[Cynthia Daniel]

Congratulations Mary!

You sound breathless and excited. Did you sleep last night?

As a marketing person, I always tell artists to never apologize for a waiting list. That's a mark of success and adds to your desirability with others. There are artists who have enough work inhouse to paint three years straight. You just make yourself some type of scheduling system so you know who came in when and take them in order. We had a magnetic scheduling board, but that's not necessary for this stage of your career.

You will need to get some rough estimate of completion for the clients. For Robert Schoeller, I used to say delivery was normally running 18-24 months, but I cautioned them that it could be more or less.

I normally tell artists they can raise prices if they are booked out for a year, perhaps before, but a year is very conservative and safe. But, that's only a rule of thumb. Depends on how fast you paint and what "booked out for a year" means for you. If an artist only paints a completed piece every four months, those things have to be taken into consideration.

Robert Schoeller would usually do a head and shoulders in 4-7 days. A full-figure of a child might run from 3-5 weeks. Then, there were some with multiple figures that ran only 4 weeks. Based on your past painting experience, you should be able to get some idea of how far out you are booked. He only worked on one painting at a time.

By the way, where is that rascal Gian Cassone and what/how is he doing? I met him at the ASOPA event in 1996 and then he was on my web site years ago, but then left the country and, therefore went off my site. For a long time I still had his 8x10's but I've moved since then and I have no idea if I'll ever find them now.

By the way, I'm going to move this thread over to the Business section since that's where it really belongs.