Would you let your work be turned into hand-painted oil paintings?

[The_Traveler]

I think that the worth of most/all of my pictures are just because they are photographs rather than paintings.
Losing that specifically caught moment reduces any value they might have.

 

[chrischen]

What do you mean would a photographer promote it? Why should we assume it's a 'big commerce site' or that it's perfect and trustworthy?

I've never heard of Society6 and I don't use 500px because of their Terms & Conditions and the low price that photographers seem to make for prints sold. So I doubt I'd be interested in having paintings done of photos that apparently would retail for the price point you've given. I don't find it believable that the quality could be what I'd want for the pricing you're quoting.

I don't see a service like this being advantageous for photographers. A commissioned work could be sold as a limited edition at an art show, craft fair or a gallery, but this seems to be unlimited; so even with the paintings being done individually by hand it seems like it will be mass produced.

This is service is not defined. Humor me, please, by making the assumptions I've asked you to make, and no more. I'm simply trying to define it, with the help of the photographers here.

That being said, I think you still helped answer some of my questions. Just to clarify, you would need:

1) Only want it to be reproduced in a high quality (faithful to the original?) manner?
2) The option to limit the runs.

The service I'm asking you to envision is not licensing for mass production, it's licensing for on-demand production, similar to how you might sell prints on your website.

 

[chrischen]

I think that the worth of most/all of my pictures are just because they are photographs rather than paintings.
Losing that specifically caught moment reduces any value they might have.

What if it was possible to keep the look of the photo while adding on just enough painting effects (by hand) to make it look hand-painted? For example, oil painting over a print.

 

[robbins.photo]

I think that the worth of most/all of my pictures are just because they are photographs rather than paintings.
Losing that specifically caught moment reduces any value they might have.

What if it was possible to keep the look of the photo while adding on just enough painting effects (by hand) to make it look hand-painted? For example, oil painting over a print.

ok, so are these really handpainted or are these printed so they look like they were painted and somebody comes along later and adds a couple of brush strokes?

Sent from my LG-LG730 using Tapatalk

 

[sm4him]

The question is being posed as a hypothetical. Roughly:

If you could fly, what would you do?

And all of you.... nice folks... are ignoring the question and saying 'but I can't fly' or 'I don't think a scammer like you can give me wings' which is kind of missing the point. Not quite all, to be fair.

I didn't ignore the question at all. I believe I answered it; yes, I said I'd be suspicious of the quality, but then I said that IGNORING that aspect, I still wouldn't be interested, and why. Seems like an answer to me.

Don't think of it as art. People have painted solid colors that sell for absurd amounts. There's "art" and then there's technical art, which is much less expensive, more of a commodity skill.

And therein lies part of the problem for me. For the most part, any photos I'd be interested in selling, I'd classify as "art." I'm not interested in having technically-proficient paintings of them produced that are NOT art. Not to mention that if I sell a print of my photo, ALL the proceeds go to ME. Why would I then give people the option to buy something "sort of like" my photo that gives a portion of the proceeds to someone else?

And, I agree with Lew. I mean, basically, if I wanted to offer paintings, I'd paint.

 

[Vince.1551]

Just go CS6 to convert your image to an oil paint and ask yourself is it worth doing it. Takes out all the guessing game.

 

[chrischen]

Just go CS6 to convert your image to an oil paint and ask yourself is it worth doing it. Takes out all the guessing game.

Please assume the hand-painted paintings look nothing like algorithmic oil painting effects.

 

[chrischen]

The question is being posed as a hypothetical. Roughly:

If you could fly, what would you do?

And all of you.... nice folks... are ignoring the question and saying 'but I can't fly' or 'I don't think a scammer like you can give me wings' which is kind of missing the point. Not quite all, to be fair.

I didn't ignore the question at all. I believe I answered it; yes, I said I'd be suspicious of the quality, but then I said that IGNORING that aspect, I still wouldn't be interested, and why. Seems like an answer to me.

Don't think of it as art. People have painted solid colors that sell for absurd amounts. There's "art" and then there's technical art, which is much less expensive, more of a commodity skill.

And therein lies part of the problem for me. For the most part, any photos I'd be interested in selling, I'd classify as "art." I'm not interested in having technically-proficient paintings of them produced that are NOT art. Not to mention that if I sell a print of my photo, ALL the proceeds go to ME. Why would I then give people the option to buy something "sort of like" my photo that gives a portion of the proceeds to someone else?

And, I agree with Lew. I mean, basically, if I wanted to offer paintings, I'd paint.

Thanks for the feedback. Keep in mind that it's "not" art in the way that the printer printing your photograph is not doing art. As I posted earlier, what if the painting effect was placed on top of your photo to produce a painted look while trying to keep as much of the artistic composition of your original photo?

There are some reasons why one might opt to outsource the painting. It can be produced at lower costs, broadening your exposure and allowing your art to affect more people, and letting those less well off to afford your photos as paintings. It also reduces overhead for you, in that you don't have to deal with customer service, procurement, supply chain, etc, so that you can focus on what you're good at: your photography, instead of production.

I guess your point is that you'd rather maximize your personal brand than to maximize short term revenues (as would be achieved by lowering the cost to purchase your works)? That being said, what about limited runs and custom pricing that you set? We most likely won't design the service to pre-pay the artist in any way, and paintings would be produced on-demand.

 

[Vince.1551]

Please assume the hand-painted paintings look nothing like algorithmic oil painting effects.

I do paint with oil and acrylic and imo CS6 do a pretty good job for a software illustrating strokes and impasto.

