Instapainting Turns Your Photos Into Hand-Painted Oil Paintings On The Cheap
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Look at Everlane for an example of a startup that does a great job of this.
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.
Also, you appear to be logged into a 4-day-old throwaway account. Is that intentional?
You are working "voluntary" only if you have options.
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 was being facetious with the "slightly above" phrase :-). But I probably didn't word it well.
Wage is just one thing to take into consideration. Working conditions, forced overtime (perhaps without pay), safety, etc...
Exploitation is far more nuanced than "working at gunpoint".
But it all has to do with ethical standards. Some are content to get the cheap labor, so they see no problem here.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
The two on the top look great, the dogs look meh and the baby looks frightening. The dog on your Instagram looks awesome as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anyway, best of luck with this venture!
http://www.chinaoilpainting.com/portrait.htm
in the past with great success. They have the ability to take your photo and incorporate it into other scenes.
The prices are about the same and shipping took about two weeks.
What is the shipping turnaround time on instapainting?
We can also do 2 weeks, however due to uncertain demand, we aren't making that guarantee yet.
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.
this is basically color-by-numbers, no?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5pQnq...
Could a robot (CNC machine) paint it faster and cheaper?
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.