Is this a Marketable concept?

Doc Mark

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I apologize for posting this in the regular Forum, rather than the Digital Art section. But I was wondering if anyone thought this concept might be marketable. I have become obsessed with drawing and painting in the ProCreate software. I thought that I would try to do a painting of a blackpowder pistol I engraved a few years ago. I wanted to change things that I was unhappy with, while accentuating certain parts that did not show in the actual photos. When I engraved this gun, I had not ever tried inlays, so I only used silver instead of gold, (BIG MISTAKE). Since then, I use gold for all my inlay work. Also, in the photos, you couldn't see any of the fine line engraving on the cylinder. It was a scene of the battle of the Monitor and Merrimack ironclads. To be honest, I undoubtedly could have simply altered the photo with Photoshop and saved myself nearly 30 hours of work, but that wouldn't have given me as much satisfaction.

Anyway, do any of you think that Digital Painting of engraved guns, knives or any other items would interest either the creators of said items, or their collectors? They wouldn't come cheaply either, particularly if the customer wanted high-end Giclee prints made.

I value all your opinions.


P.S. I just noted when previewing this post that the "velvet" cloth details are missing in this jpeg.
 

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Sam

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It's absolutely excellent. I mistook it for a photo. What collector wouldn't want this? If I were a customer I might prefer less photo realism though. Some painterly brush strokes in places might look really nice. You have done a superb job on this!
 

monk

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marketable ? i should think so. with excellent work such as you show there, i see no reason why a client wouldn't want a work showing one of their prized posessions. what is a giclee print ?
 

Doc Mark

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Thanks Guys. I agree Sam, it needs to look a bit more "painterly" but I became so hung-up on getting the engraving details correct that I was afraid to be more loose. Perhaps more "brush strokes" in the background materials.

Monk, Giclee is a high-end printing process that uses a large, high-resolution inkjet type printer with special archival pigment inks.
 

Andrew Biggs

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Fabulous work!!! Looks great!! You've got the bug alright :)

But is it marketable?............you won't know till you try. That means doing a few of them and getting them printed and displaying them in the appropriate places and advertising to the right customers. Not a cheap exercise financially or time wise.

Cheers
Andrew
 

DakotaDocMartin

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It's absolutely excellent. I mistook it for a photo. What collector wouldn't want this? If I were a customer I might prefer less photo realism though. Some painterly brush strokes in places might look really nice. You have done a superb job on this!

I, on the other hand, would like it realistic rather than have faked brush strokes.
 

Doc Mark

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Thanks "kfengraver". I have about 25 hours of actual drawing time and used 12 layers in Procreate. I changed my mind several times about how to handle certain aspects of the painting and as a result, I redrew several parts multiple times. This obviously adds to the hours spent. If I was to recreate the same drawing, knowing what I did wrong the first time, I could probably do it in 18-20 hours.
 

Sam

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Hey Mark...you can sign up to beta test the new version of procreate. I might do it.
 

Doc Mark

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Sam, I decided to wait until the new IOS 11 is available. Mainly because I've read that much of the newer improvements to Procreate are dependent on Apples' IOS 11 upgraded abilities. Talk is that Apple will release the upgrade next month, with Savage releasing Procreate 4 soon behind. I've got my fingers crossed that this is true.
 
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Sam

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Sam, I decided to wait until the new IOS 11 is available. Mainly because I've read that much of the newer improvements to Procreate are dependent on Apples' IOS 11 upgraded abilities. Talk is that Apple will release the upgrade next month, with Savage releasing Procreate 4 soon behind. I've got my fingers crossed that this is true.

Yeah, there are a lot of known bugs so I'm getting cold feet. I use it too much to lose some functionality. I might wait as well.
 
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