Plein Air Podcast 220: Pierre Guidetti of Savoir Faire on Color and More

In this episode of the Plein Air Podcast, listen to a lively conversation about essential colors for plein air painting, the role of art and building a better world, and more, with Pierre Guidetti of Savoir Faire and Eric Rhoads.

Bonus! In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, answers the questions: “Should you include the price of your painting at art fairs?” and “I’m a beginning painter; How should I price my art?”

Have a question about how to sell your art? Ask Eric at artmarketing.com/questions.

Listen to the Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads and Pierre Guidetti here:

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Related Links:
– Savoir Faire online: https://savoirfaire.com/
– Plein Air Convention & Expo: https://pleinairconvention.com/
– Eric Rhoads on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericrhoads/
– Eric Rhoads on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.rhoads
– Plein Air Today newsletter: https://www.outdoorpainter.com/plein-air-today-newsletter/
– Submit Marketing Questions: [email protected]

FULL TRANSCRIPT of this Plein Air Podcast
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Plein Air Podcast. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:19
This is the Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads, publisher and founder of Plein Air Magazine. In the Plein Air Podcast we cover the world of outdoor painting called plein air. The French coined the term which means open air or outdoors. The French pronounce it plenn air. Others say plein air. No matter how you say it. There is a huge movement of artists around the world who are going outdoors to paint and this show is about that movement. Now, here’s your host, author, publisher and painter, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 1:00
Hey there and welcome to the plein air podcast, I’m really grateful that the weather is starting to break. I hope it is where you are. We got people in 90 countries around the world watching. So it’s gonna be different everywhere. But you know, I probably did more outdoor painting in the last two weeks than I’ve done in the last three or four months, done a lot of studio painting, but not the outdoor stuff. I also learned an interesting lesson. You know, my dad always used to say to me be prepared, he would say go to meetings early. Read your notes early, make sure that you know exactly what you want to talk about. Well, I went up painting with the great pastel artists and oil painter, Albert handbells has been painting for 65 years. And we were painting together and I decided to set up and paint a picture of him painting, which I thought would be kind of fun. The problem was that I hadn’t painted in, I don’t know, probably a few weeks, and I hadn’t painted outdoors in a few weeks. And so I was really rusty. And so I didn’t I didn’t do a great job on that painting. But I you know, the lesson I learned is be prepared, right? So if you want to be around somebody else, and you’re concerned that you know you want to look the best you can be, you know, do some warm up paintings. I think if I were doing plein air festivals, for instance, I’d go in a couple days early, I do some warm up paintings, because well, you know, why not because you want to be warmed up and be the best you can possibly be. Anyway, that’s my lesson for this week. I want to tell you guys that this podcast is changed a little bit. We did the first 200 Plus episodes audio only now we are audio and video. So you can listen in audio only, like if you’re listening in your car. Or you can watch the video and we will be showing some things, examples of artwork and so on during the video version. But we don’t talk about those things because we don’t want to make the audio people feel like they’re missing out on something so you can listen either way. Anyway, that’s wherever you find the plein air podcast and certainly find it at outdoorpainter.com our website for plein air magazine. We are honored that the plein air podcast is rated number one in the Feedspot 2021 Top 15 painting podcasts about art. Anyway, so that’s pretty cool. You can subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Also coming up after the interview with me. We’re going to have a marketing minute if my voice holds out. We’re going to answer your questions about marketing. I should mention that plein air today our newsletter, is now five days a week we’ve got so much content, we’re trying to be reflective of what’s happening in the community. We’re trying to give you education, we’re talking about events. There’s so much going on and it’s five days a weekend a Saturday Review, it is on fire and there’s so much to talk about you don’t want to miss a thing. They’re short, you know, they’re not very long, you know, just so you can get kind of one story two stories in a day. So just go to outdoor painter.com and subscribe to plein air today. I should also mention that I am always trying to figure out how to get better. And I’m always playing with tools to get myself better and I used to I struggle with values I still do I mean it’s just something we all struggle with, I think sometimes and I find that you know, I was holding up a piece of red Plexiglas a special red Plexiglas and you know looking through a viewfinder and trying to you know, see my values the problem was you know, I got a paintbrush in one hand I got a paper towel on the other hand so I ended up making these glasses called Value specs and they you know, I put them on my head then I put them down I paint in my values you know my big shapes and my values usually at one color and then I nail my values that go back I take them off and I paint without them and then I you know if I want to check my values from time to time I put them on. Anyway you Get yours at Paint by note.com. That’s part of my paint by note program. Just go to paint by note.com/specs. Okay. Also, we’ve got an online conference coming up, you know, we just completed plein air live. We’ve done watercolor live back in January. Now we have pastel live coming up in August. And we’re very excited about it. We have not announced the entire faculty yet there’s a whole bunch more that are signed on that are going to be announced. But you want to get in get your seat. A lot of you are pastel artists, a lot of you want to become them, you want to get better or you just want to try it and learn about pastel. We have a beginners day or a refresher day. And then we have the full enchilada. So it’s four days in total, you can attend just the beginner’s day, or you can attend everything. But that’s pastel live, and you want to make sure you check it out. Okay, so now, I tried to be really a humble guy. And I know that’s hard to believe and ask my wife, she would say you’re not a humble guy. But talking about myself is really something it’s a little difficult for me. But I did this interview, I had two interviews at the beginning of the year, in January. One was with Pierre Guidetti The other one I’ll talk about later, but I thought you would like to hear somebody interview me just so you can learn a little bit about what it is I do in the background behind it. And then I’ll play that other interview in the future if you’re interested in it. But let’s go right to the interview now, with Pierre Guidetti.

Unknown Speaker 6:40
Welcome, Eric, thank you for coming. And you’re here. It’s a new year. And I I want to start with you is something I don’t know that many of us know, I actually don’t know. And I’m going to use an expression of yours. And when you speak, you speak a little louder, or get closer because we can hear you but not very loud. Just so you know. Yeah. Yeah, it might be a little better, closer. Alright, and then, and then we have the same size head, it’s more even,

Eric Rhoads 7:17
your head will always be bigger.

Unknown Speaker 7:20
So first of all, thank you for coming. But tell me, we know that you are one of those. You are among the Rockstar of the art industry among many one that you invite at your shows and stuff. But how did you get there? You know, some of us know a little bit about professionally, but the art were, tell us the beginning of your interest in art. And how did you get where you are today? One of the barons of the arts

