Never clean the house

A visiter to the house saw a part-finished drawing of a dog on the floor and a price flyer lying around. She took the flyer home and would now like me to do a drawing of her mothers dog for Christmas. And my mother tells me to tidy up after myself more...

In addition to this, she would also like me to do a drawing of her cat. Eek.

Dogs - yes, horses - yes, cats - ...?

I tried to draw a cat a long time ago, and it went badly. Cats are too fluffy, too small and too hard to photograph. I am not the cat whisperer. But I will try, and have warned the client that it might not come out actually looking like a cat. Luckily she knows cats aren't my forte and understands I find them hard to draw, and will be perfectly happy with just the dog drawing if it all goes wrong once more.

Thank god for understanding clients!

Riding school success

My very supportive local riding school (the one Jester the horse belongs to) offered to let me advertise my website on their Facebook page. I have already drawn several of the Turpin's Lodge horses for clients, so hopefully this bring in a few more commissions. I hope so, as it means I get to go down to the yard a lot more to take photos and stuff ponies with polos!

www.turpinslodge.co.uk:

New Website!

After testing my website out on my parents (I wanted to say elderly there, but my mum would kill me), I decided that a website revamp was in order. My original website was created for a University project and so it had to be finished before it had all the pages/information up and also before I had bought my own URL. www.clairetaylorartist.com incase you were wondering.

Since I had added so much more stuff to my website since the uni deadline, I now had far too many pages for someone (like my *cough* elderly *cough* parents to look through). It needed to be simpler to look through and easier to find relevant information.

Here is ClaireTaylorArtist.com mark 2:

Snazzy.

Prints for sale

After I put a picture of the recent dog commission on my Facebook page, I had an enquiry from another person asking whether I do prints of my work. Yes I do! But I hadn't thought about making a 'Prints for sale page' on my website. Duh. So I quickly made a new page on my website and sent her the link where she could see all of the prints I have for sale along with their prices. Phew, that was close.

The letterbox dilemma

Problem.

Big problem.

It turns out a lot of letter boxes won't fit an A4 envelope through them. Oh dear. Because the drawing of the Airedales was for a birthday surprise, the client and I decided that hand delivering it would be better that leaving it to the mercy of the Royal Mail. I popped round, happy as Larry, only to discover that their letter box wasn't big enough to fit the drawing through. Fortunately I could tell someone was in and so I left the envelope outside the door, knocked and ran. Scary stuff. I immediately messaged the client telling her where I had left it and luckily it was her who was in, so the surprise was still a, well, surprise. Phew.

For future deliveries, I have decided that I will hand deliver local commissions, and place thick card around the drawings if they are sent by post so that they can't be folded to fit through a small letter box.

Working in Wales

From my Facebook page/website I was contacted by an old friend wanting a drawing of her dogs for her mums birthday, so of course I said yes! she emailed me some pictures of her Airedale Terriers and I printed them out ready to take to Wales with me. (who ever said business had to get in the way of a holiday!?)

Here is the drawing of the lovely dogs:

And here is a picture of me and my mum galloping along a Welsh beach, because even my holidays have to contain some sort of horsey activity!

Art in the office

After the Crown Farm event, Janet Badger (remember her?) said I could put some of my artwork and business cards in her office at the Crown Farm livery yard. I think I will go for the German shorthaired pointer (dog and pencil) and Imperial Cavalier (horse and pastel). This means I can show everything I can do in two drawings.

GSP - Dog and pencil:

Imperial Cavalier - Horse and pastel:

Now lets just hope the Livery owners at Crown Farm want drawings of their horses!

Crown Farm ODE

Here the gazebo set up at Crown Farm all ready for the next days event:

Well look who it is!

This is a picture of me in my half price gazebo at the Crown Farm one day event. Thanks for taking the picture, mum!

I had a fantastic day (and not just because my stall was right in front of the show jumping). I gave out lots of business cards and price flyers, and had some really great comments about my drawings and also my prices.

We also got money off a bacon sandwich because we had a trade stand. It's the little things in life...

I bought a gazebo

In preparation for the Crown Farm event, I started by buying a small gazebo (half price - get in!) and had prints of some of my favourite artworks professionally printed. I also bought frames to put some display pieces in, and enlarged one of my price posters to A3 size so you could see it more clearly as you were walking past my stall. I chose to sell both pictures of horses (it was a horse event after all) and also some of my Wind in the Willows illustrations, as I thought these would also appeal to people at the event.

Here are the pieces I had printed to sell:

Kauto Star and Ruby Walsh:

Shires:

Ratty Plans a Picnic:

Badger Reads te Telegraph:

My first trade stand

I bumped into Janet Badger. Who is Janet Badger you ask? Well, she owns a fantastic local farm/livery yard and runs horse events on her Crown Farm estate. I told her about my new enterprise and she invited me to come along with my own stall to the next Crown Farm event. Wahey! Cue lots of panicking about finding a gazebo and working out how to advertise my business without seeming completely clueless!

Crown Farm Website http://www.crownfarm.co.uk:

Drawings everywhere

To make both my new Facebook page and my website look a little more full, and to give more examples of my work, I decided to draw a few more horses and dogs to give a clearer view of my drawing style. I drew examples in pencil and pastel, as these are the two mediums I offer on my commission price list (and the only two mediums I'm any good at!).

A Labrador drawn specifically for my Facebook page/website:

A German Shorthaired Pointer, again for my Facebook page/website:

And a drawing of event rider Mary King's horse 'Imperial Cavalier'. Well, if you're going to draw a horse for show, you may as well make it a famous one...:

My new Facebook page

Next I decided to make my very own 'Claire Taylor Artist' Facebook page. This way people could see examples of my work and be able to message me all in the same place, and on a more personal level. I wrote about myself and put a link to my website in the description, and added folders of my artwork so people can skim through and get a idea of my style more quickly.

A screenshot of the main admin page:

The 'About' section:

My albums full of my work:

It's not priceless yet

Next thing I did was to print out price flyers for my commissions, and business cards. I created  and printed the flyers myself as I had some left over flyer paper that I could use, but I chose to have my business card printed professionally. I used www.zazzle.co.uk as they were reasonably priced and provided a template for the business cards that I could place my own drawings onto.

Here is my home made flyer (note the logo at the top matches the one on my website):

And here is one of the double sided business cards I had printed professionally:

My favourite artist

The first thing I had to think about was how to price my drawings fairly. I'm obviously new to this, so I didn't want to charge astronomical prices, but at the same time, I had to cover material costs. I researched different artists who do a similar thing, and worked out my prices from there.

Here is one of my favourite animal artists of all time: Mary Herbert. Needless to say I don't charge as much as her!

http://www.portra.co.uk

And so we begin

Last year, I really started to enjoy drawing peoples animals/pets for them. It began when I drew one of the horses from my local riding stables for fun and posted it on their Facebook page, and from there, the head groom asked me to draw several pictures of her horses and more and more people became interested in my work. I decided to use this summer as an opportunity to continue building my own small business to get my name out into the big wide world. Oh, and to make some money!

Here is Jester, a 15hh Pony x Shire. He likes polos and a good scratch on the neck:

And here is the quick, rough drawing I did of him that started my little business:

Thanks Jester!