Wildlife Art DVD’s Anyone? I need your opinions Again :)
December 29, 2009 5 Comments
Looks like I am just about set up to record some wildlife painting DVD’s. Yeah….. at long last some of you will be saying! ha…….
So my question is, how are we going to make sure we create the best one we can?
What would make my wildlife painting DVD great? perhaps by thinking what is lacking in other DVD’s you might own you could come up with some really good ideas of what you would like to see in mine.
This is a similar question / process to the one I asked for my brand new ebooks, and it seems to have helped create what you wanted, if the comments are anything to go by 
So if you have a spare moment I would really appreciate you taking the time to comment on this post, or email me direct jason@onlineartdemos.co.uk
About Jason Morgan - wildlife artist
Hi Jason, The one thing I am always keen to see and is very seldom gone into, is how you put your composition together? Do you use different photos, put together (on computer? tracing? Thumbnails?) and do you have any tricks on getting the light direction correct if the photos you are using are taken on different days and lighting is different. So for me preparation is as important as putting on the colour. Most of the stuff I have seen start with the canvas already prepared with the drawing bit already done.
Also any help for those of us who aspire to wildlife art but cant get our own good ref photos….zoos and parks always seem to have thick wire fencing or dirty glass to contend with.
Thanks for the opportunity to give you our thought first.
Thanks for the post Bev. I’ll certainly cover that in the new ebook
but here are some quick answers for you – Yes I do use different photos for some of my paintings, but I almost always have one main one that has the light type and direction correct in it. This then becomes my main reference photo. Placement of animals etc is really secondary. I cover placement of animals a bit more in volume 2 of my ebooks, but the main thing I would say is to try to make up as little as possible as far as lighting is concerned as it almost always fails when it’s made up.
Regarding good reference photos, in the UK there are some places dedicated to big cat photography, and you can stick your camera through the already wide fences – another avenue to persue would be to pay for permission to use pro photos, I sometimes have to do this myself to get excatly what my client asks, bear in mind the photos generally cost £80 + each! you could always contact a pro photographer for photo usage, sometimes they will let you use it for free, but generally if you are going to be selling your painting they will want 10% + of selling price, which could be betwee, £100 + 300 for me – whic is a fair chunk.
Of course you could also buy my willdife photo CD ( http://www.jasonmorgan.co.uk/Misc%20pages/wildlife-reference-photo-CD.html )with 100 of my own photos on there and that just costs £18.50! which is not bad when you consider the other options above
Jason – Both the ideas are cool. My 2 cents would be to make sure you have enough traffic coming to the site. Given the fact that your work is special, success is linked to traffic to the site.
Thanks Thomas.
Any help you can give me on increasing traffic would be really appreciated
Those are VERY strong words Maddie.
If the CD you bought only had photos on there then it sounds like you have bought my 100 wildlife photos CD. Which is supposed to have nothing but photos on there for artists to use as references. ALL of my other Ebooks and the learn to paint wildlife in oils CD has LOTS of text and instructions, so it sound to me like either you ordered the wrong CD or the wrong one got sent to you by mistake – remember ALL of my products also have a 100% money back guarantee, so you only had to contact me and ask for a refund anyway.
Jason