Eric Rhoads 7:52
barons? Wow, that’s pretty big. Um, well, you know, it all starts out when we’re kids. And we’re playing with Kranz. And we love the idea of creativity, i i my earliest childhood memories of that would be I would sit at the dining room table with my mom, and she was taking art classes. And so she had some acrylic paints. Probably Siddeley, I’m guessing. And, and I would go out and buy, I would find rocks, and I would take pictures on the rocks. That was probably when I was, I don’t know, 30 No, probably probably, you know, six or eight. And, and I remember, there was a kid in the fourth grade, and I would always look over and he was always drawing and he was copying Disney characters and things like that. And I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. And I thought at the time, I would like to learn how to do that. I didn’t know how to do it. And I thought, you know, someday I’ll be an artist. And that’s kind of where it ended. And then in this is like way, way back in the dark ages. But my dad and my mom in 1965 came into our rooms one morning and said Get in the car. We’re leaving in 30 minutes we’re going on vacation my dad had a job that was pretty demanding and and you know those things were always last minute. So we went in the car and we drove to New York City to the World’s Fair. And during that trip we went to the frick museum. I didn’t know at the time it was the frick, but I remember walking into this room and there was a 20 foot painting of pirates fighting on top of a pirate ship. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And that was kind of the moment that it sunk in that art could actually communicate and because it communicated to me I you know I love that painting. I bought a print of that and I bought a print of Salvador Dali’s last supper which we saw on that trip and So, and then I kind of lost it. I didn’t paint or seem to be interested in art for a long time, I followed the track of my father, which was being an entrepreneur. And then, when I was about 3738 years old, I started I, my wife had to go to a hairdresser or something like that. And I had to take her. So I, I took her and I was gonna sit in the car for a couple hours or go kill time, and there was an art store next door. And so I wandered in, I don’t think I’d ever been in an art store in my life. And, and it was just like a kid in a candy store. And I walked out with two big bags of stuff, and an easel and, you know, all kinds of stuff. And I didn’t know what I was buying. And so I took, took all that stuff. And I was trying to paint copies of photographs or copies of things I’d seen in magazines. And it was just a very frustrating experience. I had lumpy paint, and I couldn’t get what was up here onto the canvas. And so my wife bought me an art lesson for my 40th birthday. And I went to this art lesson that was at the armory Art Center in West Palm Beach. And this guy says, Just express yourself. He’s like you, he’s using his hands all the time. And, you know, throw the paint on the canvas. And and so I tried that, and I just couldn’t get into it. And I went up to him. And I said, Can I learn to paint something that’s real, like, flour or a bottle or something like that? He says, oh, no, no, nobody does that anymore. That’s, that’s been done. And it’s old school. And you know, don’t even waste your time. There’s nobody who can teach you. And he said, I can’t teach you and there’s no reason to teach you because it’s, it’s old. And I so I quit the class, I was frustrated. So I went home, and I put all my stuff in a box, and I took it down to the basement and I just put it away. And it probably had been put away for a couple of years. And then I went to Miami for a meeting. And I drove down there I had the meeting at lunch. And then I somehow I left my keys in this guy’s car. And I locked myself out, I didn’t think to call a locksmith, so I called a cab. This was kind of pre cell phone and, and the cab driver was an artist and talking about divine intervention. This guy, I’m telling him these stories. And he says, Well, there’s a guy in West Palm Beach by the name of Jack Jackson and Jack studied under Frank Reilly, under Ives gamble. And under SR Rita see me in Florence. I didn’t know any of these people. He said, and he’s in a lineage of Jerome. I didn’t know who Jerome was. And he says, You got to go. He said, he can teach you the right way to do it. So I got the number and I looked up the class and it was a painting old master copies. And I was so intimidated by it that I waited a year. And then finally I decided I would go and so I went one Saturday morning, and I got out of the car, my palms were sweating. And then I got back in the car. And then I got out of the car again did that a couple of times, I finally went in. And I looked around and I see all these people doing really, really beautiful paintings to my untrained eye. And I was totally intimidated by it. So I turned around and I walked out. I thought I can’t do this. And so thankfully, the guy caught me out of the corner of resize this you who can I help you? And I said, Yeah, well, I’m here to do this, but I can’t do this. He says you can let me show you how. And he immediately engaged me and gave me a project. And that was hot. It was what he called the Da Vinci grid, which was how to copy and transfer, you know, photograph or a drawing to a bigger surface. So he taught me to do that I took a photograph, I transferred it over to a to a canvas. And then he started teaching me how to do a grayscale painting all in the same day. And the greyscale painting, you know, his his way of teaching was you know, you never get to see a brushstroke. Very, very delicate. So I didn’t finish that that day. And I thought he got me engaged. I came back. And then he said, Look, if you give me 18 months, you’ll be doing really, really good things and 18 months, he said, you know, there, there’s ways to do this. There’s a proper way. He said, I’m going to teach you the cheat cheating way because most people like you who are busy, will not take the five or six years they need to learn to draw. And he said so we we basically did a lot of tracing and copying and things like that, but we learned some principles from it. So that that’s kind of what happened and then I studied with For a while, and then I invented this concept, which is a form of internet radio. We didn’t have internet radio at the time.

Unknown Speaker 15:08
But hold on an idea you may want to say. That would be a next question about you have during all that you have a right radio experience, most people in our trade don’t know that. So you’re talking about radio, because you are from the radio world. Also, right?

Eric Rhoads 15:26
I was 14, when I was 14, I, I ended up on the radio as a DJ, because I wanted to do it. I love DJs at the time, and I learned it and I became a radio DJ, and then a radio station, program director, and then I ended up owning buying some radio stations. And by the time I was 2224, something like that. And then I sold those radio stations when I was 30. I made my first million dollars then, and, and then I was kind of lost and didn’t know what to do. So I started a company, making portable broadcast studios that look like giant radios. And then I did that for a while. And then I ended up advertising in a magazine and to try to sell these radios and that magazine. It wasn’t working for me. So I went to New York to find out why. And I met with the publisher. And he lied to me about a bunch of stuff. So I went in to meet with the owner to complain. And I walked out owning the magazine. And that’s how I got into the publishing business. So I have a radio publication called Radio Inc, I have another one called Radio Television business report. And we do conferences and things. And so that’s how I got into the radio business. And because I was interested in that I, I thought, you know, radio is going to all go online. And everybody thought it was crazy. I was writing about it. So the only one who was doing anything online at the time was Mark Cuban. So I sat down with Mark, and I said Mark, I’ve got this idea to put music on internet radio he was putting sports on. And he said, Well, why don’t you go out and raise the money and do it. I said, I don’t know how to do it. He said just do it. I said okay. So I called a buddy of mine that I went to second grade with I heard he was a venture capitalist. And I called him and I said, Hey, I’ve got this idea. He said, What’s the idea? I told him, he said, Can you be here Monday? So I arrived Monday and there’s a about 10 people at a big board meeting. And I have to pitch this idea. And it’s off the top of my head, I have no, no nothing. And they gave me $7 million, and said here, go start a company. And now it wasn’t that first meeting, it took about 10 meetings to do that. But so I started an internet radio company called Radio Central. At the time, there was really nothing else but about the same time Pandora started and a couple others started. And anyway, I we developed a lot of the technology that’s being used today. We had the absolute finest audio available. So we anyway, I did that. And then while I was out there, I you know we had moved out there, I’d left my painting mentor Jack, he died. And so my wife gets pregnant with triplets. And she says, Listen, you got to get the smell of paint out of the house. And I said, but I have to paint she said, Look, you might as well give up painting because you’re going to be the father of triplets, you’re not going to have time. And I said no, no, that’s not an option. I have to paint it’s in my blood and and she said well take it out to the garage because I can’t stand the smell. So I took it to the garage. And she then she said this, I still smell it. So I remember thinking that you know somebody along the line painted outdoors. I remembered maybe Monet did. So I took my card table, my chair, my studio easel, a big canvas box of paints and stuff. And I took it out to the golf course we lived on and I set up and I did a scene and the canvas kept blowing off the easel and the light. I couldn’t see what was going on. It was a miserable experience. And then a friend of mine said, Oh, that’s called plein air painting. And he bought me a couple of books about the old early California impressionist. And I just fell in love with it and and so I started trying to learn about it. But there was nothing you know, the internet wasn’t much at the time. There was I couldn’t find anything about plein air painting anywhere. And finally, one day I saw an ad in the newspaper for an event called the scene on the street, which was in Martinez, California near where we were. And I went to this thing and there were you know, 10 or 12 painters and they Were selling their paintings and I asked this guy, Kevin quarter, I said, How do I learn to do this? He said, Go out and buy 108 by 10 canvases and do 100 paintings. And that’s how you learn to do it. So I did that. And that’s where I met Kevin I met Randy Sexton there I met some other people who have become lifetime friends. And then I, you know, I was looking for places to learn, but there wasn’t much there. Nobody was doing workshops or very little. And then I thought, well, I learned about something plein air painters of America was doing. And they had a an event, they had about 100 people. So I went to that. And I thought all these people here, there must be a movement. I’m a publisher, I might I should start a magazine called plein air. So I did, and, and it bombed. I got some subscribers, but all the art materials people like you said, Nobody, nobody paints plein air. We’re not going to be able to sell any materials and and the galleries all said, Nobody. Nobody buys plein air. So, you know, nobody would advertise. So I tried it, I put all my money into it. My bookkeeper called me and said, You’re going to be bankrupt in three weeks? What are you going to do? And so I changed the name to fine art connoisseur change the focus that saved us. And then I kept it on ice for, I don’t know, three, four years. And then I brought it back 10 years ago. And this time, you know, it was ready. You know, there there were more people interested. There were more events. You know, when I started the magazine, there were maybe three events and today there are 300 events.

