Creating Opportunities
I update my website periodically to add new pieces to my gallery portfolio, products to the store, and articles I’ve written to my blog. In June of 2024, I added a page for those interested in hiring me to do commission work. Simply put, you can’t sell what you don’t offer. As I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom adding this page to my website, I figured that even if I don’t get a commission request anytime soon, at least the availability is there.
As an artist, I have mixed feelings about commission work. On one hand, it’s wonderful to know that people want to support your pursuit as an artist and enjoy your style to the point of wanting a piece to be on display in their own home. On the other hand, it means that the commissioned art I create will have an expectation to be a certain way, which may not always align with my creation process.
Strengths and Others
To avoid these “hypothetical” dilemmas, I’m tailoring my business so that it’s primarily sustained through selling originals, print sales, blogging, and being a content creator. Achieving success in my business with measurables I can reach through use of the internet, the “World Wide Web” if you will, lol. I enjoy chatting with people about my art, but I go through a whole process to be able to effectively communicate its inspiration, the creation process, and my portfolio as a whole. As an introvert, the more work I can do sitting by myself or with a close friend, the better. My neighborhood hosts a pop-up market once a month where vendors come to set up and sell and it seems to be very successful, but it’s just not usually my thing.
Balancing a 9-6
As I’m pursuing art, I also have a full-time job as a leasing manager for a fairly large apartment community in a busy city. My responsibilities as a leasing manager include many to-dos, one of which is to make sure each new move-in has a gift waiting for them in their apartment. My coworker and I have been wanting to include some type of sweet or savory treat to add to these sets of gifts but we hadn’t come across the right product that was custom, local, not readily perishable, and at a price point that would fit the budget.
One afternoon in the office, I was at my computer doing my usual job, and a call came through. It was a lady from the local company BeeHiveYourself. She mentioned having spoken to our community manager about an event including a honey tasting activity and as I was chatting with her I had a “lightbulb moment” - Honey would be the perfect addition to the move-in gifts! We scheduled a time for her and her husband to come to the office to facilitate a honey tasting for the team.
Honey, Honey
It was fabulous! I LOVE honeys and teas and there was quite the variety of flavors to try including a Cacao Infused Honey and Vanilla Bean Infused Honey which ended up being my favorites. She and her husband were lovely to talk with and educated us during the tasting on fun honey facts and their processes. We all ended up purchasing multiple jars of honey from them and bought a bulk order for the property.
Networking at Work
On a slow Saturday afternoon, the husband came to the office to deliver part of our honey order. As I was making polite conversation, I mentioned also being an artist and with him being quite the conversationalist and my excitement to talk about my art, we ended up chatting for a good little while. The main topic of conversation revolved around my goals as an artist. I explained my plan to create a business that’s primarily sustained through print sales, blogging, and being a content creator. He responded to this with an excellent point, mentioning that having one-on-one conversations with people interested in my work would allow for me to effectively build rapport as an artist within the local community. However, he suggested the execution of these one-on-one conversations be accomplished by setting up a booth at my neighborhood's pop-up market, or at other similar events.
Thoughts and Considerations
It’s in moments like this where I stop to consider alternative ways to accomplish a meaningful goal. I was already aware that having in person conversations with someone is a good way to build rapport. I have also already made up my mind that I don’t want to create a business model revolving around setting up at vendor markets. The fact still remains though that having in person conversations with people would allow me to effectively build rapport as an artist within the local community. So how can I do this? Oh right, by entertaining conversations like these!
Accepting Opportunities
We continue our conversation as we’re sitting at the leasing desk in the office and then he asks “Do you do commission pieces?”
“Yes!” I replied quickly without a second thought.
And so my second commissioned piece was placed.
He briefly described to me the design he had an idea for but left before we could solidify all of the specifics. Later I emailed him details on the commission process along with pricing and he responded with all the necessary details.
Specifically, these were mentioned from the prompt:
As a note, keep in mind my typical style as we go through this.
