Things we do for art, again.

Artwork by James E. Lyle (Based on a publicity photo, presumably copyright by Ms. Eden, but used here only to demonstrate the technical ability of the artist).

Why do I do the things that I do? Good question…darned good question. Wish I had a good answer, but I don’t.

Above you will see (at least if the image hosting worked out as it has mostly in the past) a picture of Barbara Eden, rendered by me in “bing salad” colors. If you don’t know what a bing salad is, then you simply need to get down to the south sometime and experience one. (Hint: It’s not named after Bing Crosby).

Anyway, I did this piece last week. I had some other stuff I should have been working on, but I didn’t get to it.

I told myself that I was doing this piece for money. And that is, at least in part, true. I’m hoping it will sell on eBay at as high a price as the Lynda Carter piece did at Heroes Convention back in June. Barring that I hope that it will at least impress someone enough to convince them to commission a similar piece.

But there are some differences:

First off, Barbara Eden is not known for playing a comic book character. True, there have been “I Dream of Jeannie” comic books, but they were spin-offs of the TV show, not the other way around.

Secondly, this piece has no “hook” aside from the weird color interpretation. The Lynda Carter piece, besides showing her in the Wonder Woman costume she’s known for, had also the pop-art addition of a Che beret. That seemed to sell a lot of people on the piece. Whether they saw the intended satire or not I cannot say. But it seemed to work.

Third, the bidding at Heroes Convention was for charity and there were a lot of high spirits involved therein. I was pleased to know that my piece there went for $1700, but was also embarrassed a bit by all the adulation.

So it would be easy to say that I simply did the piece hoping to cash in, personally, by doing so. But I’ve got no guarantees that anyone will even care. I’ve had auctions crash and burn more often than I’d like to admit.

I will admit that when they crash and burn, I often accompany them emotionally.

Every time I put a piece up for auction on eBay I get the same feeling that I did in elementary school when I got up to bat in softball. I was usually picked last and calls of “easy out” still ring in my ears (Charlie Brown and I were obviously separated at birth).

So why do I do it? Why put myself through all that, again and again?

Because of the occasion of adulation. I may be embarrassed by it, but I also love it. In fact I very often would prefer to impress someone with my art than make a lot of money. Fortunately for my finances I’ve been doing both a lot more lately.

But I’ve also been experiencing a lot more clients walking away. I suppose it’s part of the percentages. That is; if I’m doing more work, making more money at it, then it stands to reason that I’ll have a larger number of clients that will walk away not completely satisfied.

The last client to drop out, did so a couple of weeks ago and it brought me down. It was affecting my work, and so I tried a couple of pieces. I thought I’d take another stab at a 60s Black Widow (before her hair turned red), and posed out a couple of figures that I thought worked. But I got halfway through both and was completely disappointed with the results.
I even tried to use Barbara Eden as the face for that Black Widow piece. I figured it was a natural.

But it stunk.

Okay, so I had all this research on Barbara Eden and an itch to draw her face. This is the result.

So far my wife, Karin, is impressed…and also my student Cierra. They both liked the art, so I figure I’ve got a chance. I sent the scan to my agent on Friday, but I’d forgotten that he was away at Dragon*Con this weekend, so I haven’t heard what he thinks yet. We’ll see.

After taking a couple of days away from the studio, I have to admit that it looks better than I thought it did originally (and I liked it before). So maybe it will sell.

When Steve Martin got the Mark Twain Award for American Comedy he said, “this award is our nation’s highest award for comedy…next to money.” (I laughed and laughed).

Putting a piece of art on eBay is sort of like that. I want people’s approval and adulation (this is a character flaw, I admit), but if that approval results in them giving me their money then I feel exonerated. If it ends in them giving me a lot of money then even better.

Not that life is about money, or adulation. But my experience says that being an artist means needing a certain amount of both.

The trick is not needing so much of either to get by. That I have to work on.