 

[robbins.photo]

Just go CS6 to convert your image to an oil paint and ask yourself is it worth doing it. Takes out all the guessing game.

Please assume the hand-painted paintings look nothing like algorithmic oil painting effects.

Please assume that my questions are just as important as your own, and please assume that the methodology by which these are actually being created is important because frankly it is - if you are advertising these as "handpainted" and yet in truth your intention is to print them and then have someone simply trace a brush over them to give them the simulation of brush strokes well that really isn't a handpainted piece of art. As a result the assumption that you folks are "trustworthy" goes completely out the window.

I won't be a party to misleading people or downright false advertisement. So, yes, the method by which these are being produced becomes very important if they are being advertised as handpainted, when in truth they really aren't handpainted.

 

[limr]

Please assume that my questions are just as important as your own, and please assume that the methodology by which these are actually being created is important because frankly it is - if you are advertising these as "handpainted" and yet in truth your intention is to print them and then have someone simply trace a brush over them to give them the simulation of brush strokes well that really isn't a handpainted piece of art. As a result the assumption that you folks are "trustworthy" goes completely out the window.

I won't be a party to misleading people or downright false advertisement. So, yes, the method by which these are being produced becomes very important if they are being advertised as handpainted, when in truth they really aren't handpainted.

And quite frankly, even if they are handpainted in a very technical sense of "someone's hand put some paint on a surface," the more I hear about this process, the less I would want to be part of it. "What if it's not really 'art' per say, but just a technical process?" "What if it's being mass produced?" "What if it's as close as possible because it's really just someone painting over a print of your photograph?"

All those "what ifs" are showing the process to be less and less interesting.

Expand my exposure by someone using my photographs as a paint-by-number kit? Hell no.

 

[limr]

Thanks for the feedback. Keep in mind that it's "not" art in the way that the printer printing your photograph is not doing art. As I posted earlier, what if the painting effect was placed on top of your photo to produce a painted look while trying to keep as much of the artistic composition of your original photo?

There are some reasons why one might opt to outsource the painting. It can be produced at lower costs, broadening your exposure and allowing your art to affect more people, and letting those less well off to afford your photos as paintings. It also reduces overhead for you, in that you don't have to deal with customer service, procurement, supply chain, etc, so that you can focus on what you're good at: your photography, instead of production.

I guess your point is that you'd rather maximize your personal brand than to maximize short term revenues (as would be achieved by lowering the cost to purchase your works)? That being said, what about limited runs and custom pricing that you set? We most likely won't design the service to pre-pay the artist in any way, and paintings would be produced on-demand.

This sounds to me like someone trying really really REALLY hard to convince photographers that it's all about helping them, when really it's about somebody else making money from the photographer's work and China's cheap labor. Seriously, the more "options" I read about, the less I would want to be part of it.

 

[robbins.photo]

And quite frankly, even if they are handpainted in a very technical sense of "someone's hand put some paint on a surface," the more I hear about this process, the less I would want to be part of it. "What if it's not really 'art' per say, but just a technical process?" "What if it's being mass produced?" "What if it's as close as possible because it's really just someone painting over a print of your photograph?"

All those "what ifs" are showing the process to be less and less interesting.

Expand my exposure by someone using my photographs as a paint-by-number kit? Hell no.

Well at first this sounded interesting, at least to me - I mean as an amateur the thought of making a little extra money here and there was of interest particularly if I really didn't have to do much in the way of marketing, etc. But the more I hear about this the less I like what I hear, sounds to me like they are going to be marketing these to folks as "handpainted works of art" when in truth they are just printouts that have been retouched so they look handpainted.

That pretty much kills any interest I might have, because frankly they'll be advertising a product that they won't actually be delivering if such is the case. I realize the OP supposedly posted this originally as market research, but honestly the responses received about the process and most of the other details don't just seem sketchy, they seem downright evasive.

So yes, even though I don't have a brand I need to protect and no intention of turning pro, well, ever.. lol - I've pretty much lost any interest I might have had at this stage.

 

[BlackSheep]

Thanks for the support. Short answer: they're painted in China. But we have over 70% net promoter score so the quality perception must be there.

Long answer: existing painting services are operating a price fixing ring, or at least such a ring has threatened us revealing they are price fixing. They mostly paint in China as well, but they do huge markups because people perceive art as inherently expensive. Truth is, there are lots of technical artists, especially in China, who make a living not necessarily doing "art" but practicing painting as a technical skill, which isn't that expensive.

I would kindly ask everyone just assume that the paintings are very good quality, and give feedback based on that assumption.

Bolding mine - I personally would not be comfortable with being involved with a situation like this.

I have had local artists use my photographs as base material for their paintings, but the final product was their work and their work only. Their paintings were not a mass-market copy of my image and were not sold as that, which is quite a different situation from what the OP is proposing.

If I was interested in mass-marketing my brand/name/photos (which is what the OP is selling), then I would skip the paintings completely, and just sell my photos as gift cards, post cards, calendars, mugs, etc. etc. etc.

 

[photoguy99]

This feels like a guy who is at the very beginning of drafting a business plan. There are certain resources available, namely technically skilled painters available at - in the western world - extremely low prices. He's trying to see if there's some motel that appeals to photographers and getting very little traction here.

OP: TPF is a particularly poor venue for the sort of question, for a variety of reasons. You should probably be looking in to stock photos, as well as trying to find forums where the stock photo people talk about these things.

Stock photo people in today's world are very comfortable licensing appealing photos for a variety of consumer uses, at quite low rates. TPF leans in, um, let's say less pragmatic and more argumentative directions.