Getting a Handle on Your Artist

I have a theory on why so many painted miniatures you see are either amazing or terrible, with very little in between. Some of this might be controversial, so we’ll start with the easy part, terrible.

If you don’t have the skill, and you either fail to acquire it or fail to compensate for it, you simply won’t end up with a good product. From what I’ve seen, a skilled artist can take bad paints and still make something impressive. If you lack skill like I do, then you need paints and techniques you can reliably execute. I don’t think many people would disagree with that.

What I do think people might disagree with is this, there often isn’t much of a middle ground because a good artist will always want to make the piece better, without thinking about the bottom line.

My wife has probably thought of eight different ways to make our Fire Elementals look better. Anyone would. My uncle Jim even suggested putting magenta into the recesses to get a deeper red. He wasn’t wrong. It would have looked better.

This isn’t just a problem for artists, it’s something that directly affects whether a piece stays affordable or slowly prices itself out of reach.

Every time those ideas come up, I’m the one dumping the bucket of cold water.
“Okay… and how much extra time would that take?”

Right now, that miniature is budgeted at 20 minutes of labor at $20 an hour. If we add 10 minutes, that’s another $3.33 in cost. That means at least a $5 increase in retail, and more realistically closer to $7. I’m fairly sure that when I explain this, all anyone hears is Charlie Brown’s parents talking. Then comes the sad look. Again.

If we’re going to make a change, it either needs to replace something we’re already doing or be small enough that we can absorb it. The idea might be great, but we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Three small improvements later and suddenly we’ve turned a $30 miniature into a $60 piece and blown the price point.

That doesn’t mean we never improve things, it just means every change has to earn its place.