Creative Corner

@Spooner OH- I misread the date oh noes- got recommended by a friend a few months ago and kept tabs ever since. I go for g/t and might try out USD in the future.
I guess I'm looking for more casual so not huge grand pieces but more like half bodies and busts mostly.

For designs, it's required to give me some details if I have to design from scratch like pose, general references, etc. For apparel and skins and all the jumble stuff, I naturally incorporate it in based on my own skills, so I don't usually charge. I might in the future if it gets overwhelming.

Over all, pretty casual but still want a steady income without it taking up too much time and effort. I'll revamp my shop after I know I'm ready to.

@SpiritFlower - Hey, it's all good! I'd probably have opened it in a few months anyway, this is just a little earlier lol. ;)

When it comes to sketch shops, commissioners are usually looking for something easy to order/kinda casual, so I'd kinda be leaning towards simple pricing myself. The sketch shops I've ordered from have always been built pretty sleek - here's the art, here's the flat price, and off we go.

Going off stuff I've bought that was in this kind of casual, sketchy headshot territory - I'd start somewhere around 1000g for halfbody, 750g bust, take off 200g if it's not coloured. (I personally like stuff that's not coloured, it has a kinda journal look to it, haha.) You might like to add a discount if you're going to offer two sketches in the one slot.

Prices can be the same across digital/traditional - just make it clear that with traditional there's no coloured option! Generally, $10/$7.50 USD for coloured sketchy work feels about right for FR, though I'd say go higher if you find there's a lot of people interested.

@Spooner

I’ve had an artshop for on here for like two years and not a single person has bought anything from me. Understandably for a while I had it as real life currency only, but then I grew desperate and made it available for treasure and gems and yet still no one buys. I am a little hurt and ready to give up and close for good but I just want to know what I am doing wrong.

Link to my artshop is in my signature and if you want to peek at my gallery you can.

@TheGildedRaven - Cool of you to drop by! It's not always the easiest thing to work out why you might not be getting comms, especially when your art is honestly pretty good. That said... selling things doesn't have that much to do with your art quality, if my experience means much. There's some correlation, but it's not a 1:1 thing, you know? Good artists definitely lose out on comms through bad communication, poorly made sales posts, etc etc. I can see some things just from the marketing side of it that may have contributed, so I'm going to list those here. I will say this, though - I do think a big part of selling stuff does come down to luck/being on the front page of the art boards at the exact right moment. It's dumb, but the art boards can move so fast at times, it can even come down to what time you bump at. So, sometimes you can be doing everything right and it just doesn't work out. It happens. [quote=Stuff]- The shop title is not the best thing. What is a headbust? Why is the shop titled pay-what-you-want (pwyw) when it's not actually pay-what-you-want (there's payment ranges, this is confusing)? Why have you listed that you take g/t/$, when that is basically everything? Is there some other form of currency you don't take that I don't know about? ...Yeah. I'd retitle this to Gilded's Headshots [OPEN] or something like that. Headshop if you want to get punny with it. Leave the whole busts topic alone, honestly - I know people who insist that dragon busts involve the wings/secondary as well, and some people feel it's the neck + head. The end result of this is that 'dragon busts' = 'who the hell knows', and as such it's probably best to just avoid the word altogether. - The first thing I see on desktop is a text wall. You're an art shop but there's no pictures until several scrolls down the page. I'm always going to suggest putting the rules/payment stuff after the examples, because you want people to fall for your art first and foremost. - Where's the toucan? There's a toucan in the banner, I click on the toucan wanting to see the whole toucan, and now I can't find the toucan. I'm not sure this is a contributing factor to the shop not selling anything, but like, I feel unfufilled not being able to see the toucan. (It doesn't help that I really like bird art - I was a tad disappointed to see a dragon art shop, haha. Consider putting dragon art in your dragon art shop banner if your dragon art shop is going to mostly push dragon art.) - The shop has three examples, one for each tier, and I don't feel they really represent a commissioner's needs too well. Neither dragon has any apparel or more complicated genes like poi/tox or cry/face, and the traditional example isn't actually a dragon (which is a bit of a problem when many commissioners here are looking for dragon art). Generally with dragon examples, you want to show off a range of breeds/genes/apparel, and I feel that's kind of especially so with headshots as you can't really vary the pose. - You do mention you have problems with certain genes/apparel/accents. It'd be a good idea to specify which ones, so commissioners can feel more comfortable ordering - for instance, I can't draw Poison to save myself. Commissioners generally want their artist to feel comfy drawing whatever it is they want, so try to give more of an idea of your comfort zone. (More examples will help!) - What's going on with the ranges? Ranges confuse smooth-brained buyers like me, I just want a hard price. I don't want to guess at whether or not I can afford a commission, and I'd feel pretty embarrassed if I approached you wanting something drawn only for it to be publicly revealed that I couldn't afford it. Give the upper number of each range if you want to, but I'd strongly recommend having a solid price tag. - I generally respect a higher price for traditional commissions, but I think you might want to look at coming down on the digital price tag? I'm not all commissioners, but I wouldn't personally want to pay $20 USD when the lines aren't super clean, and there's colour bleeding outside of the horn on the example. Coloured sketches are very sellable, but they do tend to go for a lower price. (Unless you have more recent examples that are digital and not sketches, in which case, disregard and just post those ones instead.)[/quote]

