My Art Prices are Going Up…

I wanted to give you a heads up in case you’ve been looking at my art for a while, and thinking I’d really like one of those, or I must get up to Julie’s studio and have a look, or I’d like to commission one of those…..

NOW, is the right time to get in touch.

Why….?

I had a 1-1 with a couple of art mentors recently.   They had a good look at my website and social medias, and gave me some fantastic, but brutally honest feedback!  

I could feel the tears prickling behind my eyes as they told me their honest thoughts.  

This isn’t what I signed up for was my initial reaction!!  But, as they gave me their reasons why, I realised they were totally right.

There were way more insights than I can share here, but here are a few highlights….

My first bit of feedback was… “It makes no sense to have artwork for £10 & £20 sitting alongside art for £250.  It’s confusing.”

In my defence, I put some super low cost artwork on my new website so I could test the shopping cart functionality out.  If something were to go wrong with this new payment software, I’d rather it happened with a £10 customer order, than a £700 one!  Anyhow, take it on the chin… that’s what’s there, valid point.

My other methodology of uploading art had been, what photographs can I locate amongst these tens of thousands, of photos on my computer… not very strategic I know.  I also discovered during this process, that I HATE uploading products to my site, full stop, and have been looking for some help with that, which brings me onto point two.

“You have one portrait up, and she is STUNNING, absolutely STUNNING. There’s an energy about her face, her movement.   Why don’t you have more?”

Erm…. [bites lip]   See point above…?  

We move on, and I get more enlightening insights before my next piece of advice arrives…

“So, you need to remove the £10 art, or up your prices.  Then add more work, at no less than £200, and an awful lot more that that.”  

Just incase I didn’t get the message first time around, I got same message, with slightly different wording…

“You need to UP YOUR PRICES and OWN YOUR SHIT”.

Yikes… Tell me like it is, don’t hold back ladies………..

To be honest, I really appreciated the feedback.  I felt as if I was talking to a couple of friends, we had already got to know each other in the group, and actually, I needed to hear it.  Yep, my eyes widened, and I had to hold the tears back a couple of times, but truth hurts right? And they were right.

So, we moved on to what they saw in my work, and a reality check on my costs and investment…

“Your work is very feminine, it is very beautiful, it’s very colourful and energetic.  It just needs to be communicated to the right people, clearly, and at the right price point.”

Next, they went on to help me recognise an obvious point, that I had been ignoring until now…

“You didn’t wake up one day and make a portrait of encaustic and go yay, I’m good… there’s probably about 100 – 200 pieces behind that, some of them were failures, and some of them were mediocre. There’s a lot of learning, and hundreds and hundreds of pounds on material costs, and course costs, and space costs.”   

I’m thinking; yeah, and some…   Yikes… yes… when you put it like that….

“A thousand pounds and more, is absolutely reasonable.  ASK FOR IT.”    

“You are bloody amazing at what you do. It’s not because you just have that creative ability… You have honed your skill.  You have spent countless hours of time, money, creative energy, whatever it is, you have earnt the right to call yourself a professional fine artist in my opinion.  And you need to own that.”

At this point, the prickly eyes start again… it’s a bit like when you’re trying to hold it all together, and someone asks if you’re okay… just don’t be nice to me, and I’ll be absolutely fine…… !  

If you are like me in the past, there’s a tendency to brush off compliments, oh, that old thing, it’s [insert appropriate put down] and generally rack a compliment down to people being polite.  

I actually believe these ladies compliments; I don’t think they’d sugar coat anything they don’t mean!  

It’s taken a while, but now I’m believing it myself too.  

So, all of this brings me on to say…

Prices will be increasing. (Dramatically if these ladies have anything to do with it…!)  

If you want to own a piece of my art, you can:

• Go to my online shop and buy any of the pieces that are loaded on there right now at my current prices.
• Contact me about a commission, pay a deposit and I will honour my current pricing.
• Come and visit my studio this month, Wednesday 8th May 12 – 3pm, or Saturday 18th May 2-4pm
• Look through my Instagram feed, and Facebook posts, most of my artwork is loaded on there, then contact me via e-mail: julie@artyheaven.com to see if it is still available.  (Please don’t only post in comments, as notifications are so unreliable.)

I will be reformatting my remaining pricing soon.   As I say, if you’ve been considering owning a piece of Julie Ann art in your life… now is your best time to take action.  

 

So, before I finish, who are these ‘kick you up the bum’ art mentors?   

Leigh Shenton and Paula Mould.  

They are fun, to the point, tell it like it is, been known to swear on occasion, drink gin, and I generally leave their broadcasts with a huge smile across my face.  

It’s easy to take life too seriously sometimes, these ladies help remind me to put the fun back.

Here’s the link to their page to see if they are your kind of crazy.

https://www.facebook.com/TheCreativeVisionaryOfficial/

Hope to help you with some unique, bright and vibrant art for your walls very soon!  

Julie. x