Calculating Gallery Pricing

Artists (or anyone who sells through a gallery or business that takes a commission)

Here's a formula you can use to price your work so that you end up with what you want for it once the gallery takes its commission.

Let's say you want to make $325 on a painting, and the gallery takes a 40% commission on the sale. If you price it at $325, once the gallery takes their 40%, ($130) you end up with $195.00 - Nowhere near $325.

If you simply add the commission percent to your price, you'll still end up with less that what you expected.
Add the 40% commission, and you get $455.00: $325.00 + 40% ($130) = $455.00
But, if you price your work at $455.00, you end up with just $273.00 after commission: $455.00 - 40% ($182.00) = $273.00

So, how would you end up with $325 after the sale?
You'd need to price the work at $541.67 to end up with $325.00 after the sale.

Here's the trick!

Divide by the _remainder_ of 100% minus the gallery's commission.

In this example, you'd need to divide your price by 60% (.6), because the gallery takes 40%. (100% - 40% = 60%)

If the commission is 50%, divide by .5

If the commission is 35%, divide by .65

If the commission is 25%, divide by .75

etc.

x ÷ r = p
where x= the price you want, r= the remainder of (100% - commission%) and p= the price you list

Here's the formula for this example: $325.00 ÷ .6 = $541.67
So: $541.67 - 40% ($216.67) = $325.00

Here's another example:

If I want to make $100 on a painting, and the gallery takes a 15% commission:

100 ÷ .85 = $117.65

Of course, I'd round the prices off to the nearest $5.

Download PDF: Calculating Gallery Pricing

Ocean Acidification Illustration - Coming to Seattle

So far, this illustration has been picked up 3 times since it was published in E Magazine back in 2012. Once by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, once by an Australian publication whose name escapes me at the moment, and most recently, by the NSF funded series QUEST, The Science of Sustainability, on KCTS TV in Seattle. I guess the illustration works. :-)

Thank you, Tamora Pierce!

Tamora Pierce, NY Times best selling author of Young Adult Fiction, animal lover, crazy lady and creator of magical universes just bought one of my framed limited edition prints: Old Pueblo, Ranchos de Taos, NM. - Print No. 1 of 200. I delivered it to her yesterday.

So now, by virtue of that sale, and my longstanding relationship with that other famous author/friend/client/universe creator Bruce Coville, I'm also kinda famous -- by proxy.

A few years back, I did the cover and packaging for Tammy's written for audio (later published in paperback) story Melting Stones (produced by Full Cast Audio). The paperback version got a different cover, done by another artist. Publishing houses like to do that. Change the covers. Guess it's a marketing thing. Tammy confesses that she likes my cover a lot better. Me too. :-)

Read about Tammy, and her books here:
www.tamorapierce.com/

Then, read her books!!
She's written a lot of books!

I have a Byline

I've been working with the Adirondack Explorer since the very beginning. I've done a lot of illustrations for them over the past 15 years. I've been doing the layout and illustrations for the Outdoor Skills page in the back for each issue, and now, I'm doing the writing for that page as well. So now, I have my own byline! Woo hoo! Check out the Explorer... it's a great publication about all things Adirondack!

Ocular Inserter 3D Model & Render

This is an illustration I did for Fingerpaint Marketing. It's an Ocular Inserter, a device used to deliver medications to the inside of the eye. Modeled and rendered in Strata Studio CX 7. Straight render, no post work.

3d SketchFab Test

Alien Head by jerryrussellart on Sketchfab

Modeled this in Strata Sculpt 3D. You should be able to rotate this model in the viewer. If this works, I'll upload more models. I use 3D software for technical illustration projects and sometimes to create my own reference for digital paintings.
Strata Sculpt 3D is an online 3D modeling program that works like sculpting with clay, sort of. This alien head started out as a sphere.

If you have the right graphics processor, you should be able to rotate and zoom the model above. Your graphics card needs to suport WebGL. (My MacBookPro does).

Studio309 West

Studio309 West is up and running. It's my new painting studio with gallery space where I can display and sell my original paintings, limited edition prints, cards and other artsy stuff.

If you visit, use the side entrance, right there next to the big banner that says "ART Studio and Gallery". I'm upstairs in the loft, as I should be. The spaces below are available for rent. I'm really hoping someone will open a coffee shop right below me. The area really needs a cozy coffee shop. Especially one I can walk to, which would be easy if it was just one flight of stairs below me.

