pinstriping the more you practice the better you get (duh). So I say you have a lot of lost time to make up for.....$10 bucks, that's a steal concidering the cost of things in this goddamn country.

DO IT - and have fun while you are at it.

 

That's sort of like dissing somebody and following up with "just playin'." Washes away all sins.

Hack, I'd give you $10 to draw my Beetle. Especially if you can make a "fantasy" view of it with the fenders fully attached. Having a wheel fly off whille driving down the road does not bode well for fenders.

Ever consider the Ed Roth "monster" - style drawings? I think a lot of guys would pay for a picture of a monster driving their ride, super-tall shifter and all.

 

As the price goes up,demand goes down.
How fast the price drops is call the "Elasticity of the Demand Curve".
-------
On quality paper,
a simple one color design has gotta be worth $10,
depending on the local market.
Adding more detail,color,background,etc. will drive the price up higher.

I would suggest keeping prices in convienient multiples.
$10 - simple line drawing,one color only.
$15 - more detail,background
$20 - detail,backround,multiple colors

If it really catches on,then prices can jump to:
$15,$20,$25,or $10,$20,$30,or even $100,$200,$300.

Trying to make change at a show is a PITA.

They are paying for your time,AND your skill.
They are not paying based on how hard YOU have to work,
but on how difficult it would be for them to try and do the same thing.
A portfolio of your work will be helpful,showing a variety of work.

-------
A Dollar a minute is a good rule of thumb,if you can make it fly.

 

If you can do caricatures of people, and caricatures of cars, why not do a combination? That's sort of what I was getting at with the Roth comment. Maybe draw the owner sticking out of the roof, hand on top of a big shifter, tongue wagging. That sort of thing. Or maybe pose the owner next to the car in a Fonzie jacket. You could charge $10 for a car drawing and $15-20 for a drawing of the car AND the owner. Something like that.

Whatever you end up doing, practice seems like the best thing. So make sure you've always got that paper, marker, and skateboard with you wherever you go.

I saw the Speed Buggy drawing you posted once before. Good stuff. I liked that cartoon too. I had a cheap plastic Manx looking toy I called Speed Buggy. I think Luke Skywalker and C3PO used to drive around in it on our green and yellow shag carpet. Probably out crusing for some Princess Leia tail.

 

Additional helpful checklist:

Be "tortured"/go nuts
Dress in all black-or turtleneck/beret
Go through "blue" phase
Fall in love with hooker/drink a lot
Smoke cigarettes through one of those long holders
Have affair with your model

Hmmmm... I know there are more.

 

Cut your ear off and send it to a prostitute.
get a funny looking white wig and go around saying "everyone will be famous for 15 minutes".
Paint pictures of soup cans.
Blow your thumb off with rocket fuel (betcha don't know who did that)
lock yourself in a locker for a week.
retreat to an exotic island and marry a 13 year old native girl.
make giant sculptures of clothespins.
pickle a cow in formaldahyde and call it art.
Poop in a can, slap your name on it, sell many piles of artwork.
Pee in a jar, stick a cross in it, get famous.
buy a famous drawing, erase it, call it "erased DeKooning".
Stick a whip in your butt, take pics of it, get banned from Cincinnati
paint all white paintings.
paint all black paintings.
wrap an island in cloth.
wrap a building cloth.
make art from corpses....


......whatever you do, DON'T make any of that horrible Lowbrow cartoon art.

 

To quote Dennis Hopper:

" People used to think you had to be Fucked Up to be an artist ! "

 

I do my cartoons differently from you - I mark it out in pencil and finish in ink, then erase my guides. Therefore I charge moderately - but not much - more. Only $20 delivered.

Just to give you an idea:


I charge $10 more for color:


I don't think $15.00 would be out of line for a good marker cartoon on good paper.

 

Greg, DO IT!!!!

I used to go to cruise nights and draw cars, just like you are talking about... My truck still says "The Drawing Guy" across the front, so they'd let my late model truck in.

I had a folding stool, and the bottom half of a Delco rolling battery charger/tester. It was about 24" tall and I cut a piece of plywood to fit on top, covered it with some checkerboard contact paper. it had shelves in the bottom for pens (Vis-a-vis thin and thick, and pencils, and grey kneaded erasers) and bristol paper (doesn't soak through).

Then I'd buy about 10 8"x10" (black plastic frames, glass inside) frames at the dollar store ($1 each, duh!) and a package of single edge razor blades.

I'd start the night off by picking my favorite car and drawing it... sometimes the guy would buy it, sometimes he wouldn't... (If the guy's wife was with him, she'd ALWAYS buy it).