Unknown Speaker 21:43
Now, let me pose a little bit because you have the same problem. In fact, one Marine told me what Eric can use gonna be speaking who’s gonna be speaking more your two big talkers. So I just want to interject what you said first of all, when you say plein air, so I just want from the historical site, the real plein air. First known plein air was they called the baptism, which was very early in the 19th century. But it’s only but they didn’t have the right didn’t have children. He’s old. He was kind of complicated. And the plein air which really exploded was with the Impressionist in mid 19th century. Put out the two Yeah, with uncentered Yes, one of them the only one left of the tie, you know, that invented the chilled not invented the tube, thought of the cube was invented in America but was one other thing was for, actually, for the military to have medical, you know, things in tubes. But then, in Paris, when Paris was the center of the universe of the art had the idea that was to company bourgeois and center you started doing that. Bozrah what became Lafond? Bozrah that’s a different story and center. Yeah. And then that’s contributed to the explosion of plein air painter, but it’s true in France. We don’t call it plein air, because it means plein air means outside doesn’t mean. So the notion of the expression plein air had was more started in the US. And I was in the early when I was in the early 80s. There was but it was very obscure. There were some shows plenty I showed you. Oh, what is it? What is it? So anyway, I just wanted to go back there and to go back to that time where you were so go back to when you are because that’s I believe when we met because I remember me. Richard Lindenberg calling me here, you got to meet this guy. Okay. And then we gonna have lunch. And we started, like you said, talking about painting. And you were pitching the new version of plein air because the old very old version, I did one ad a few years before but like you said, didn’t really grab. And then you were pitching me but with your it was not a hard pitch really have fun. We had glass of wine were eating and all that. And, and that’s at that lunch that we talked about the plein air. And I told you I wanted to do an impressionist convention. They said, Ah, I have a better idea. Why don’t we do a play and that’s how we became friends. And that was about 10 A little more than 10 years ago. So anyway, continue. I just wanted to interject my little …

Eric Rhoads 24:39
Well I remember you were rolling your eyes a lot too. Because I was telling you all these things that that we were going to do and and I was kind of used to people going and I know but you were you were more visionary than most because you you were saying yeah, I think you ought to do that. And and so anyway, we pulled it off, thankfully cuz, you know, I was telling somebody earlier today that most of my career has been coming up with ideas that everybody says won’t work. And my bookkeeper said to me, if you restart plein air magazine, and if you start this convention, you’re going to be out of business, you’re going to be bankrupt, you don’t have enough money if it fails. And I said, it’s gonna work. And thankfully it did, because I didn’t want to be bankrupt. And you know, same thing with the internet radio thing and a lot of other stuff. And it just, you know, you just have to kind of follow your gut and of course, my guts wrong half the time.

Unknown Speaker 25:41
Yeah. But that’s typical to entrepreneur and I have that also in my blood and it’s through, it’s very tough when you ask your friends, your consultant, if you should do this, and they tell you no, and you do it anyway. But they usually give you some warning. So you do it sometimes a little differently. But that’s the nature of entrepreneurs. If you have it in your guts, it’s hard to stop someone you really have to, to money.

Eric Rhoads 26:06
Well, and thank goodness, nobody stops. I mean, some people do. But you know, you’ve got to have you got some people who who like to be secure and other people who I like to be secure to I don’t I get scared when I do some of these things. But I don’t let the fear stop.

Unknown Speaker 26:23
So a one thing because I want to check is Andrew and Cindy, because we have and I should mention it before you’re much better than that, but giveaway and doing this. So we should have announced it before. I think many of you know that. You with your company have been extremely generous of you doing a giveaway today, which we’re matching with a beautiful set of watercolor. So for you guys, if you didn’t sign up for the giveaway yet, I don’t know what you have to do. But Cindy Andrew can tell you, you, you should do it because it’s a remarkable, extremely generous, present, and giveaway. And then on both sides. So why don’t you tell us I believe and you can speak to that. I think the first giveaway, I mean, your gift is a pass or ticket or how you call it to the watercolor Live, which I was there last year, and it’s extremely generous of your park. So you want to talk about the life.

Eric Rhoads 27:31
Yeah, sure. It’s a, it’s a, you know, when the pandemic hit, you know, we, we, you don’t make a lot of money on magazines, and you don’t make a lot of money on videos, which we do. I mean, we do videos, where we make our money is in the convention. And you don’t even make a whole lot on that. But it’s it’s the biggest money that we make. And we had to cancel our plein air convention in our figurative art convention this year. So and you know, when the pandemic hit, we lost 50% of our advertisers 100% of the people cancelled the conventions. Videos stop selling and like you I was like, Okay, guys, we’re gonna have to lay people off, we had to lay a few people off and we cut everybody’s salaries back to survive. And then things start started turning around and we were able to get, you know, get people back, get the salaries back and and even pay back what what we had taken away. But the reason that happened is because we started doing these virtual events we did plein air live watercolor live pastel live and realism Live, which is about portrait and figure and so on. And so it’s each one of them is a four day conference on Beginner’s day, which is optional, and then three days and we bring in as you know, the top artists in the categories from around the world, we have people teaching that you might not know but who are the best from England or India or wherever. And so watercolor live is coming up in January, late January. And we’ll have 1000s of people on there this year. We had 1000s on last year, and it’s going to be the world’s largest art conference and what I just share what I learned from that and that is I’m a mostly an oil painter, but I can’t take my oils with me everywhere I go, I try but you know, if I’m on a business trip, I throw some watercolors in my bag. And my watercolor work has been pretty awful. And after watching that as the host I didn’t get a chance to paint along or practice or anything but just watching you know, the the demos here and there when I could in between things. I picked up so much that my work went up three 400% And so I think you know for everybody watercolor is something that you know, first off a lot of people only do watercolor and This is a chance to kind of get your, your work to a higher higher level learning from some of the top people, you have a chance to chat with them and interact with them. And so it’s a three day event, we’re going to give away a ticket today, and give everybody a chance to win that.

