A Little Market Research

So I had these cards printed by Moo with 12 of my paintings on. I figured they would come in handy if I wanted people to buy prints and the such like and also if I finally get my thing on with the BS9 Arts Trail. I couldn’t resist taking them to work yesterday and letting people choose the ones they liked. I’m not sure if I will use the results, and, if I do, whether I paint more of the ones people like or work harder at the ones that they don’t; I just thought I might get some interesting results.

So here they are: The cards were beautiful despite not costing a lot, the site was very easy to use and the results are very pleasing. Each box of cards contains paintings of the following and this is how they scored:

So what can I deduce from this?

The paintings submitted into the RWA Open, Eye Apples (accepted), Snowy Owl (rejected) and Waves (rejected) scored 0, 2 and 4 respectively showing that what the general public like and what grand art insitutions like are two very different things.

Snowy Owl, which is a very popular picture when seen large, isn’t quite so good small.

The scoring performers took the following hours to paint:

While non scorers took:

Showing there is inverse correlation between time to paint and popularity.

So what I really learned was landscapes were more popular than animals and pictures with people in aren’t popular at all unless you know the people involved. Of course this was taken from a small sample. Expect briefer updates in future as I bought a lot of cards.

The real result is, of course, that I will carry on painting to please myself, painting things that catch my eye rather than trying to churn out similar popular paintings all the time. Of course, if they are popular anyway that is all good.