Spotlight on Arsies !
When Martin asked me to write a few lines about me and my work as professional painter focused in commissions for companies, I must admit I felt little bit overwhelmed.
Well let me start for the
beginning. If anyone doesn’t know me (and it’s not hard as I
don’t use to move so much in forums or well, outside my own blog),
My name is Javier González, I’m Spanish professional miniature
painter since 2008 more or less… and let me say “more or less”
as I started as something close to a sizar for another painter’s
studio.
I think most of the
professionals have a semi-professional stage that could be from
several months to several years, depending if they want to do it as
living or they just have another job. In my case I was plumber and
self worker, and when crisis started my business crashed so I started
to paint full time each day trying to survive.
I started working with
Jose Manuel Palomares from who I learned a lot, but after a while I
decided to fly alone. I closed my connections with forums and other
painters for some months to reach my own painting style and started
to paint commissions without external influences. Was hard at the
beginning as I was slow painter and usually jobs were poorly paid,
but nobody said that beginnings are easy.
At this point I opened my
own blog which gives me today almost all my customers. Near 380.000
visits till now. I shared most of my works there and at last after a
few years working hard to make a name, to reach a quality level and
to earn a serious reputation I can say that I can work of my brushes
almost all year and sometimes I have 3 or 4 months of waiting list.
But you are reading this
to know how is the miniature world behind the scenes, not to know
about me aren’t you?
Well, usually the idea is
that professionals works almost all the time for companies. Well
maybe there is one or two, but at least in my case, private
collectors are the base of my work. That doesn’t mean a brand never
ask me, but first of all you should know that there are lot of small
brands outside trying to survive and nobody is going to be rich
because of that. Usually the small brands earn just enough to live
and they deserve respect because they work very hard, but usually
they can’t afford a first line painter for their miniatures, and
top brands usually have their owns on staff so don’t need
freelances like me.
In those cases a brand bet
for my work, I know that they are doing an effort, and they know that
I’m just trying to do my best, so it’s very strange to have
troubles. Usually everyone is very happy at the end.
Summarizing I can say that
artistic work is never a problem, everyone is an expert in what they
do, so sculptors don’t need much more than a concept and painters
usually don’t need more than a few lines with the global idea,
digital designers just need to crop the pictures and add a great
background and everything is quite pretty.
So, really which are the
problems of being professional? Well, I can say without doubts that
is the bureaucracy. It’s funny to explain your accountant what in
hell are you doing, but isn’t as funny when your accountant need to
explain in the tax office and nobody knows something as easy as sign
up your studio to work legally.
Later you have to pay lot
of money in taxes, need to do lot of papers, usually local laws are
not friendly with international ones. And believe me, I have lot of
international customers! And we do something “artistic” so there
are special laws that could be applied to us, but you can apply only
if the bureaucrat shift understand that, and everyone has his own
opinion because in deep, nobody f them understand our work!
At the end this is a
vocational work, people that work in the hobby do it because they
love it.
So please, next time you
think about asking a commission think that painter in the other side
of the email just want to do for you the best work as possible, and
he’s going to break his heart just to put a small piece of it in
your miniature. He’s going to work with love and care during weeks
looking at every small detail just trying to make all perfect.
Do you know any other job
where people try so hard to make you happy?
Thanks Javier for this article I really enjoyed it! It's really an honour that you wrote this article for our small blog!
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