If you are using over-seas artists as is suggested in the article it might be nice to be very transparent about where the costs go, how much they get and how it is (hopefully) supporting and not exploiting them :) It would make me and probably others happier about using such a service.
Look at Everlane for an example of a startup that does a great job of this.
I don't understand why people think that using inexpensive labor overseas is "exploitation". If they are willing to take the job, that means it's paying more than the other options they have available to them which includes not having a job at all. As long as they aren't being held at gunpoint and aren't actual slaves, how is this exploitation if they are happy to freely take the job?
There's a spectrum between slavery and a happy, voluntary decision. Most of us want the floor on how an employer treats its workers slightly above gunpoint.
I come from Poland,where the minimum wage is ~$1.8 and I know a lot of people who earn it. Now from what I've heard, the Chinese workers at Foxconn work for $15 a day, and everyone calls it exploitation. Yet the Polish workers work for not much more if not for less after paying their taxes, and I've never heard anyone in the Western countries calling Polish workers "exploited". I also don't know anyone working under "slightly above gunpoint" conditions. The wages are just what they are, for many many different reasons. But just because someone is not getting paid what a person doing the same job in the UK or US or Germany would get paid doesn't automatically mean that they are exploited.
I'd rather the floor be much higher than just slightly above gunpoint. Like you mentioned, there are some people who don't care, and that's sad. Chances are that a voluntarily-working group of people have the floor much higher than "slightly above gunpoint".
Also, you appear to be logged into a 4-day-old throwaway account. Is that intentional?
Because humans cannot photosynthesize, hunger is a consequence of idleness in a subsistence farming economy. A modern industrialized economy isn't too different along that parameter.
>hunger is a consequence of idleness in a subsistence farming economy //
Yeah, 'cause famines and floods and other natural disasters never happen. No-one ever has to sell all their produce to pay for medicine. No, nothing like that; hunger==idleness for sure. /sarc
I'm Chinese and so is my co-founder. In fact, she grew up in China, and I lived a part of my life in semi-rural China. I know and interacted with people who worked in factories and have relatives that do these jobs.
We kind of take offense to the idea that us bringing extra work to these painters in China is "exploitation," and it's easy for a lot of comfortable Westerners to take this stance because the standard of living here is so high and we have the luxury to think about how much we'd all like to get paid.
To put your mind at ease, most of these painters have set up shop doing this regularly, and have a standardized price usually on their websites. We simply contact them, talk to them, and send them business according to their quoted prices. We don't gather a bunch of people who have nothing else to do and force them to paint because they have no other alternatives. They are already painters, and they do this as as their main specialty.
>We kind of take offense to the idea that us bringing extra work to these painters in China is "exploitation," and it's easy for a lot of comfortable Westerners to take this stance because the standard of living here is so high and we have the luxury to think about how much we'd all like to get paid.
Well, I'm not that much of a "confortable Westerner". I'm from Europe, true, but my country has been in a dire Euro-crisis condition for years.
Since that happened we see all kinds of foreign and local businesses coming to exploit the situation, offering wages that we consider insulting and near-substinence but are forced to accept for lack of options.
The only reason business say the "cost of living" in country X matters regarding to how much to pay a worker is because they can get away with it. I don't see why an American working at X is worth more than a Chinese or a Portuguese working at X. Especially with all the talk of a globalised economy.
It seems the main idea businesses take from a globalized economy is to take advantage of it NOT being globalised enough, ie. to play national economies and cheaper labour against each other.
I'd like to see a real "global economy", where everyone is paid the same.
What I meant by "comfortable Westerner" is that what you may consider insulting, they in China might be fine with. And it is presumptuous to think that they are being exploited (and ungrateful for their jobs) just because Western standards are to have supersize and excess in everything like gas guzzling Hummers, McMansions, air conditioning in every room, etc.
And someone from a developed country always has better options, so it is easy to say "they should not be taking that job" from up high. But when your main concern is your family, your child's education, and putting food on the table, any option is a good option. More so when you aren't concerned with luxury... because you can be more efficient and actually work for less when you don't waste money on extraneous living expenses.
Plus, if you truly believe in a "global economy" where everyone is paid the same, the only way to move towards that is to enable free trade and allow cheap labor to be used. Holding back on an area because the wages are "too low" in fact drives wages there even lower, so that other exploitative people will be able to exploit this imbalance.
So avoiding cheap labor doesn't make sense and causes exploitative wage reduction by artificially withholding demand, and paying more than market price doesn't make business sense. For example if I have three photographers. One charges $100/hr, the other $200/hr, and the third $300/hr. If I hire the first photographer I don't just decide to pay him $300 simply because the highest quote I received was $300. Not to mention paying market price is perfectly conducive with evening out the wages in a "global economy."
Imagine that I have some discrete, solo work that needs doing, and that it can be done anywhere in the world. (This is a best case for global work.)
