For any new business, pricing work can be a total guessing game. On the one hand, you want to undercut the competition, beucase you know everyone wants a bargain and you want to get your product out there. On the other hand, you want to eat. How to solve this quandary?

The pricing problem becomes further compounded with creative businesses, because the product you’re selling isn’t something people can easily place value on. Artwork doesn’t immediately solve a pressing problem, or offer some kind of stable market for which you can compare models and prices. The price a person pays for artwork is whatever they feel it is worth. If they don’t feel it’s worth the price asked, they won’t pay for it.

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And you thought tea parties were harmless fun …

I recently finished a new piece that appeared in the Part Time Artist, Full Time Friend show, held at the Classic Comedy Club on Sunday 18 November. The show was a great local arts initiative combining a one-day art show, 14 bands and musicians and comedy acts running all day. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the show in person (it’s crazy this time of year), but apparently it was a roaring success.

“The Great Victorian Food Fight” was inspired by one of my favourite children’s book, Princess Pam Fell into the Jam, as well as an exhibition of food paintings I saw about 10 years ago. Mostly, it’s just a fun illustration of how a tea part can get dangerously out of hand.

Detail of my favorite sections – the pink cupcakes, the immaculate hairdo, the jelly flying, the cat sneaking some cake, and the little mouse in the teapot.

Detail of the gold decoration around the edges.

This piece didn’t sell in the show, so is still available for purchase for $310. If you’re interested, contact me at steff AT grymmandepic.com and I can give you all the details. To see more examples of my art/illustration work and hire me for editorial or custom commissions, check out my Gallery page.

It’s a lazy, sunny Sunday here in New Zealand. My husband and I have just purchased a 4 acre lifestyle block – eeee! – and it is sucking away every moment of free time we have right now. It’s wonderful to be spending so much time outside, doing physical labour, feeling the satisfaction of dirt under your nails and a sun on your arms. I haven’t had such restful sleep in years! We have a lot of work ahead of us before we can even begin to build our dream home, but we’re excited about building our future in this place.

Since it’s a lazy Sunday, and you might be spending the day thinking about your business and catching up on your Internet reading, I thought I’d link you up to some of my most recent articles for writers and small businesses around the web:

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Hypothetically, of course. Anything else might get me into trouble.

In my ebook, the Grymm & Epic Guide to Blogging, I talk a lot about figuring out what to blog about. A successful blog strikes a balance between writing about what interests you, and writing that helps you find and build an audience – the right audience. The audience that will go on to buy your art. And sometimes, that audience isn’t whom you’d expect.

A lot of artists get stuck in the habit of writing about the business of selling art. Often, they’ll get quite in-depth, writing epic 2000 word posts about their successes and failures at craft fairs, etc. These posts will be extremely useful for other artists, and they’re profoundly interesting for the artist writing them, because they offer the chance to put thoughts about business down in a cohesive way and analyse what is and isn’t working. But whenever I see an artist with a blog that’s all about running an art business, I wonder if the artist knows whom their audience really is.

Who wants to read a blog about how to run an art business? People who want to become full-time artists, of course. And yes, many people who are full-time artists want to support other artists and love to buy art, but they are a small slab of an infinitely larger pie.

Read On…

Lets say for a minute that you sell some kind of actual, tangible product. Or you’re going to, once you’ve finished creating it. Maybe you make jewelry and sell it. Maybe you’re a band, and you’re pressing a CD to sell that. Maybe you knit funky mutli-colored winter scarves (if so, we need to talk …)

You probably feel a bit left out of the internet business conversation. I don’t blame you. These days, if anyone’s talking business online, they’re talking about info-products, selling services like consulting or de-stickifying your life or making your website look pretty. And these are all super awesome and useful services and products. Heck, I know, because I sell my fair share of info-products.

But you, yeah you, with your jewelry and your CD and your rainbow-colored scarves. You are so cool. You sell actual stuff.

Read On…