Hexagons to be a main part of the design along with bees
Various tones of honey colors based on make/infusion flavors
The hexagons as a background would be perfect
Colors would include some Reds, purples, chartreuse, yellows, Browns. All of these would have an Amber undertone.
We would prefer honey bees instead of bumblebees.
Eccentric or whimsical
Let the creative process begin!
Creating Honeycomb
I feel like this is the perfect scenario that aligns with my fear of commissioned art having an expectation to be a certain way, which doesn’t completely align with my creation process. As a creative problem solver though, there’s nothing I can’t make the best out of! From the start, the keywords I took away from this prompt were whimsical, hexagons, and honey bees.
Initial Ideas
I thought an outdoor scene would be fitting given the nature (lol) of the prompt. I tried to work through my imagination and I thought it would bee so cute for the bees to be flying around a honeycomb styled house in a valley of flowers.
As I sketched these ideas in a Procreate draft, I was also trying to figure out how I was going to paint a feature so intricate that the viewer may be able to distinguish a Bumble Bee from a Honey Bee. I used hexagons for the honeycomb house, added a flair of whimsicalness with the florals, and included honey bees - as to not confuse them with bumble bees. I drafted flowers to see which shapes I’d prefer to utilize here as well. I also experimented with golden tones of color to work into the composition. You can see from the chimney of the house is a puff of smoke that’s actually meant to be bee pollen and I think that’s just so cute!
My sketches will rarely be a miniature version of the final piece but come on, this was very obviously NOT it.
Conflicts
Problems:
No way I’m going to paint bees that intricately
No way I’m going to paint flowers that intricately
No way that bee house is going to come out looking decent
I was STRESSED but that’s alright. At this point in the process I’ve acknowledged the conflict and am able to start the resolution of it all.
I realized the mistake I made, I was not using a reference and I was trying too hard.
Resolutions
References are extremely important for pieces I create that are representational of something because I need to be able to visualize it with my physical eyes. Then I can recreate its concept with the imagination of my mind’s eye. To resolve this issue, I found images of pollen charts, fields of flowers, and honeycombs in the wild. The pollen chart helped me decide which variety of colors would best be used to represent honey. The pictures of flowers in a field gave me a better perspective of which colors I’d want to use for the flowers. Lastly, seeing honeycombs in the wild gave me the idea to picture a honeycomb coming off of a branch, but in my artistic style. Remember how I said My sketches will rarely be a miniature version of the final thing? Keep that in mind.
The Composition - Shapes
I finally figured out what the composition was going to be and then I transferred my idea to the canvas. I didn’t think the honeycomb stood out enough so I wanted to make it bigger. However, I didn’t want to erase the whole thing so I sketched over it thinking I’d just erase the smaller one after the fact. I actually really liked the way it looked so I decided to keep all of the new shapes that were created in its process.
The Composition - Colors
The next task was figuring out which colors to use. I mixed about 20 different amber shades and decided on a few of them for this specific design. I like creating symmetrical designs so using a random shade for each shape that broke up the hexagon was not aligned for the vision I had with this piece. Although the assignment was to include a multitude of amber shades, I decided to bring more color to the composition with the use of flowers in the fields - this also added to the whimsical character of the piece.
Once I determined my color palette, I started painting. The honeycomb, sun, tree, field, and sky were first. I use a variety of high quality acrylic paints to accomplish the shades I wanted to create. Then, I started painting the field of flowers.
Mixing Styles
The inspiration for the style of flowers in the field came from the idea of impressionist style paintings. I wanted it to be obvious that flowers were the subject matter, but I wanted their style to be more organic to contrast with the fundamentally geometric style of the honeycomb.
The concept of the bees was quite the challenge. I debated whether or not I wanted to embroider them with beads onto the canvas or if I wanted to sketch them on. Ultimately, I decided to allow their form to flow from the impressionist style of the flowers! I added a stinger to them so that they’d have more characteristics of honey bees than of bumble bees.
To finish the piece, I added a gloss coat, painted the edges, and added my signature.
I present to you: Honeycomb
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