Now, imagine that I can get that done for X by someone right next to me, where the transport costs will be low/zero, the transport latency will be low/zero, and I can be reasonably assured that the secondary effects of that spending will be local (when that artist spends the money on things they want to buy).
In a scenario like that, why should I pay X to someone far away, with a possible language barrier, time zone issues, certainly transport costs and latency and concerns over how much more effort it may take to do whatever training, quality control and feedback mechanisms are needed?
If it's X here and X there, I choose "here". Always. It's not racism or xenophobia; it's just the practical reality.
Businesses exist to arbitrage and combine raw materials (including labor) into finished goods and sell them at a profit. That's true whether you're a kid's lemonade stand, Starbucks, Apple or Google.
There's nothing wrong with a supplier setting whatever price they want. If I set the price of my labor too high, no one will buy it, just as if I set the price of a ton of coffee beans too high.
My belief, while there is undoubtedly some amount of exploitation in the world, is that people who are willingly selling their labor are better off, not worse off, by having extra options of where to sell that labor. If we run an employer out of a market, laborers are not better off for having that option removed.
Because clearly everyone deserves to live at whatever arbitrary standards the person complaining about "exploitation" thinks is correct. Nevermind the fact that if they weren't being "exploited" like this, they'd probably be illiterate subsistence farmers.
Come on, these are trained artists, not "illiterate dirt farmers." There's a way to have the globalization discussion respectfully, but this is not it.
What he's saying is that if these artists didn't have a supply of income, they would not have studied art.
Withholding jobs from China because they are "too low" by Western standards simply further lowers their wages (due to artificial constriction of demand), hurts economic development, and discourages development of human capital (like artists) because foreign companies think it's too cheap to pay them.
It isn't necessarily, but obviously it does exist. My point was not that instapainting is doing this, but if they are not that it might be nice to make it transparent how they are also bettering the lives of the painters :)
The artist in this case would be the photographer who took the photo. What the painters are doing is equivalent to painting by numbers (they are painting over the photo). Its a skill for sure, but not an art form, anymore than the interior wall paint of your house it art (which requires a lot of skill to do correctly ... having witnessed many badly painted walls in my time).
I don't get all the complaints. This business provides employment for Americans (the founders) and Chinese (the painters). Its a win win. Not exploitation.
Great, that means there is probably a fantastic opportunity to separate your brand with something like this and use it as marketing leverage against those folks ;-) Win-win?
I like the labor reducing (and cheapening) idea of printing on the canvas first and then painting on top. This removes the sketching time and eliminates the whole class of problems relating to proportion and perspective.
The idea of shipping canvas in tubes has me less enthused. Most people can't stretch canvas over a frame on their own, so they have to get somebody to do it for them. That person probably isn't very cheap in their locale. This step is potentially done better at the factory.
Next the stretched canvas needs to be framed. Once I have my 12" by 12" canvas stretched and then framed, I wouldn't be surprised that it cost me some multiple of the $53 price. Besides a costing a bundle more than quoted, I had to do some legwork in meatspace to get it wall ready.
The quality of the work has to be good too, otherwise the prestige of a painting will be overshadowed by its gaudiness. Might as well hang the original photograph then.
Overall, not an easy business to get right, but monetization is built in. I hope you succeed.
Printing on canvas first seems to limit the artist, though. Not doing that would let them make a dogs head bigger to make the dog's expression the main part of the piece, for example, if you were getting a painting made of a favorite pet and wanted that - or whatever the goal is. The goal of art isn't to look as much like a photo as possible, so printing the photo first doesn't seem a good thing.
>The goal of art isn't to look as much like a photo as possible //
Arguably Instapainting's "artists" aren't making art for Instapainting's customers, they're making photo-style reproduction in paint.
Some artists work to create photorealism; I'd say it's fine to still call it art (but not art that does anything for me besides illicit awe as to the skill involved) despite it being perhaps better described as craft.
Hi, Chris - It seems that like.fm is drastically different. What made you pivot from sharing songs to selling paintings? I'm sure it's an interesting story.
I have to agree that the baby looks frightening. The web site would be stronger without that image.
Of course, adoring parents who are addled from sleep deprivation would love this service, I suggest you replace it with a drop-dead gorgeous baby painting.
Yea those were early orders where we were still isolating the price-quality ratio. In any case, if you don't like what you get, we'll refund you or ship you another one.
My reaction to the examples was "it seems like they don't actually want me to be able to see what the results look like." The pictures are very badly-taken: weird angles, bizarrely limited depth-of-field so most of it is out of focus, too close to see much of the picture, etc.
We placed it at the angles so you can see a closeup and also notice the texture in the brush strokes and paint. If you receive a painting and it's not what you expect, we'll refund you 100% plus the return shipping, or send you another painting.
that makes sense, but the way it's presented looks more like someone just doesn't know how to take a picture. Including full shots of each and calling the closeups out as detail views would help a lot.
I wonder if there's a way to nudge people to submit the "right" type of photo. I'd assume that your complaint rate will be far lower for the landscape type photo than the super close-up portrait.
