Fun Without Color

Several years ago my nephew Dan and I had this idea to produce and market a series of small prints in black and white. We assumed that quality black and white prints would be much cheaper to produce, so we would be able to sell them at a low cost.

The photo above is a tight close up of a larger piece.

The complete painting. I enjoyed doing the series of black and white paintings. It was an interesting change of pace from my normal work. I forget the name of this one and the rest as well.

Another close up of the next painting. 

The complete painting of the wolf family.

So our intention was to do a series of small prints of popular Alaskan wildlife and sell them at art shows and in local gift shops that cater to tourists. We quickly found out that we would not save all that much money doing these paintings in black and white as opposed to color.

Another close up of another in the series, a Dall Ram.

Another Dall Ram from the same painting.

The complete painting.

Anyway we worked out the cost of printing, and the costs of matting, foam core backing, and shrink wrap. Then we figured that we could sell each print for $15, or $20 dollars. The gift shops take half of that leaving us with a thin profit margin.

Every tourist who comes to Alaska wants to see a Moose. Every hunter dreams of bagging a giant Moose like these.

The painting is set in Denali National Park. No hunter will be able to get these guys.

A close up of Trumpeter Swans.

The funny thing about this painting is that the leaves look to me like they have a trace of color although I only used black and white acrylic paint.

From the experience of doing many art shows together, Dan and I knew that we would only be able to sell a limited number of prints in a given show. We realized that it would take years for us to recoup out initial investment in making these prints. So we dropped the idea for now.

A grizzly cub.

Mama Grizzly.

The complete painting with Mt. McKinley in the background. There was another painting in the series that was far superior to any of these but I sold it before I could photograph it.