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Fantastic, Mary! Nine in one day -- that's amazing.
Julie, my first few commissions were priced way below market value, too. That's how word of mouth gets started sometimes. I donated to nine high end charity auctions over the last two years. About half of the auctions I've done have led to other business afterwards, while others have not ... yet. Almost all of them gave me at least some income, with the winning bidders upgrading either a little or a lot.
You'll get a mixed bag of results: One auction led me to meet one of the very wealthy founders of Microsoft, good friends of Bill Gates. I painted their daughter and they have four more kids whose portraits they want me to do when they get older.
However, there were also two auctions where the winners decided not to go ahead and get anything done at all. Turned out that what they had in mind involved paying to upgrade and they didn't want the additional expense. That happens sometimes.
I'm done with auctions for now since I currently have about a year and a half waiting list, almost all of which is full price work (many of which came to me as referrals from other auction clients).
So, Julie, if this auction doesn't lead to new business for you, you may want to try another one, and another one. Just be sure the auctions you pick are all bringing in people who can truly afford oil portraiture, and therefore who have friends who can afford it too. There are high end auctions and low end ones. I have found the best results from private school auctions since I paint mostly kids and the attendees are all parents of school age children.
I looked at those auctions I did as a way for me to get paid at least something to learn on the job, with real clients and real models and then to have real portfolio pieces to show for it at the end.
I owe Stanka Kordic a big thanks for encouraging me, on SOG, to try auctions in the first place!
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