Unknown Speaker 30:18
Alright, so very great, very generous, and I was there, you know, I’ve been in all your life, and thank you, and sometimes so as a sponsor, but sometimes also faculty, and sometimes I’m trying to bring some of the, what we lack in those live, I mean, in this virtual lies, from what we get into the in person is sometimes the lack of, you know, camaraderie and all that. So when I come to your show, even if it’s virtual, I’m trying to, I’m trying to be funny a little bit to bring some humanity to the virtual world. But I remember one thing, and I was looking at it last night, but I couldn’t find it. I’ll find it, we’ll post it. And if you remember, and I actually I don’t remember if it was in Santa Fe in Las Vegas, I think it’s probably Santa Fe.

Eric Rhoads 31:08
The last the last convention was in San Francisco the one before that was Santa Fe,

Unknown Speaker 31:13
he was the time when there was Keiko, he was plein air. And he was the beginning we’re starting to talk about watercolor also invited a couple of handful of watercolor teacher including Keiko Tanabe very, very close friend of mine. And, and I remember, you went to the booth. And she was I don’t know, demoing or something. And I challenged you. And she made you paint we made you paint and we filmed it. And I have it somewhere. And you told me was the first time your first watercolor you told Kikuna I can’t do it. I I don’t know how to do watercolor. And Keiko and I were pushing. Yeah, you can do it, you can do it. And you started doing the first stroke. And you were actually surprised to see the color floorings. And oh my god, it’s working. Do you remember that?

Eric Rhoads 32:06
I remember that very well. And I will pay you large amounts of money to make sure that disappears.

Unknown Speaker 32:13
We’ll discuss that offline. So but now let’s see, we are a little more than halftime because we’re trying to stop and I promise even though two of us we could probably stay a couple of hours and people might stay. Oh, yeah.

Eric Rhoads 32:28
Well, you know, once you break out that good French wine, it’s all over.

Unknown Speaker 32:32
But to that promise on Drew, and Cindy, that will stop on time. So I just wanted to change pace a little bit. And, and again, as for everybody who knows who haven’t been in this show before this is totally improvised. That is totally improv spontaneous. There is no plan. There is no script. So we don’t even know what we’re going to talk about. But I was thinking it looks like you are in your screen you will you be so kind. Because again, my challenge to you is to portrait you as the artist we talked about business entrepreneur, your your thing or convention. But now I want to circle back to you as an artist, if you don’t mind. And is that your painting studio, where

Eric Rhoads 33:19
I have a My studio is about 16 by 20 it was designed to be a pool house, the man who built the house here, never put the pool in, we still don’t have a pool, we don’t need a pool, we wouldn’t use a pool. And so it became a it became my art studio. So normally I’ve been painting out of the garage and or a back bedroom or something. And so I have a little bit of room I have a group of people who pre pandemic would come in here and we’d get a model of a model stand over here. It’s a mess. It’s filled with with junk. But

Unknown Speaker 33:57
yeah, she Yeah, she’s you know,

Eric Rhoads 34:01
anyway, we put we put a model on the model Stan and we paint together and, and you know, I’ve done that now for probably close to 10 years and every Wednesday night so I’ve you know, I’ve got a lot of experience doing models that way, which is fun.

Unknown Speaker 34:15
Yeah, models, I want to say something for other people. I mean, most of the professional serious painters knows that. But live drawing, whatever you do, even if you do abstract, even if you do something totally different landscape and all that life drawing is the foundation, whether you learn all the technique, the drawing the skills, whether you do whatever I’ve heard, I’ve learned from all my friends painter, it’s like a religion. You know, you draw all the time. And if you have if you can arrange to do a live drawing every week, every month or something. This is essential. Again, you don’t have to be a portrait painter. It’s just the exercise. It’s like Playing music practicing with your friends. It’s it’s essential in my opinion.

Eric Rhoads 35:04
Yeah, I went to American artists magazine, may they rest in peace used to have an event called weekend with a mask. Yes. And I took up my first life drawing class there with Daniel graves. And I just was so addicted. And I had, that’s the first time I ever met Dan and and we’ve since become good friends, I’ve stayed at his house and, and he said, Eric, you know, you need to do this just every week, every day, if you can just constantly draw. So I came right back and I found a local friend made a local friend, Danny Grant, who does a podcast and Danny and I started doing life drawing every week, we actually do painting more than drawing. And then you know, we’ve had as many as 16 or 20 people on the studio, including some really famous artists who have come here and painted with us over over the years. And we have not resumed since COVID. But we will hear soon, hopefully.

Unknown Speaker 36:02
And you know, in those in those life drawing session, so I invite I used to run some, I used to dedicate a space and I used to sponsor others, it’s essential, and it’s the camera is huge, because in some of the one I’ve been, or the one I’ve developed, you could have some people from the full spectrum, you could have a students, you could have a hobbyist, you know, and you can have the Superman say no, I typically just passed away. But at some point in San Francisco, where they used to live there for a while, even when TiVo you know, just passed 101, it would show up, you know, it can’t say, oh, I like to draw a little bit or, you know, with a student, there’s something about drawing around a model. That’s

Eric Rhoads 36:53
Baba, we all we all love it. And we all need to do it. And it’s you know, we only do portraits here, because it’s kind of a short thing. But, you know, I have hundreds and hundreds of portraits that I’ve done, most of them aren’t very good, but it’s great experience. And, and, and it’s just so much better than than working from a photograph just, that’s the same way I feel about landscapes is I, I would rather paint landscapes on location than from a photograph because there’s so much more information. And it’s not skewed, it’s not distorted. It’s not darkened, you know, photographs and days.

Unknown Speaker 37:29
And same thing with live drawing. You know, we say when we talk about plein air or Impressionism, about how important it is to be in the element, you know, there is something to say not everybody feel it the same way. But there’s a majority of people who feel like when you are outside, it’s not only what you see, but that’s what you smell the when the the potential rain or snow that builds into your, your body. And when you paint it, you have that additional sense. And the same thing with life drawing when you have a person, particularly whether they’re new or not, but particularly when they’re new they something man, woman, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about the it’s either eats it’s very inspiring. And they something almost your hands draw by itself just by the connection. So I think it’s a little similar. Well,

Eric Rhoads 38:30
it’s a great experience because you’re you’re interpreting through your hours through your eyes into your nervous system through your hand into your brush or your pencil. There’s nothing nothing quite like it.

Unknown Speaker 38:40
So a second back to you, I think would you be so kind because you’re very humble and Modesta about your painting are not good, but I’m sure you can we can you find a couple of decent one in your studio you could show us

Eric Rhoads 38:55
Yeah, no, I want to Yes, of course. But I want to make a point and that is that I I spend my life around painters who who are masters who are at a you know, a very high level, I try to bring them in to do videos with us. We do articles and things like this. I paint mostly for myself. I do have three galleries. I put a little bit of work into those three galleries. And, and but I am not a I don’t make my living as a painter. So I’m still a little bit how would one say shy about about that. So yeah, I can I can kind of show you around. We might not have as much light. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 39:38
Yeah. respond to what you said, Hold on, I want to respond quickly. Painting is not only about making a picture that you’re going to sell or you’re going to get painting. It’s also for yourself, it’s therapeutic is good for you. So that’s very important. to know.

