Back in business: Two more full sized banners incoming!

Finally I have the banner machine running again. The lady who sews my banners for me had a breakdown. Her machine broke. That meant that I had to figure out who was going to sew the banners for me before I was able to do more! Definitely an inconvenience since I already accepted payment for two.  In case you have been sleeping under a rock with the Geico dudes, I paint full sized banners by commission. Here is a recent one I did for Feast of Blades actually taken by Chandler the guy who is organizing the tournament.



I hope the link works!

I got it off his photobucket.

Any way, back to the machine. I ended up finally offering to buy the lady a new machine on agreement that she would work off the cost by sewing banners for me.  Machine was handed off today and we are good to go!

The two banners I am working on now are the Space Wolves Chapter Banner and Helbrechts personal banner.

Image borrowed off Bolter and Chainsword

who borrowed it from some one else.

The dancing dog!  It really is a pretty abanner and I am looking forward to painting it.  This one poses a challenge though. Normally I send off the fabric to be sewn while I paint the image onto a nice and neat piece of canvas, then she sews the canvas onto the banner.  But there are elements to this banner that extend all the way to the edges, while others do not.  Plus they overlap. Big problem. So I am going to have to do all of the painting directly onto the banner.  This is hard because the "Duck" cloth soaks up the paint, causing me to have to use many layers to get color down.  

The next one is Helbrecht's

Thanks to Ron Saikowski, this is his work from his blog.

Now this banner is more traditional. A big black piece of cloth with a rectangular image sewn on.  I am having her sew the banner and will paint the image onto canvas.  Nice and easy!  

Lots of guys have been asking for prices on these.  Let me break it down.  In materials and labor on the banner being sewn I spend 100 bucks. I pay her 50 bucks, plus paint and fabric runs about 50. I use top quality paint.  So the first 100 bucks of the cost are eaten up just in production. That leaves me charging 300 bucks to do a codex chapter like these.  It takes about 10 hours to paint one and my standard cost is 20.00 an hour.  (Hey I could make 10 bucks an hour at Michaels Art Supply or even McDonalds, I don't think 20.00 an hour for putting all of my degrees to work including my BFA and a masters is too much to ask, especially since I made more than that doing landscaping!) 

I also do customized ones, but I add a couple of hours to the total based on just how much work I have to do. This means that I ask the customer to do a rough sketch of what he wants, including his desires for color etc. then I redraw it to look good and work well. This may include changing it around to meet the principles of design and just plain look good.  Usually I will have to spend time researching images and figuring out how to paint them. 

What it comes down to is that I have never charged 300 bucks for a banner and done less than 10 hours of work. Usually I would estimate it at 15+, but another 100 bucks on the price tag starts to push it well out of reach.  My Blood Angels Chapter Banner was at least 15 to 20 hours.  You can find a link to that on the right.  

Ok time to get to work. I got resin to pour.  

Jawaballs