If he didn't, I called it a sample... Either way you are going to need a sheet of paper and a clipboard for people to sign up. Once they saw you doing the drawings, you had a line up of people wanting them. The only fair way 1st come 1st served. have a place for the name and the make, year and model, and their email, so you can find them again. the Mulletmobiles will be mostly what you will be doing. It was amazing how quickly I got better and faster at drawing doing this stuff. I'd do a rough sketch with pencil lightly, then start with the pens, then I'd erase the pencil, and touch it up with the pens. if you can do lettering, put the guys name on it like "Joe's 40" or "Bob's Bitchin' Camaro", it's corny, but they like it.

When they did buy it, I'd pull the glass out of one of the frames, lay it over the drawing and use the edges of the glass to trim it to fit, put it in the frame and charge $15. I could usually do 4-5 a night before the crowd would break up... most times the next guy on the list would stick around an extra half hour. I used to do one all day charity car show, I charged $20 and I'd give half the money to the charity, I'd still walk out with a bad sunburn and $150 in my pocket.

The list also comes in handy, if you didn't get to the last guy on your list, he may be there the next week, and he can be first.

If you have them put their email down on the list, you can send out global emails, telling them which shows you are going to be at.

An extra $45-$60 a night is a good.

Oh and everybody knows that you have to dance with the green fairy for a while before you want to cut off your ear with a prostitute (see avatar).

 

A FAT HACK original! It's now tricked up a bit by Pat Maphis(Skate Fink).Sorry I don't have a current pic.
Greg I would charge a absolute MINIMUM of $10 for anything that escapes from your pencil and/or marker.
The suggestions so far seem to be dead on.I envy people who can create a cartoon character from scratch.I can copy just about anything but originating a character will probably never happen with me.
I have a couple of striper friends who are great at it(Shane Syx and Jeff Crank)and I've learned a bit about it from Jeff.
One of my all time favorite cartoonists is Johnny Hart(B.C.;the Wizard of Id).He is probably the only cartoonist who can run a nine panel spread with no words in the first eight,add one word in the last one and make you laugh yer ass off! His cartoons are so deceptively simple looking;until you try and draw one!Been following it from the first(ca.1962).
Sounds like a plan to me.
Ray

 

The drawing looks great. I would love to have you do one of my car, if you have the time. Please PM or email me and let me know what you decide on price and I will email you some pics of my car.

Thanks<
Cathy H.

 

Holy crap! That Safari cartoon is awesome. Why aren't we seeing this stuff on the Friday Art Show? It's not fair.

 

The Safariknut drawing is great! but it probably took a while to do. I can't draw people worth crap, so you got me beat there.

I don't have a scanner so I couldn't do this by hand, but a few simple tricks I used, that are quick and make it look like I know what I'm doing.

-The shadows can flow into the black on the tires. no need to avoid edges of the tires, the tread gives the impression of how big the tires are.

-Thick outline around the subject of the drawing, makes it look like it's sitting on top the page. And it hides the areas that you colored outside the lines.

-Use the thin marker for cross hatch or other pattern (flames, squiggles, speed lines, etc.) behind the subject, makes it look like it has a back "wall".

-Don't mix pencil and pen on the final drawing. For shading, use cross hatch pattern in pen. go one direction for light shading, then cross over those lines at about a 90 degree angle to make it look darker when things are deeper in the shadows. (I had a hard time making it look like pen in Photoshop).

Put their name on them.

I have some tricks for chrome too, PM me.

Mike

 

And we must not forget Berkely Breathed who does,"Bloom County" and,"Opus".I still have my copy of DeathTongue's recording that came out of one of his books.And of course a Bill the Cat and Opus(in a towel) stuffed animals.

 

greg, hell man, wanna do one of my car??? i would gladly pay 10 bucks...

if i were in your position here is what i would do...buy a portfolio with sleeves in it...go to car shows/cruises/stripclubs etc...and just start drawing the cars...people will see you drawing away and take notice...(just look at how busy the striping pavilion was at billetproof) once you finish one,. put it in your portfolio...if someone wants it, then sell it...if not, it gives a great example of your work. hell someone may just happen to be looking through it, not noticing you drawing their car the week before and pull the "well i'll be damned gladys, that looks just like our buick"!!! instant sale...
the best suggestion i can make is have fun with your art...don't let it become a "job".
and please post some more pictures of your drawings...they are VERY good...makes me jealous, i can't draw cartoony stuff to save my life.

 

I'm considered somewhat of an artist , I think that looks great. I can draw cars, but I'm not good with cartoon stuff.

I say if you're doing anything with your life that's not incorporating your talent, you should find a way to start using it.

Raw talent needs disapline to grow a mature take some classes and push it.

That's my 2 cents. KK

 

Nobody wants your drawings Greg. Your just a hack. Ya right man! Your drawings are great. Im sure you can make some cash at cruises with your talent. Heck, like 5 people on here said they are willing to pay your price. I already got one from you and i love it! I printed it out and its been hanging in the garage for inspiration ever since you drew it. When my cars finished im gonna be callin on you for another one though!

Nick