I'm in agreement with the parent comment - I was interested, but the examples were a little off-putting. I'd consider removing the baby one or posting a different angle.
It would be much more interesting if this became a market to those artists abroad instead of a interface that obfuscates which artist made your painting. The reason here is taste and style. It would be great if I could look over the work of those that do this kind of work, but introduce their own personal style into the process, that way you can get your painting converted, but also have it done in a style that you like.
Feel free to find an http://Artsicle.com artist anywhere in the world and send them a photo. I'm sure they'd be happy to make you a painting out of it. That way you can choose your style and have direct contact with the artist.
I think we'll definitely be exploring that level of customization. We (the founders) are Chinese so we have a pretty tight relationship with the artists over there.
Somehow painting doesn't seem like a dangerous job where one can lose limbs or life like working in a factory. The ability to have a job and put food on the table for the family is probably a better option for everyone than starving or begging. (To be fair, I've never been to China, so I could be mistaken.)
This is good idea. I can imagine this becoming go to website for my lot of gifts. Few suggestions...
1. You probably want to advertise more clearly and strongly on what is the turn around time because "insta" is bit misleading. Right now it is in grey font tucked away in between.
2. Your site can become a contact point between artists and customers who want to commission a portraits. Artists can upload their pricing and portfolio and customers can choose the one to commission.
3. It would great to have option for painting on a greeting card. Hand painted greeting cards would be very special.
Regarding points 2 and 3, check out Artists&Clients [1] – it's exactly what you're suggesting, and I (founder/dev) commission greeting cards on it myself :)
On the one hand, I applaud the creative business model here....
On the other hand, being practically married to a woman who is a classically trained fine artist who already has a difficult enough time making a living from her work, it saddens me that the consequence of this is further diminishing her ability to make that living.
This causes a reduced perception of the skill involved in actually creating original works. And it reduces the already small market for original artwork.
The horse buggy drivers felt that way too. I'm sure they managed to retrain and find a new profession.
Historically, artists have always had to have a patron sponsor them in order to pursue their artistic inclinations. While it's hard for male artists to find this today, chances are that your wife already has access to guaranteed patronage if she's not in the mood to learn a more economically relevant skill set.
I find your comparison to be ridiculous and frankly, quite ignorant.
You are right about patron sponsorship of artists though. And thankfully, she has developed her skill to a point where she is not reliant on selling her work exclusively for income (in fact, she is an entrepreneur who has opened her own private studio for teaching).
The fact remains though; while I appreciate the low-cost nature of the "product". I hope anyone who buys one of these realizes that it is not a real work of art (outside of the virtue of the original photograph) and that there is in fact real (and more) value and real (and much, much more) skill that goes into making true original oil paintings.
This is an amazing idea and sounds pretty affordable at less than 50 bucks. I wish it was posted on HN last month so I could have ordered something for Valentine's day. :-)
I tried this service and was surprised with how well it turned out. The artist even hand-delivered it to me, although I don't think they do that for everyone.
Would it be legal to send a photo of a famous piece of art from hundreds of years ago to one of these services. On one hand the painting would be in public domain. But I wonder if some anti-forging laws would be an issue?
It would be forgery (fraud, whatever) if you mis-represented it as an original, but if you wanted something that looked like a famous piece of art, you should be in the clear.
Its not a forgery as long as it isn't misrepresented and there is already a market for reproductions see http://www.ebay.com/bhp/starry-night-oil-painting for instance (no connection to this seller, just came up in google). More than likely though you are going to get a better reproduction if you go with someone who specializes in that sort of thing. The people who do this do very much specialize, not just in doing reproductions, but typically in reproducing the style a handful of artists.
This is fascinating and I would totally consider doing this. One thing that I would like would be examples in the gallery that show the source image along with the hand-painted output, so I can get real sense of how my picture will look as a hand-painted image.
I like the idea, but something doesn't feel right. The paintings look just like the photos, no emotion, no feeling, simply an output of the input. I don't really see the point. You may as well apply a Photoshop filter to your image and print it out on canvas. It would be a lot cheaper and have about as much Art™ bound up in it.
They look better in person. You can fault them for the customer-provided images, but the actual translation from image to painting looks good in person.
This looks like an interesting business model. Good luck to you!
Perhaps you might want to consider providing an option to buy the printed, but unpainted canvas for people who might want to try their hands at making their own.
That's a good idea. We don't have that at the moment because lots of places already do prints. Perhaps a print with colors mixed for you to paint yourself?
twenty years ago I was looking into franchises and this came up - there was an army of Chinese painters willing to take a photo and convert it into oils - a couple of hundred pounds if I remember rightly - it was a big and sophisticated operation then.
I said no as I had no idea who would work for me and no idea how to sell. or scared of selling I guess.
but if I was a decent artist I guess a nice sit down job beats most options.
Look at Everlane for an example of a startup that does a great job of this.