Studío 309 is located at 1987 Rt. 31, in Lakeport (Chittenango on your GPS), on the south shore of Oneida Lake. Twenty-five minutes from Syracuse.

GPS Coords: 43.14541, -75.86543

Hours: Thursday and Friday, 10am - 4pm
or by appointment

www.studio309.com

It's a Special Award!

So, I get this email today, and it explains that I've been selected by my associates and colleagues, (and an internal committee, and some online stuff) to receive a special award, chosen just for STUDIO 309,

Earlier this year, I sent a notification email to you recognizing that Studio 309 has been selected for the 2012 Best of Liverpool Awards in the Graphic Design Services category by the Liverpool Award Program committee.  Our selection of your company is a reflection of the hard work of not only yourself, but of many people that have supported your business and contributed to the subsequent success of your organization. Congratulations on joining such an elite group of small businesses. In recognition of your achievement, blah, blah, blah . . . http://liverpool.award-program-2012a.net/

Ooh! A prize!
Of course, whenever I see "You've been chosen..." I fire up Google and start tracing the scam back to its roots. This is, in fact . . . a SCAM. A ruse. A gambit.
The "award-program" website was launched back in July and has since been selling bogus awards to unsuspecting "winners". Now, if you just want a prize with your name on it (likely misspelled), this is one way to get one.
The "fill-in-the-blank.award-program-2012a.net" people don't know me or my company from Adam Ant, but they sure wanna sell me a prize! Maybe there's a 2-for-1 deal.
Now, if it was a Leg Lamp, I'd be all in! That's a special award!!

I'm all over E

My illustration is on the cover of E Magazine this month. My work is also on the inside, with a spot for E Word and 2 large infographics for the feature article about the Changing Ocean Chemistry.

I've been working with E for 15 years. 

Homage to Johnny Hart

Visit E Magazine's site

It's All About Me

I am tickled, and honored.
I've been doing illustrations for the Adirondack Explorer for over 14 years. And now, my friends at the Explorer have just released an anthology of some of those illustrations in a lovely 50 page book titled "A Jerry Russell Retrospective". Each page includes an illustration and a brief synopsis of the article that it accompanied in the original issue. (sample pages below)

You can get your own FREE copy when you subscribe to the Explorer.
http://www.adirondackexplorer.org/index.php

Space Cadet Illustration, Step-by-step

Space Cadet: by Robert Heinlein. 

This is another cover painting for a Full Cast Audio package.

This is the finished cover art.

Concept sketch & Comp.

This is the rough concept; the initial sketch, and the comp (comprehensive) that I presented to the client. They liked the concept, so I started exploring composition & lighting.

 I built a helmet and a rough hatch, and posed a model in 3D software so I could explore the composition, lighting, and camera angles. The helmet gave me good reference for reflections, and shadows on the face.

Here's another angle, which I kind of liked. We decided we wanted the boy facing more toward the viewer.

Here's the final pencil sketch which I scanned and placed on a colored background in Photoshop. The colored background shows through in places in the final art, and helps tie everything together. I drew the space suit based on several reference photos I have on hand, plus the helmet I built in Strata 3D. The story refers to the helmet as a "fish bowl".

Beginning the painting with the face, which went through several updates throughout the painting process. I decided I didn't like the "accordion" neck of the space suit, so I painted over it with fabric.

A closeup of the panting further along. I used a Wacom graphics tablet and Photoshop CS5. Most of the panting was done with one brush, a pastel-like brush that gives some texture to the brush strokes.

The final, un-cropped painting.

[click on an image to view larger]

Giant Hogweed

Another one for the Adirondack Explorer. Giant hogweed is a very large (some over 20 feet tall), noxious cousin of Queen Anne's Lace.

Sea Shepherd

This was for the JAN/FEB issue of E Magazine. The article is about the Sea Shepherd (as seen on Animal Planet's Whale Wars), a group who uses some extreme measures to fight against illegal whaling. The wave in the image is based on a well known Japanese watercolor. The Sea Shepherd regularly goes up against Japanese whaling ships which are in violation of international whaling laws established to protect threatened or endangered species and prevent overfishing.

1. Sketch  2. Final art

This is the concept sketch I sent to the client. Normally, rough concepts are -- rough, but I was pretty confident that the idea would fly,  so I went to a tighter sketch that I could use as a guide for the final art.