Eric Rhoads 40:02
So, yeah, I mean, this is my studio I, I’ve got, I’ve got a lot of different things out here I learned by copying a lot. So this I wanted to learn how the Russian impressionist worked. And so this is a, this is a copy of someone else’s painting, it’s not my own. This is an original that I did. This was from a live model, it was five days in person with a live map, or, excuse me three days and, and I was trying to learn how to do this. And I asked Joshua rock to come in and work with me. And so Josh really coached me on this, I painted and drew the whole thing, but he, he really helped me with that I don’t have the patience to do that. I, I do a lot of BART drawings because I’m trying to constantly better myself, they’re not perfect, but this is a good way to learn. And I have a collection of casts that I cast and actual statues that I use when I do drawings from them. This one is is actually made out of jade. This This, of course, is a famous French, the lady of the sin, and the the lady who died and they found her body in the sin. This is something I’m almost done with I’m working on. It’s a pretty tall painting. I did it and plein air behind my house my woods in the Adirondacks. And I’m just kind of letting some time pass so I can look at it again and try to figure it out. But I’m, I’m trying to play with you know, sir oil like light. And by the way, there’s a magical color that you make, which is called Chinese. Orange. Yeah. Oh my god. I still have it and you get these incredible oranges?

Unknown Speaker 42:05
With Oh, yes, yes. Do that we love Oh my god, you surprising me here. We love these mixing. Go ahead.

Eric Rhoads 42:13
I’m a I’m a man full of surprises. But this Chinese oranges is a really essential color for me. And a trick that Richard Lindenberg taught me I don’t have that other color out. But you have another one that’s kind of a light blue, I just took this King’s blue. But when you take that Chinese orange into a king’s blue, or light blue, you get these amazing grey greens. And one of the essentials that I use all the time, which is really wonderful is to is to take these colors. And then you can also rich in it. Of course, if you take like that’s a sin Lea cobalt blue, you can get these really rich dark greens. And look how beautiful that is. Just so rich. And you know, you can make some beautiful pine trees with that. So that’s anyway, that’s my little surprise for you.

Unknown Speaker 43:09
Oh my god. How did you know I was going to ask to see your studio. You guessed it, or you’re going to show it anyway. Yeah, well, yeah. So I think you

Eric Rhoads 43:21
know, I’m a complete paint junkie. And I wish I could say it was all simile a but it’s not, but I a lot of it is. And I have it all categorized by colors. And I buy a lot of paint, I still buy a lot of paint, I do have some colors that I stabilize on. But this is this is where I paint this device here, this table goes up and down. But I just leave it up all the time. And then I have a you know, kind of a knockoff of a huge easel, which is, you know, which is nice because it goes two directions. It goes sideways and it goes up and down. This is a piece that I’m almost finished with. It’s a it’s a scene for Brusha I was over there. I was driving through the roads in this incredible sunset and hitting this house. And I’ve been battling it because I made the sunset really really really garish and, and brilliant. But I really wanted to draw attention to the house. And so i i You know, I took my mud and I just covered up all that color. And I was going to show you how I do that because it’s something I recently discovered.

Unknown Speaker 44:35
Oh yeah, you might even show us a touch. Or if you can do a stroke in front of us. That will be great. But I want to say one thing, just Yeah, I want to disclose one thing. And because it would be easy for you to have so many free paints or you may get some occasionally, but I want to disclose that and I was happily surprised that occasionally you go and buy even my product at your local store, so thank you for that.

Eric Rhoads 45:03
Oh, aye, aye. Well, as you know, I mean, you’re always offering to give me stuff at the convention. And you paid to be at the convention. So I always say, Look, you paid to be at the convention. So I pay for my own pain. And so that’s kind of how it works. So I was just going to show you something I don’t have my gloves on, and I probably should. So this is something I’ve been playing with this is. First off, I was, I was trying to, this is just so bored. I think that’s copper. But I’m a neighbor across the street has this beautiful Mexican painting, and it’s got this beautiful little boy or girl in it. And I’ve been playing with painting it I’m far from done. But you can see I started out in a different direction. And I completely botched that painting. One of the things that I’ve recently discovered is that if I take just some gray mud, and I smear that gray mud across a painting, I’m just gonna bring it down on a surface that I can work on. And I get a brayer. See if I can show you have a brayer. And I just take that brayer and I Breyer across the painting, it’s First off, it’s a great way to get a really smooth surface of paint on a on a painting if you want to cover something up. But it’s also a great way to mute something. So if you can imagine I’m not going to do it on my sunset, because I’ve already done it. But if you can imagine some bright colors under this and that you wanted to pull them out, then you just take the paper towel, and then you you just kind of pull out I can’t really do it with the holding the phone and stuff. But But I do is like you know, I can pull it out. And it mutes part of it and

Pierre Guidetti 47:01
and it goes lack, but the image will come back.

Eric Rhoads 47:05
Yeah, the image will come back to the extent that I want it to. And what I’m finding more and more in my life is the more mud that I use, the more pleased I am with things and so I can take a bad painting and save it. And I love this is my new favorite tool. I love this tool because it’s just a great way to cover things. I’m going to buy one for my plein air kit, too.

Unknown Speaker 47:29
So Blair as the Breyer talking about the instrument we use for Printmaking normally, right, yeah,

Eric Rhoads 47:34
yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t maybe you make it. I don’t know.

Unknown Speaker 47:38
No, no, we don’t make it. But for the people who are asking, it’s a printmaking tool, because not many painters knows about that. I bought work on your plate.

Eric Rhoads 47:49
And I learned about it because somebody was on my show my daily noon show on Facebook. And I learned about it there. But anyway, this is i You can see that I did that with this painting. That’s very gray. And then I pulled the lights out because I really wanted to mute that sunset.

Unknown Speaker 48:11
Very interesting. Yeah, I like I didn’t know that trick. I mean, I know many artists, and sometime I show some way to mute. And you know, that’s why I like Grey’s. Now a lot of different grades are becoming very popular to actually do that. But I didn’t know the trick about the Breyers. Thank you. Yeah, well, it’s

Eric Rhoads 48:31
something I recently discovered. This is called an easel brush clip. And this is, of course, a brush that I discovered.

Unknown Speaker 48:42
You told me about that live one. Yeah.

Eric Rhoads 48:44
So Max, Max Ginsburg told me I had to get this brush and it’s a Raphael. And I ended up paying some stupid amount of money for it. I could have called you and got a free one. Anyway, they’re, they’re really great. Max told me they’re great because they carry a lot of a lot of paint. And they really maintain their stiffness. And I used them when I was painting my self portrait. I was on a self portrait kick. So I’m going to show you the rest of my studio, but it’s it’s messy, as I wasn’t anticipating this, so this is where my model sits. And we have a little scene here that kind of looks like an 1800s kind of scene. I’ve got an old Hudson River School painting back there. Then I have these IKEA racks and I just put paintings on them. And this is usually where I put paintings to dry. I recently did all my color charts. And so I had my color charts up there but you know I if I’m if I’m working on paintings, you know, sometimes they’re finished. If they’re finished, I’ll put them in a frame. This is a painting that I did. And I And full disclosure. Joma girl helped me with that. Graydon Parrish was on realism live lately and he taught me how to do this. This was based on this, this actual three dimensional ball. And so I haven’t really finished that. But you know, so I just put my plein air stuff up here and, and then I have stacks and stacks and stacks of paintings. I have paintings that I’ve done over there. And then I have a you know, a bookshelf, which is, you know, just full of books.

Unknown Speaker 50:28
a question for you. You know, you showed us the collared shirt. That’s a very interesting things I know here Laureen and I, we love we obsessed with colored shirts, of course, we are the color business and we have color. Sometimes the pastel were 525 colors and here. And only a few I occasionally I see artists who make their own colored shirts, just so you make your own color charts for reference for different brands, different shoe, why do you do your college shop, but I love college shops.

