South Wales Urban Sketcher: Commercial Work

Commercial Work

Okay, let me stress from the start that I am purely an untrained, amateur artist. I do not make a living from art, although I would be perfectly happy to do so if this were possible. Still, I don't make pictures in order to sell them, I make them for the pleasure of making them. Nonetheless, there have been occasions when I've made pictures - sketches or paintings - which people have bought from me. This page will give you an idea of how this has happened.

1) Express Cafe, Margam

This pretty much started it. In 2017 I set myself the challenge of making 100 sketches of the town in which I live, Port Talbot, South Wales. If you're interested you can see all of them on my sister blog - 100 Faces of Port Talbot
This is the Express Café in Margam. My daughter showed it online to a friend she works with. That friend is connected with the owners of the café, who subsequently contacted me to ask if they could buy the original sketch to use on their menus and wine labels. Yes please, said I.

Well, that might have been that. Except for the fact that my daughter's friend has a relative who ran a design business. She's a brilliant artist in her own right, but hates sketching buildings. She did a bit in the line of designing wedding stationery, and gave me a few commissions to produce sketches of wedding venues. Here they are:-

These were produced in the way of samples, since each is a well known wedding venue, and could be used for many different weddings. For example: -

However, they did also lead to some bespoke commissions as well:-

The last one of these was a second attempt, since I just didn't quite get the church right. Normally, if I was just making the sketch for myself I would have said sod it, and left it as it was, but for a client you've got to try to get it right.

Going back to the 100 Sketches of Port Talbot, I was contacted by a local business who' seen this sketch on the blog: -

They bought this from me, to use on the cover of their menus, and I produced another bespoke sketch which has been used on the inside of the menus as well.

Now, as I said, I'm not a professional, but that doesn't mean that I'm happy if I find my work being used without my knowledge or permission. This next sketch I produced on a sketching trip to Swansea a couple of years ago: -

Then one day in August 2018, I logged onto Facebook to find that a friend of mine had posted this:-

Now, put yourself in my position. On the one hand it's hey - they like my sketch enough to use it! On the other hand it's - cheeky sods - they're using my sketch without even asking. So I basically left a couple of messages with the organisers, telling them that they had broken my copyright, and suggesting they contact me to sort it out amicably without having to resort to due legal process. They did actually contact me very quickly, and this was sorted out to all of our satisfaction. Yeah, petty of me considering that I'd only made the sketch for the pure enjoyment of it, but sod it - I didn't make the sketch for financial gain, but I'll be damned if somebody else is going to make gain from it without at the very least getting my permission in the first place.