I have my sources...

I went over to Crown farm today to give Janet Badger some of my business cards to put in her office. However. She was so impressed with the drawings on my business cards (particularly the shires on the front) that she offered to put some in her tack room (you know, where the horsey people who want drawings of their ponies hang out) and she said she'd give one specifically to a lady who wants her dog drawn, but doesn't know who to get it done by...Well hello!

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!