Eric Rhoads 51:01
Well, why don’t let me show you what I did in this particular case. So I have on my palette I have, these are the colors I currently have in my palette, let’s see if I can find it. So I have a chromium black, I’m not going to name the colors. But I have you know, this, this, probably a cadmium, and this is an orange. And this is a lemon yellow. And this is a cat green Veridian. I have the Inman blue, which is the new blue, I have a cobalt, Ultra Marine. And that a transparent red and brown oxide. So each color chart is this. This row here is a grayscale row. Right, the black and adding white. And then this row is this color plus this color and adding white. And then this row is this color plus this color and adding rights white. So I do that with every color. And I have as a result, I have color charts for every color on my palette. So I can look at this and say how did I get this color? And I’ll know I got that color by mixing that plus, plus this and white. That’s very so yeah. Anyway, that’s a great way to do it. So yes, I make my own color charts. I also have one over here. This is the Frank Reilly palette. And Frank Reilly taught my teacher and my teacher taught this to me, I did that when I was 40. So that’s a long time ago. And it’s strings of grayscale strings of reds, browns, yellows, and so on. And I used to premix all those colors for my portrait work. And I don’t do that anymore. I just kind of do it out of the top of my head. But it’s a great discipline for any artists to try to figure out. Okay, nice.

Unknown Speaker 53:01
Okay, any we need to get moving? Five more minutes. And no, no, it’s very good to do. Scholar chalk. I just wanted to come back for just unless you have one thing you want to show you get that brush since you give me a thing. Let me show you something. Well, I should have one here. So I just want to say something about that brush, because it’s unique. You know, we don’t sell it’s not our best selling brush, but it’s my favorite I brush from Central. Yeah, it’s the original. And this is the actual original. This shape is called Hilbert or an officer is a Bombay needs us brush in France, we call it use brush. And it’s the first time in the you know, we said earlier that during the 19th century, the tube have inspired. I’ve inspired the how you call the Impressionists to paint outside. Same with brushes. It’s only in the 19th century that we started to have Farrell, you know, brush Pharaoh, and copper. That’s the original cover. And this is what’s the first flat brush, which is a filbert, which was halfway between flat and round. And that was the first time you see that brush, in fact, and then short after there was the flat version. But that was the very first one. You can brush in some old photos

Eric Rhoads 54:32
And this is the brush the Impressionist use.

Unknown Speaker 54:35
Yeah. And that because of that brush flat that also open up the looseness of some impressionist, you know instead of before it was they were using only round brush, very detailed. With the Impressionists with flat you can have Bold Stroke, and that’s contributed also to the openness of the impressionists. And that brush is called Paris class. Wow. Well, and then a couple of things. So you’re talking about your place in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, how you said because I don’t have I got home that

Eric Rhoads 55:13
Adirondack, the Adirondack Mountains. The Adirondacks is very little known. It’s a million miles, millions, a million miles and protected. Three national parks would fit into it. It’s a protected state park. And, and there are some towns in it. But you know, you have to get permission to cut down a tree. It’s very, very, very protected. So we have a place on a lake up there. I do every June up there, which I call the publisher’s Invitational.

Unknown Speaker 55:44
Okay. So hopefully, someday I can visit. And so, you know, hopefully someday you come and visit in Kenema. We are talking, you know, some of your friends been there. So a house in Brittany that I’m converting into an artist retreat place. So we’ll talk about that. Someday, we’ll do maybe we’ll do a plein air event there someday. Anyway, yeah, that’d be nice. So five minutes left. So usually what I like to do first of all, I know, you have a couple of minutes to say whatever you want. But I have one question I love to ask. Usually, most of my guests when I feel comfortable I do is, as I explained, when I started, you know, part of this live is to inspire people to open up the art to share ideas. But it’s really to remind people, how essential is the art. So with that in mind, going through all this, the pandemic, the craziness of the world where it is, whether it’s politics, the environment, climate change, the panda need, whatever, how we are challenged, how what in your mind is the role of art and how through art, we can build a better world hack?

Eric Rhoads 57:07
Well, you’re only giving me four minutes to answer that. That’s a four hour question. I, you know, I, I think there’s two ways to look at it, the way I look at it is what it does for the individual who’s doing it, you know, there’s a whole nother discussion about what it does for the people who see it and the people who view it. But I think that the thing that is very important to me, I have this goal of teaching a million people to paint, that’s why I do what I do. And, you know, we’re probably getting close, because there’s been so many people reached during the pandemic, but you know, it, I can only speak to myself, I was a hard driving, you know, busy business guy. In my 40s, when I learned how to paint, you know, everything to me was about making money. And, you know, I was, it wasn’t going all that well, quite frankly. And then I found art. And I, you know, once I was being creative, and being myself and, and expressing myself through art, my heart changed, everything changed about me, I became a much more gentle person, I stopped caring about the things that I used to care about. And, and I was not focusing on anything, but just doing art, you know, I was still doing my business, but I wasn’t, you know, it just wasn’t as important to me at the time. And then when I discovered all of this, and I got the magazine going and I got the events going, I realized how many lives we were touching. And it’s just so fulfilling to see people get, you know, make friends and, and connect with each other at events and, you know, stay in touch. And I mean, there’s hundreds of people now who have done that. And to me that that’s, that’s my role, it’s to put people together and to teach them how to paint. And I just think that, you know, our world is crazy. And the people who paint, you know, we have this image of artists that are crazy, and I’m sure there are some but you know, the people who paint for the most part are really really sweet people. And I’ve seen people who are jerks who start painting who become really sweet people. And I think that and you know, I might have been one of them. So I think that that’s what from my standpoint, if you open your your your heart to this and by the way, you don’t have to become a professional you don’t have to get really good at it. I get to the point where I want to get better and better because I get dissatisfied with it. But I think it’s all about you know, just being creative and being yourself and painting for yourself not painting for the gallery not painting because somebody else wants you to paint you know, a little red barn so I think it’s all about paint for yourself. And then That’s what my mission is all about is teach more people to paint. You know, if we, if each of us watching this, you know, however many people end up watching this, if each of us just taught one person to paint in 2022, we would change that one person’s life and all of us would have a cumulative effect.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:18
All right, I like this. So we got to put that challenge. And I know when we talk offline, we come up with all those ideas. Hopefully, we’ll do a few of those idea. This year, we talked about the studio, the dream studio we talked about, yeah, but the challenge to everybody, each of us should make sure that one of our friends learn to paint, either teach it themselves, or buy them a class. That’s a good challenge. I like that.

Eric Rhoads 1:00:42
Yeah. And well, it’s gonna sell more paint to, Pierre, with when I’m, when I’m outdoors painting, every time I’m outdoors, if I’m in a public place, and inevitably, somebody walks up and says, I wish I could do that. But I don’t have the talent. I can’t even draw a stick figure. And I always say, Here, let me show you. This is a process and I’ll put the brush in their hand, they’ll say, Here, do this, and I’ll show them a brushstroke. And I’ll say, Okay, do another one. I don’t care if they mess up my painting, I can fix it. And, and I just want to give them a little sense of confidence. Because if they get that, and then I say, you know, here’s where to go online, you know, you go to my paint by note.com for a free lesson or go to this person to get to teach, you know, to a teacher or something. And when that happens, I’m I’m hopeful that I can convert somebody into a painter.