Painted in Photoshop

Freshwater Sponges

Who knew? Evidently, freshwater sponges live in cold streams in the Adirondacks. Here's an illustration I did for the upcoming issue of Adirondack Explorer about the subject. The colors are very saturated and brighter than they appear in print. This is intentional so that on newsprint, the colors don't look too dull.
1. Sketch 2. Line art  3. Final art.

Concept sketch

Line art

Final art. Line art is scanned and color is added in Photoshop.

New Heinlein cover, just completed

Just finished this illustration for Full Cast Audio's edition of Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets. The dragon in the background is self-named Sir Isaac Newton. He's a resident of Venus, and that device on his neck is a "voder" which translates his speech into other languages. That's Don in the foreground, the hero of the story. He's 17 or 18 and was born in space. He's stuck in the middle of an interplanetary battle.
Heinlein's character descriptions were un-characteristically vague in this book, so I had to do a lot of making stuff up. Making stuff up is fun, but I try to be accurate to the story, so I had to decipher a lot of little clues in the story to try to get a handle on how Heinlein envisioned the characters.

See the full illustration on my website click here

JR

Rod Walker, as Heinlein Intended

"The recent release of “Tunnel In the Sky” by Full Cast Audio brought an opportunity to to present the character of Rod Walker as Heinlein intended him to be–as a young, black man." —The Heinlein Prize Trust
Read the full article here


The original cover:

Some of the print covers for Tunnel (click to view larger):

New web site is up!

After way too long, I've finally revamped my website from the ground up. It's more streamlined, and much easier to update and navigate.

Check it out at: www.jerryrussell.com

Oops!!

So . . . I just finished this cover illustration for Full Cast Audio's recording of Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein. I was pretty happy with the result. Certainly more pleased with it than some of the paperback covers I've seen for this title.



A few days after submitting the art to the publisher, we get this email from a fellow with the Heinlein Prize Trust, explaining that, although they are very pleased with the cover, there is one problem with it. The boy depicted, Rod, who is the book's main character, is supposed to be, wait for it. . .

black.

Well, the boy on my cover certainly is not. YIPE!

In my defense...
Heinlein never mentions in the story what Rod's race is, and the couple clues he did include were very subtle. In fact –- every other cover done for this story (and there are a lot), depicts a white boy -- or in cases where the illustrator evidently skimmed the text instead of reading the story (several), -- a white man.

I read the book. I recommend it highly!

The only real clue in the text -- and this only applies to a pre 1970's mindset -- is that the girl in the story that everyone assumes will eventually end up as Rod's girlfriend, is black. So, by 1955 YA publishing standards (when this story was written) Rod must certainly also be black.

It is entirely possible (even probable) that Heinlein specifically didn't call out Rod's race so that readers in the 50s -- naturally assuming that Rod was white because he was the main character--- would be shocked by his interest in a black girl. Or, they would be shocked by the fact that the main character was black. Either way, Heinlein makes his point about racism.

I wasn't shocked, either way. Although, I did think that it was pretty forward-thinking of Heinlein to write a black and white relationship into a 1950s novel. But then, Heinlein was a forward-thinking kind of guy.

Before I start working on sketches for a cover. . .
I read the book. I also look at other covers to see what's been done so I don't come up with something too close to an existing concept. The paperback I read showed a white boy on the cover, as did all the covers I found. So before I even started reading the story, my preconception was that Rod was white.

Damn it! I hate being so far off target, but Heilnein, you set me up!!

SO... I scurried and did some quick repainting on the cover to make Rod black, and shot it off in an email to Bruce Coville (owner of Full Cast Audio, and a pretty darned famous author to boot). Bruce loved it and forwarded it to the Heinlein Trust.


They are quite pleased with the change. We'll use the new cover on the second run. Since these are produced in short runs, there won't be too many "wrong" covers of mine floating around. Maybe they'll become collectors items!

click image for larger view

Score!

Here's a little tool I fashioned for scoring paper/cardboard prior to folding it. It makes for a clean, precise fold.
Cut off the end of a paper clip and clamp it in the business end of an X-acto handle. Use this tool to score along the fold lines of your project. Place a piece of mat board underneath the paper you're scoring to get a deeper score.

Wild Thing

This is the Max costume I made for Andrew when he was a seedling. He wore it to bed. A lot. I still have it around here somewhere. I think. I made several costumes for him when he was a tyke, including a full Renaissance costume for Fairy Tale Theater.