...in working with an artist,especially a muralist, is that you have an idea of what you want. What do you want to see? Have pictures.What do you want the work to feel like? Have you seen examples of something like it before?
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The most important thing...
...in working with an artist,especially a muralist, is that you have
an idea of what you want. What do you want to see? Have pictures.What
do you want the work to feel like? Have you seen examples of something
like it before?
Get the artist
to do preliminary drawings. This is basic discipline. If
the artist can't do a decent job on scale drawings can you really expect
him/her to be able to organize a decent job on your walls? However,
this is not like an estimate for a fence or pest removal. Be fair.
You don't work for free, neither should a qualified artist. While the cost
of plans is usually taken care of in the fee for a project I usually charge
a very modest fee for drawings when I am not assured of getting a job ($200.00
to $300.00 or so). If things don't work out you didn't cheat the artist
and they have no good reason to be angry with you.
What is it going to cost? I charge between $7.00 and $25.00 per
square foot of wall space, depending on how involved the artwork is.
(The
work in my Kid's Room page is about $10.00 psf. The "castle in the
sky" picture on this page, pretty close to oil painting quality and done
under the close supervision of an interior designer on a multi-million
dollar home, would be in the $25.00 psf range) Don't know
what to expect from some other artist? Tell the artist what you think
is fair. Will he/she work for that? Work out the price you will pay ahead
of time. The artist may be uncomfortable working in this way, but experience
tells me this is the only way to go.
Well sure, artists are not like most other business people, but if we
can't work with those other business people we will starve. We need to
be able to understand the discipline they expect of us. We artists must
also be able to explain the discipline we must apply to our work to achieve
the quality of work we want to produce. If a job should be allowed six
weeks the artist should be able to explain why it can't be done in six
days. If we think it must take six working days we shouldn't represent
it as being possible in two. (My longest job?
Seven months. The room in the kids rooms page took five working days.)
Finally...Be aware of the law. Copyright laws protect artists even if
they don't register their copyright right away. It is, for example, a very
bad idea to get a drawing from a more expensive artist reproduced by a
less expensive artist. You may own a painting or mural, but unless the
two of you have agreed specifically that you also own the imageit
is the property of the artist. If you want to send postcards with the
image of your mural to your friends work it out with the artist. I usually
just ask for an image credit if cards are not to be sold.
Contact Lee Emmerich Jamison.
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PO Box 265 Dodge, Texas. 77334