Pierre Guidetti 1:01:32
Yep. All right. Just on time. So yes, ah, is good for you. Art is good for the world. Thank you. I think the challenge is great. Let’s make sure we convert as many people to become artists as possible. I’m looking forward to see you other virtual live watercolor live, but I’m even looking more forward. Awfully please, please, please, it will happen. I can’t wait. And I know many of our friends can’t wait to see each other live real lives this time. And I believe it’s going to be in Santa Fe

Eric Rhoads 1:02:08
this year, that plein air convention in May.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:11
So I’m really hoping to see you there. And again, thank you all for coming. Every week. It’s been 20 months. Imagine every week. We are here. Welcome. Thank you. And of course, Cindy and Andrew, which are behind the scene without you this wouldn’t happen. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Andrew. And of course. Thank you, Eric. And let’s stay connected. And, go paint!!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Eric Rhoads 1:02:45
Bye. Bye. All right. Well, thanks again to Pierre Guidetti, for giving me the interview opportunity. I’m humbled and grateful and thank you. I hope you learned something i learned something about myself by listening to it. I know that sounds a little weird. Okay, now let’s do some marketing. We do marketing at the end of every plein air podcast. We also have a separate art Marketing podcast. So if you’re not a plein air person and you just want to get the art marketing podcast, you can find it wherever you can find other podcasts. So let’s get started.

Announcer 1:03:21
This is the Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the number one Amazon bestseller “Make More Money Selling Your Art: Proven Techniques to Turn Your Passion Into Profit.”

Eric Rhoads 1:03:33
Alright, so we have our first question and Amandine, my producer who is from France, if you notice a slight French accent, that’s why I think it’s very, very exciting. I mean, come on, I want to ask you a question real quickly. I know you’ve got the question, but come on camera for a second. And I know you don’t want to be on camera, but what is the proper pronunciation of PLEINA ir to a French person?

Amandine 1:04:01
Plenty like the person in the introduction video is saying it correctly. It’s clean air,

Eric Rhoads 1:04:07
clean air, okay. Yes. I knew that but I just wanted to make sure because I never asked you that question. Okay, what is our first question?

Amandine 1:04:18
Our first question is from Nitti from India. When we are exhibiting or artworks in galleries, or in an art fair, is it wise to put the custom label as well along with the size, medium caption and other details? Sometimes I’ll feel it’s good as the viewers or art buyers around, get a feel of the price. And if they are interested, then they can inquire more rather than feeling shy or even lazy to initiate a dialogue. At other times I also feel and have noticed artists changing their cursing based on general posts or buying capacity of The buyers, or the Custom Range put by other artists for similar artwork.

Eric Rhoads 1:05:05
All right, well, thank you to Nitti. In India, for the question, costing, the way you say costing, we would say pricing here. So we’re talking about pricing. The first thing I just want to mention is a couple of general thoughts. Now, no matter where you’re showing your artwork, or how you’re selling your artwork, there are some essentials, I believe you want to have the size of the painting, the type of painting it is, for instance, oil painting, and you want to have the substrate that it’s on. So watercolor on paper, or oil on canvas or oil on board, etc, you want to have that down, you want to have the size. And I believe and this is something I go into depth with in some of my training, my art Marketing Bootcamp videos, I believe that every opportunity you get you want to stand out. How do you stand out? If let’s say you’re in an art show, or an art gallery? How do you stand out from every other artists in that gallery? What can you do to stand out? Well, typically, you know, there’s a little card and a little card has your name, the name of the painting the size, and so on on it. But what if you were to tell a little one or two paragraph story very brief, but tell the story of the painting. I get into depth about this. But stories differentiate. And when people have stories that helps them envision 50% of the people roughly according to research can have the vision to see, this is a painting I want this is a painting I love this is a painting I’d like to have in my house, the other 50% need a little help with that. So if you have a story that gives them a little help with that gives them a story behind it. That’s good. The other thing is when people are making an investment in something part of what they’re thinking, I know this sounds crazy. But part of what people are thinking when they buy a car is I’m going to look good in this car, and my neighbors are going to see me driving this car. This is pretty cool, right? So they’re thinking about how other people respond to things. I catch myself doing it sometimes it’s dreadful, but I do it. So in terms of you know, there’s a, there’s a painting there. And what is the story about that painting that they can tell other people who are visiting their house, because stories are memorable. You know, the whole Bible is built on stories, and proverbs and things that you can remember that you know, you can’t otherwise remember verses and so think about stories as an option. In terms of pricing, pricing, I think should be on everything, including websites. Now, some people say I want them to call, I want them to call and ask or you know, sometimes it says price on request. When I see that I just move on, I go away, I don’t want to these days, maybe the old days, but these days, if I’m up at two o’clock in the morning, and I got a hankering to buy a piece of art, and I happen to look at something and it says price on request, I want an instant answer. And I know I’m gonna have to email them and go through this big dialog. And I don’t want to do that. So if you know just have the price there, a friend of mine told me this a long time ago, kind of at the beginning of the internet, he sold a $650,000 piece of sculpture, because he put the price on it. And the money was wired to him before he woke up that morning. I mean, how cool is that. So this is the kind of thing that you want to think about in terms of pricing. So yes, the price is on there. There is a concept called price anchoring price anchoring is to create the vision of a higher price. So that when they see the existing price, it feels like a lower price. Right. So price anchoring, what you will oftentimes see you know, we all know we all fall for this, and I’m not saying you should do this, sometimes it’s not appropriate but you know, you walk into a store and a big sign says sale and it says you know on the shirt normally $99 Today it’s $39 Right? And so your brain is telling you well you better grab it because it’s a good deal. The reality is that that’s the everyday price they just always show it as marked up and then marked down. And so there is some anchoring that can take place. Now I’m not a big fan of doing that when selling art where it would say you know normally $20,000 Today only $9,999 I you know, to me that doesn’t fit, but you could do anchoring in your story. So your story anchor might be something like this, a major art collector in Los Angeles bought the last painting that I did of this topic for over $20,000. And, and then you tell the rest of the story. Now that is a price anchor. So now in their mind, the first thing they heard is $20,000, there is research that indicates, you can say a number that doesn’t even have to do with the price, a higher number can be spoken. And in comparison, it will make a lower price feel lower. So the research, I think it was done in a university and maybe Nashville or something, I read it just recently, it said, you could just say a number, let’s say, you find a reason to say one the word 1000. So you could say in your story 1000 people showed up at an art show for Mary, last June, which sold out now if your price is under $1,000, just that 1000 will anchor it. Now I know this stuff sounds a little manipulative, and you have to decide if that’s right for you. I’m just reporting. And so keep in mind that anchoring is a good thing, but price should be on it. Now, if you want to, you want to stand out, then make sure you put your story in there. In terms of the other part of the question. Let me just read the other part of the question here. Oh, the the idea of some, sometimes people want to negotiate price or get into a dialogue. Or, or changing the cost in a show. You know, there’s a thing called supply and demand, you have only so many original paintings. And let’s say you go to a tent show, I wouldn’t do this at a plein air show where you know, somebody else’s control and it’s hanging on their walls, I wouldn’t do that. But let’s say and I wouldn’t do it at a gallery. But let’s say you’re at a tent show, I had this happen to me one time I was in a tent show I had this painting that immediately sold and then somebody else wanted it and then somebody else wanted it and somebody else wanted it kind of thing. So I now look at that and say I probably undersold that, I probably could have got more money for it. If you find that you’re in a tent, show an art show where you, you thought you were going to sell your paintings for $1,000. But you find out that it’s in the wealthiest neighborhood in town, and you have an opportunity to sell them for more money. And you you know, that might work, then, you know, go ahead and change the price. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing immoral, nothing illegal. The other thing to keep in mind is that wealthy people look at pricing differently. Now everybody always wants a bargain. There’s no question about that. But and I’ve talked about this before is the story. I just heard another story, by the way, which I’ll tell you in a minute. But the story about a man who was at an art show a woman walked in said I’d like to buy that painting, how much is it? He said $4,000. She wrote him a check for 40. He said, Oh Ma’am, this is wrong. She tore up the check and say, well, it must not be good. Now, the other thing about pricing is you want to have some courage. Now, we just had a story come in. Someone had won a category in our plein air salon art competition. I don’t know what category it was, well, let’s say it was florals. So this artist had a painting. That was really a beautiful painting that had one. And the wife said to the artists don’t sell that one. Don’t put it in the show. And he said, Well, I really think it’ll sell I really think we should do it. And she said, No, I really want to keep it. He said how about this, I’ll put a higher than normal price on it. And if we get that price, we’ll sell it. She said Okay, I agree to that. So all the other paintings were $900 this particular painting, he put a $5,000 price on it because he really didn’t want it to sell but he thought if I get 5000 I’ll take it. And he put the certificate of award next to it, which gives it prestige, right. So the show opens guess what the first painting sell was $5,000 painting. So it’s all about packaging and presenting and if you have something that gives credibility, you know, if you had won an award, say it or put the certificate next to it, that’ll make a big difference. Okay, I’m a dean. What’s our next question?

