Queen Visits Leicester

Last month, The Queen made a stop off in our home town of Leicester to tour some of our newest buildings. Six years since she last paid visit to the country, her Royal Highness came a visit some of Leicesters latest creations - the Highcross Shopping Centre, The Curve theatre and a new Leicester University building. Arriving by her royal carriage in Leicester's London Road, the visit took her past our HQ a few minutes up the road.

At WHoArtNow however, we were most interested in her stop, and official opening of the Leicester Grammar School Complex just outside the city Centre.

Back in the summer of 2008, the headmaster of LGS contacted us with a brief. In moving from their city centre location to a new purpose built site meant they would be losing a lot of their history. We were commissioned to photograph some of the older historic parts of LGS, and produce some Canvas Art to hang in the reception.

As you can see from the image (right) the finished product looked fantastic hanging over the gap. The head master and all of the staff were very happy with the quality of the art work. Sadly though, we could not get a comment from the Queen or Prince Phillip!

Introducing Framed Art From WHoArtNow

Here at WHoArtNow we are always designing now artwork to add to our catalogue. Now were into 2009 we've launched framed art.

Taking some of our most popular images, we print them on Hahnemuhle textured 320gsm Acid Free Archive Museum paper which is one of the highest quality paper available. Many regard this as the best printing paper you can buy today.

To launch this range, we've chosen 3 frames that best suit our current style. The Gold Leaf Fame (see right) is the over the top frame. It's bold and ornate and works perfectly with out 2009 Interior Trend Prediction Timeless Curve. These frames are made from Fir-Wood with a Red-wood face and a MDF backing.


Next up is the Matt Black frame. This is the generic black faced MDF backed frame. It might be popular but that's only because of just how many different styles of artwork work in this frame.

The black frame is a solid 2" wide all the way round, Images come with a range of border sizes depending on the base colours of the images. The Manga image (left) is a dark image so has a small white border.

The Matt Black Frame works well in Timeless Curve, but can also work with Let's Play depending on your choice of colours. It's worth noting that the black frame does not work with all colours, browns clash.


Last but by no means least is the Solid Oak Frame. This 2" wide solid oak frame has no MDF backing, it's the real deal. Each frame is unique because of differences in grain, and of course knots!

This classic frame works well with organic images, especially photographs. Designing an interior around our 2009 Interior Trend Homemade? Well this is the frame for you as you can see by the sunflower photo (right)

All frames use real glass to help keep your image from UV fade and to help with keeping it looking clean.

At present, we have a small selection of our artwork in the Framed Art Prints section, this will grow over time. If you like an image off the website, but you don't see it in the framed section, give us a call and we'd be happy to print and frame any image. We are also accepting custom image commissions for framed art.

How To Sell Your Art (pt3)

How To Sell Your Art (pt3)

Continuing the article on selling your art, comes the third part in this series. Outlining briefly some of the v2.0 websites that as an artist, you can utilise to get your art out there to achieve notoriety, and even earn you some dollar.

DevinatART

DeviantART is one of the biggest websites on the Internet, they've been going for a little over 8 years and as you maybe able to tell from their name, They specialise in art. Early on in 2008 they rocketed past the 50 Million deviation mark!(currently (October 2008) stand at a little over 66 Million) They regularly receive more than 20 Million Unique visitors each month and have over 7 million registered members. They often appear in Alexa top 100 websites for traffic and more importantly, reach between 0.5% and 1% of ALL Internet users! With traffic like that you can't afford to NOT have an account, after all, its free!

DeviantART also features a Print Shop where you can buy and sell art from the other users. Its a great feature of the site because it gives you an idea of how popular your art may become. The basic print shop account is free with a premium service on offer for a small fee. You do however get a wide range of media to sell on. Canvas prints, glossy photos and matte prints are all available and you can sell your art on any or all of them.

A premium Print account cost $30 (£15) for a year which may seem a lot, but you can make a lot more money. After base costs, you then take 50% of what's left for yourself.

Below is an example of the difference between a standard account and a premium print account.

Wrapped Canvas Image 40" x 30"

Standard account -

Base price - $167.93 (£70)

Cost to Buy - $285.50 (£145)

Your cut - $23.51 (£13)

Premium Account -

Base price - $167.93 (£70)

Cost to Buy - $285.50 (£145)

Difference - £117.57 (£60)

Your cut - $58.75 (£30)

You can't deny there is a huge difference in the amount you earn. There are other advantages to using the premium account, larger upload image for larger files, 3 months DeviantART subscription and the option to buy your own artwork at base costs make it an even better deal. Be cautious though, don't jump straight in with a premium account, start off with the standard account, make some friends, get some fans and watchers and when you get some sales invest in the premium account.

The Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi gallery is one of the largest websites in the world (October 22nd 13:22 pm GMT – last 24 hours – 72,648,783 – Alexa ranked number 232) Even though its a .co.uk site, its open to all and its also free and very simple to use. There's no way of making money off the site, but its a great place to have an on-line portfolio especially with those kind of traffic figures. There's some very well known artists on there, as well as a large following of students who are trying to get some constructive criticism on their projects.

FlickR

This is another well known art and photography site. Originally designed to share photos around the world. Like the Saatchi Gallery, you can't sell through Flickr, but you can use it as a portfolio site or as an addition to a DeviantART account or your own web page or blog.

There are some great features including a slide show box you can mount on your own sight or blog. This allows the user to interact and scroll through your images easily, without taking up to much room. Flickr, like DeviantART gets on average 20 Million unique views a month so there's plenty of people out there to find your art, appreciate it and hopefully buy it!

Ebay

One of the most well known websites in the world. You can of course sell anything (within reason) on Ebay, its simple to set up and you may already have an account so selling could be really easy! There are of course drawbacks with Ebay.

Its not an art based site, this means that searching 'ART' in Ebay, you end up with over 400,000 individual auctions and obviously your art will get lost in there! You can attract people with more defined and specific key words, but that's a lot of art (and after spending 3 minutes looking, I do use that term "Art" loosely!) There's nothing against selling on Ebay, but if you plan to take this route, set up a portfolio site first, get some fans and find out if anyone would be interested in buying your work. If you get a strong "yes" from your fans, post the auction and let them know about it. If you have people who already know your work looking, the price could go up more than you thought.

This site is great if you already have a lot of one off canvas art work that you want to sell.Use the money from any sale to invest in your own site or more materials and supplies for any future products. You need to treat your art as a business and more often than not, most of the money in a new business goes straight back into the company to help it grow.