December 5, 2004
fine art prints
So I’ve been talking to a publisher about making fine art prints. I was first talking about this almost a year ago, but I got distracted by the day job. Funny how quickly time flies.
Let’s see… poster sized, signed, limited edition, available framed or unframed. For sale online or through regular galleries.
I’m thinking the first print I want to make is the “Mistakenly” one above.
So now I guess the question is: would anybody want to buy one? What other prints would people want to buy? The “Urban Existential Barfly” ones or the more “Hughtrain” kind?
I’m guessing price would be about the same as what they’re charging over at NewYorker.com.
Any thoughts?
I would certainly buy one if I had a room to do it justice. $450 is a fair price. IMO, those up at streetcards would work. Do you have any verticals? I know I’ve seen one, but horizontal seems to be your thing. Some people may like that option.
Personally, I think it might be stretching the idea a medium too far. The cards are cool because they’re small and succinct, that’s their whole selling point. A giant version hovering on my wall just wouldn’t deliver the same impact to me. Still, best of luck anyway, because as they say.. there’s a bum/butt for every seat!
If I were to buy one for the wall, I’d be going with the Hughtrainy type, as they’re more business oriented, although I think there’s a different audience between the two types. I could just imagine many a fashionista in NYC with the NY/urban based ones on their wall, holding cocktail parties, and having visitors think just how witty, clever and postmodern their host(ess) is. Go get em.
Waiting for Godot
There’s an amusing new blog I came across: “Gapingvoid”, by Hugh Macleod. He’s a cartoonist, and his postings often have a quickly sketched amusing drawing. I caught today’s posting with this quote on it: ’ “I can’t take this shit anymore!” He said, mi…
Waiting for Godot
There’s an amusing new blog I came across: “Gapingvoid”, by Hugh Macleod. He’s a cartoonist, and his postings often have a quickly sketched amusing drawing. I caught today’s posting with this quote on it: ’ “I can’t take this shit anymore!” He said, mi…
I agree with Peter above.
You always blogged how the cards were just your thing, your expression, your creative outlet. Which is what made them so interesting and funny. They were an expression of what makes you you.
Recently everything on gapingvoid appears to be up for sale. The tone of the blog has changed from ‘Hey, be creative, have fun, think for yourself’ to ‘Buy my drawings, paintings, fund my start-up, publish my book, give me money’.
That’s a real shame.
Eh. Pete, blogs are like people. They have phases. They have moods.
I go through commercial phases, non-commercial phases, cartoon phases, Hughtrain phases… swings and roundabouts:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000889.html
You’ll get used to it eventually
Fine Art Prints?
naahhhh. You need to rethink here.
offer ‘limited editions’ printed on that cheap micro-perf business card stock that you can buy at the Gigantic Office Supply Outlet or walmart which ever is closer..(time is money you know)and limited by how many times you hit the ‘print this’ button.….
for a few extra bucks you can toss in a presentation case to display them crafted from…”Genuine Imitation Virgin Vinyl!!” in a plethora of personality pleasing colors!!! avacado, harvest gold, orange shag carpet.…..
For those that need or want that ‘strong lasting experience’, a limited edition, blown up, printed on standard post card size stock, and offered as the ”Postal” Series, perfect for writing ‘I fucking quit’ on the back.…
The ‘Nuclear’ series can be printed on 8.5 by 14 legal stock, which ya oughta pick up for a song(keep an eye on production costs) since the legal industry has moved to regular size paper, and the only folks using legal size are your kids school for newsletters.
oh yeah…loose the frame idea, make the bastards buy their own damn frames! ya can build another website where you can have folks take pictures of their completed missions, and post them.
Now that I have articulated your new business plan, your cost for this is the zzzzzsteak12 card the venn diagram of full of shit, full of ideas,full of shit ideas.
since it is the only thing that has made me laugh in the last three months, although ‘why do they call it snatch is a real close second.…
oh yeah„toss in the complete fucking asshole one too.
I’d totally buy one, Hugh. And I’m sure with not much prompting you could get a bunch of poncey meeja-types in Soho to decorate their offices with a few, as well.
I actually like far, far too many of your ‘creations’ to choose just one.
And as for Pete complaining that ‘everything on gaping void appears to be up for sale’… fuck ‘im. Get the cash while you can. You know as well as I do that it won’t be there forever.
Good on ya.
Just a regular, poster-sized print. Something I can slap up on my dorm room wall. A simple price, like $5 – 10, will do.
The only problem I can see with this is that you’d need to make them larger, which might make the quality of the work provided go down, or else find something that will turn your cardwork into vector art that’ll blow up nicely.
Your work’s good, but it’s simple, whether you see it that way or not, and unless you do something funky with the coloring on the posters, they’ll be simple too. If you want people to have to blow their wad to buy this stuff, offer it on 100-lb. fancy handmade stock with the fibers still visible or something. Me? I’ll take a simple posterprint and be done with the thing.
I agree with Rachel, a lot of us just can’t justify spending hundreds and hundreds on clever urban angst drawings… I’d buy posters.
Also, Pete has a point… I think you sometimes tend to stretch things too far (the How to Be Creative thing was in danger of becoming just another fuzzy feel-good manual – a parody of itself – by the time you stopped it.)
As for marketing, you seem to be doing a lot of criticism, which is fine, but are you doing anything to change it? Do you have constructive ideas? I’m sure you’re doing a lot in your career that you don’t write about, but the reader tends to become cynical after reading “control the conversation” as a prescription for the 200th time.
In any case, you do tend to go through phases (eg. the how to be creative seemed to have come out of nowhere and suddenly garnered huge favour, and maybe making more drawings has not exactly been your mood for the last few feeks) and gapingvoid.com continues to have great content, which is what matters.
Monday Morning
Yeah, its gonna be one of those
Monday Morning
Yeah, its gonna be one of those
I agree with ditching the big-format. What’s next, podcasts of you *reading* the damn things!
I think a biz-card-sized piece in a cool frame could be very great looking.
Also an etched-metal card could be cool, like
http://www.securityedition.com/index.asp
Funny you should say that, Bill… I’ve been selling those wee pieces for over a year and a half
http://us.easyart.com/gapingvoid/
The frames are way to friggin’ big, they totally dwarf the space the cards take up. There should be no more than an inch or so of white space surrounding the card. Also forget about the ‘signed and numbered’ crap — “I draw these for fun, but for you it’ll cost an arm and a leg” — you should know better.
Inexpensive prints to scale, half inch white border, put em in inexpensive frames with an easy-to-affix-to-cube-wall backing; optional mini-easel for displaying on your desk. $5 per print, discounts for purchasing 10 or more. Like hotcakes, I tellya…
It’s the edge that makes your work something that touch a lot of people … if it becomes a widespread product, keeping that edge will probably get harder and harder, since a lot of it’s slightly around the corner from cynical .. in a highly accurate and amusing, insight-generating way.