Amandine 1:14:50
Our next question is from Jacqueline Mckinty. I am new to painting. It’s a retirement hobby. I have been in a few shows and competitions, the thing I struggle with is pricing. I go to shows and look at other artists pricing, and it seems to be all over the board. I realize being new, I can’t charge high prices. But where do I start? Is there a formula or rule of what I should be charging by the size of the painting?

Eric Rhoads 1:15:20
Okay, well, the first thing I want to say to you, Jacqueline is, everything that takes place takes place in your head, you’re telling me that you can’t get high prices? Because you’re new? But what if you have the best painting? What if your painting is better than everything else? And there are people that have been painting for 20 years and your painting is better? Can you get a higher price for that? I walked into my first art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I took a body of work in there and I had one painting I really loved a lot. I wasn’t really interested in selling it. And I said to the gallery owner, I said, I would like to be the most expensive artist in your gallery. And the gallery owner said, Oh, no, no, no, you’re new. You know, nobody knows your name, you don’t have an established brand. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So long story short, they wouldn’t do it. But this couple walked in, saw my painting and immediately said I want to buy that painting. And they it wasn’t necessarily about price, it was about their passion for the painting. That’s what sells a painting. And now some people can afford a higher price than others that we talked about. But you don’t have to price something low. Because you’re a beginner, you have to price something where you think it needs to be. And I will tell you that most artists, including the best artists underprice their works, so manage your head, don’t let price rule you know, your heart may be telling you one thing, and you got to listen to your heart, but also manage your head. Shows oftentimes have minimums we have an art auction at the plein air convention because we don’t want to mess with a lot of $50 sales, you know, we have a minimum that you know, people have to put their price on to get into the show. So look at the show minimum that’ll help you determine but you can you can make it whatever you want it to be, you know, you got to have a little courage like we talked about before. Now, there are going to be artists who come into a show I know of artists who work like plein air shows, and they’ll come into that show where all the other artists are the three $4,000 range. And this artist is, you know, selling them as cheap as he or she possibly can, within reason. And that artists sells out real quickly and goes home with a pot of money. And oftentimes that prevents the other artists from selling something now, as a marketing move that might be smart, as a member of the community of artists and the events, you want to think in terms of am I doing the right thing for my community, because, you know, you don’t want to be selfish. And by the way, the artist I’m referring to is not getting invited back to a lot of things because of the complaints. So you have to judge yourself accordingly. And so I’m not again, making a judgment call here, I just want to make you aware that there are things that you can do. People tend, as I mentioned before, if they have the money, they tend to want the best, and oftentimes the most expensive, which we’ve talked about, but that’s not for everybody, you have to decide, do I want these paintings to go home with me? Or do I want them all to go away, and there’s a price at which you’re willing to let go, you know, the the way I look at it sometimes is hey, I’m getting paid something, or getting a chance to paint and do what I love. Now my paintings, I have some paintings that are in a you know, 2020 $500 range, and I have some that are a lot higher than that. Rarely below that, that’s just kind of where I pick it. But and there are some people who say, you know, all paintings that are nine by 12 have to be the same price. I have paintings that are of a size that I’ve worked on that painting for months. I have paintings of a size that I’ve worked on for weeks, and I have paintings that I’ve been able to knock out in a day or two. And so I tend to price according to the painting, and what went into the painting. There’s a great story from a great artist, I won’t use names. I went to that artist and I said how do you get how did you get your prices so high? Because he’s selling for a quarter of a million dollars. He says, I don’t know, ask my wife. Excuse me. So I asked his wife. And she said, Well, I just figured out how much we needed and how much time he was putting into it. And I put a price on it and that’s the price and its soul. So you just never know now that artists happen to have a brand and reputation Another area so that impacts it and branding does impact pricing. That’s why I tell artists, it’s important to brand yourself to the people who are going to be buying. You know, if you’re going to plein air shows, you want to make sure that the collectors that plein air shows who read plein air magazine are getting to know your brand. And that’s not one time. That’s multiple times. So keep that in mind. Anyway, that is the marketing minute.

Announcer 1:20:25
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com

Eric Rhoads 1:20:32
Hey there don’t forget to subscribe to plein air today. You will love it. It’s free. Just go to outdoorpainter.com and click on the subscribe button for plein air live our plein air today we got a lot of plein air stuff to talk about. Also, make sure to pick up some value specs just go to paintbynote.com/specs. And last but not least, check out Pastel live just go to pastellive.com. And if you’ve not seen my blog, where I talked about philosophy of life and things like that, it’s called Sunday coffee, and you can subscribe for free. And it’s kind of fun. We’ve got a lot of readers now. And so just go to Sunday. Go to CoffeewithEric.com. That’s Coffeewitheric.com. Also, I’m on the air daily on Facebook. My show is called Art School live. And hundreds of artists are doing demonstrations talks, all kinds of things. I’m on noon every weekday you can subscribe on YouTube by searching streamline, which is my company streamline art, and hit the subscribe button and also the notification button and please follow me. Eric Rhoads on Instagram and Facebook and other Twitter and all that other stuff. All right. Remember, it’s a big world out there. Go paint it and we will see you soon. Thanks again. And thanks to Pierre. Bye bye.

Announcer:
This has been the plein air podcast with Plein Air Magazine’s Eric Rhoads. You can help spread the word about plein air painting by sharing this podcast with your friends. And you can leave a review or subscribe on iTunes. So it comes to you every week. And you can even reach Eric by email [email protected]. Be sure to pick up our free ebook 240 plein air painting tips by some of America’s top painters. It’s free at pleinairtips.com. Tune in next week for more great interviews. Thanks for listening.



1 COMMENT

  1. Hi, in this podcast episode with Pierre Guidetti you do a tour of your studio which makes it sound like their is a video version. you also announce on one of the podcasts that there are video versions. I can’t figure out how to find those or watch them. I checked you tube. I’d really like to follow along visually. Ideas?

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