Interestingly, there are no rules in art, only materials. You have the opportunity to express yourself the way you like.
Henry Ward Beecher says, “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
Starting a craft painting business can let you share your joy of painting with the world, showcase your talents as an artist and have a buoyant account at the same time.
Who can do the business?
The most important criteria for whoever wants to be a craft painter are your sincerity to be an artist, concentration and ingenuity. You must also be a thinker. People place value on artists.
Start-up cost
The start-up cost for painting business is considerably low. You can start with as little as N50 to buy pencil and cardboard. Yet you can start with hundreds of thousands, depending on the level at which you want to start.
The basic materials needed are: cardboard, which is about N20 per sheet; HP and 2B pencil, HB costs N5 to N10 while 2B costs N20 to N40; water colour, which costs about N2,500 to buy the small pack of 12 colours.
If you are starting on a large scale, then you need a studio. It is expedient you locate your studio in an environment where intellectuals stay, within hotel or stadium premises or nearby.
Learning
The best teacher of art, they say, is you. Yet you need to learn the techniques and the applications, and also know the materials and when to use them. This makes learning imperative, even to the most talented artists. Learning will tell an artist not to use pencil to sketch on the wall, but to use either charcoal or chalk.
You can learn from professionals and also from school of art or institutions. It may take you between three to six months to learn the basics in painting, if you are learning from professionals, while you will spend between two to four years in a formal school or institution.
Meanwhile, art is not what you learn and know everything at once. You continue to grow in it. People will criticise your works, and because you want to please them, you will continue to improve on your skills.
You do not necessarily need formal education to do the business because you can get the training in your local language.
Planning and research
Do a detailed research on the kinds of paintings your prospective clients will like, whether traditional (paintings from culture of a people) or contemporary (paintings from sceneries). Then do paintings in line with it.
Some people are not artists, but they have interest in art, so they discover artists, make an arrangement with them to produce while they market it. They open a gallery to sell art works. They know the kind of art work their customers want. Look for these collectors, familiarise yourself with them and make a good arrangement with them.
Cost and potential earning
Cost of producing a painting is drastically low compared to the price you sell it. It is not what you have on the surface of the canvass or card that you are selling, but your creativity, idea and your ingenuity. With about N2,500 you can do a painting, which you can sell for N50,000 and above, depending on the value you place on your creativity, the value your customers place on arts and where you are selling it.
You can use the pencil alone to do portraits on a card and sell for thousands of naira. Some artists practise monochrome (painting in black and white). They buy ink for N500; a sheet of cardboard for N20; pencil for between N5 to N40 and a frame for N1,200, and sell the product for at least N15,000.
Note that you don’t sell your painting at roadside and expect to sell at encouraging price.
Reputation and marketing
Your creativity and ingenuity will build a good reputation and market for your painting works. Every painting work bears the imprint (name and phone number) of the artist, so whoever sees your works and appreciates them can call you for more works. Painting collectors can also contact you, make arrangement with you and become your marketer.
You can also contact local craft stores and fabric centers, provide them with brochures or flyers to hang at their location to help advertise your works.
You can as well sell your works at conferences, exhibitions, trade shows while sales for painting works is mostly on the increase during festive periods.
Hotel, which is a good component of tourism, is a good market for painting works, also tourist centres, and wherever there are expatriates or foreigners. The intellectuals pay good money for arts, so you can have brisk sales in an environment full of intellectuals.
The good news is that every unsold artwork is like money in the bank, because they will soon turn into money.
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