If you're still doing this, I could use some advice on pricing those types of semi-polished sketches?? I don't know what to call them- Critique is always welcome too if you're willing to share your opinions. :> I took quite a long break from art for a while and I feel super rusty, both in my skills to draw and effectively price my art. I was toying with the idea of starting a shop, but I'm having a hard time getting into it, so this would help me [i]a lot[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/2yh1JNa.jpg[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/nU6IAmK.png[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/MPWhQkE.jpg[/img]

@EtainRazkatan - I'm never sure where the market sits on this kinda semi-realism when it comes to dragons, haha. I can try to price and critique, though! [quote=Things] - So first off, definitely don't rush the whole shop thing - take your time! You've got as much time as you want to make more examples - I'd say make some more, figure out how fast you are with these and what breed/s you enjoy drawing the most. - As far as starting points go, 750g for these coloured sketch headshots feels about right to me? There's some loose lines going on, it's not entirely clean. I think you could - and should - consider charging more for annoying genes you might have some trouble handling, like Flaunt or similar. - Honestly, it might be an idea to just not offer apparel right away? It's a bold move, but your strength seems to be with rendering different dragon breeds/genes and actually making them look different. Why cover that up with apparel? (And besides, ancients can't wear apparel in the first place, and I think your veils would sell, so.) - Critique-wise - would I be right in saying that the one on the bottom is the most recent? Regardless, it's the style I like the most of the three. It's to do with the lines - they're definitely softer, but they also feel a bit more present than on the other examples. I'd encourage you to look at whatever you did to get the third example, and do more of it, haha. - I think you could be a bit bolder with your shading and highlights? Like yeah, rendering white is kind of a pain, but even on the third example, Diaphonous is a pretty sparkly gene. Maybe have a play around with some shadows and highlights on a seperate layer, and see what happens? Try adding extra shadows in places like where the mane is going behind the head on the third example, and play around with highlights that aren't necessarily white. Why [i]not[/i] bright red, or purple (reflected light off the black neck)? - Everyone's facing left and looking horizontal! I get they're headshots and there's a limited number of ways to pose them, buuuuut headshots at different angles can really open up different moods, even if it's dragon-facing-left-but-looking-way down. Dragon necks can also convey a lot - here's[url=https://www.deviantart.com/christoskarapanos/art/Dragon-head-sketches-432017929] an example with some different neck poses [/url] that help add to different moods. (To me, the S-neck one looks more regal, the arched/hunched neck one looks more quietly intimidating, and the one on the top right has a lot of neck shoving into the frame to give it more force/momentum.) - Also on the pose thing: have you considered cheating? Or- okay, not cheating, but there's lots of headshots out there of birds, lizards, and snakes that make decent reference material when trying to draw dragons from the dreaded front angle. You can break them down into shapes, and then exaggerate whatever shape you need to. [img]https://i.imgur.com/bhwz2DQ.png[/img] [/quote]

Yeah I'll definitely take my time with the shop, I need way more practice before that. You brought up some very good points and I'll try to play around with colors more, maybe I can pull off a more dramatic shading/lighting style, like you recommended. :D

Also good point about not including apparel in the beginning. I feel like I have a hard time setting boundaries when it comes to commissions, and end up taking characters that are out of my comfort zone. That's usually a good thing, during practice though and not when trying to deliver a product, haha! I'll start that way when I finally decide to open shop.

Thank you so much for such an in-depth look! It really helped me see my work from a new view point. ^^

@Spooner

Thank you very much for the advice and i did revise my artshop if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at it again. Also how can I advertise that I want to draw dragons as well as animals, creatures, alien etc because I put it in what I can draw but I’m not sure if people can see it and I added the toucan but I feel it conflicts with the “I will be offering headshots with simple backgrounds,” under it.

Oh I forgot to mention I edited the digital example.

@TheGildedRaven - No worries! I'm gonna stick to dot points just so I can cover your questions quickly (but still in detail), if that's aight with you. - Had another look - the title is fine now, set prices are good. You still have the giant text wall out the front, not many examples/you've kept the ones you had before, and you're not coming down on the digital price. With respect, I don't think I have much more to say on it all that I haven't said already! (Unless you made a big change and I didn't notice, in which case, I'm sorry and you're going to have to point it out. :'D ) - If you go look at other artshops, you'll often see fullbody art banners and then the person's just offering headshots/busts. Think of the toucan as like a mascot, I guess? If you want to use it, anyway - the alternative is to stick art you want to sell in your banner. - If you want to advertise that you can draw other things, just put some of the other things as examples in the shop. Example images are about showing what you can do, and like I said in the other post, more examples would only help you. Edit to address your edit: The digital example is still messy, so I'm still gonna say it's sketch quality. There's lines going outside of the lines, and colour going outside of the areas it should be in. Example of both- [img]https://i.imgur.com/T9nfEOt.png[/img] There's also lines going directly against the intended flow, mostly in the mane- [img]https://i.imgur.com/7incIvz.png[/img] I realize there is probably some sort of intended aesthetic to this, and I'm not challenging that! I'm saying that when commissioners see this sort of thing (especially the loose line quality) they tend to be... inspired to pay less, I guess.