A few useful Q&A's

I was sent an email with some good questions, so am copying and pasting below as I think these will be useful :)

What do you do when your piece is complete?

I see by your website you send your finished work out “professionally mounted with backing board and wrapped in acid free acetate” … do you do all of that or do you have someone else do it? What’s all involved? When you ship it, is there anything special to know about how to pack it? Do you insure it? What kind of shipment method – should you have someone sign for it on the other end?

I don't mount or wrap my pieces, I take the finished piece round to my framer and he mounts and wraps for me, you can buy ready made mounts, if you do, try to buy thick mount board that has a surround of around 3". When I ship, I wrap in bubble wrap so that all the edges are protected, I then envelope the bubble wrapped piece in double thickness cardboard, I usually use two pieces that are 600x800 and fold them over each other to create a secure envelope, and then I tape all around them to secure. I then place that into a mailing bag and tape up with 'fragile' tape.

Insurance is a very interesting area because no shipper (not royal mail, parcel force) will insure a work of art for its full value. You may get back the cost of materials, but you can't insure for the full cost, unless you use a specialist courier (and then it's incredibly expensive). For UK I usually send Royal Mail or Parcel Force, guaranteed special delivery next day, for overseas I use a company in the UK called Trans Global Express, they are excellent, you can choose your courier and they will pick up from your home address. I always send with a signature at the end and tracking.

Also, I see a lot of artist who sell both original pieces and then prints for a lesser cost. Do you make prints? How do you make prints?  How do you take the best photo of your work? How do you find/what qualities to you look for in your printer? You send your work over as a PDF, correct?  What kind of paper would you have them printed on? How many do you make? Do you always make limited editions and if so, how do you decide how many to make? If you do a commissioned piece for someone, are you allowed to make a print from that? Would you need to get permission from the person who commissioned you?

I don't currently make prints, but will be doing in the very near future. I will be using print on demand rather than doing them in house as I don't have the time for fulfilling and posting. You can use all sorts of different companies who provide giclee printing on fine art paper, if you want to create them in house, you can buy a suitable printer and use the high quality acid free art paper. I have the Epson XP900 which does up to A3 and is superb. You'd need to use acid free archival paper to print onto. Limited editions are a personal choice. You can either make an open edition where you just keep printing out the copies, or you can choose to do a limited edition of say 50 or 100. If you create a commissioned piece for someone, if you wanted to take prints from it you would have to ask for their permission - always.

If you just want to display the commissioned piece on your website, do you have to get permission from the person if they own the reference photo? Do you have any rules about them not using your completed work for anything other then their own personal display?

I always state that I will be sharing on social media and my website, and I don't actually say anything about them not using it for anything else - but it would probably be a good idea.