Sunshine Promising
Inc.
Monthly Newsletter
Mar. 29, 2007
Why Portrait from Photo Become Less Expensive Now?
Edited by Sunshine Promising, Inc. Best Arts from China
Putian City of Fujian Province, P.R.C.
Portrait from photo, is always a hot topic among all galleries, both overseas and
domestic, since such service brings people happiness, reminding previous happy time
with their family members, relatives or intimate friends; or even their dear pets,
landscape; sweet memories of their important events such as wedding ceremony, award
winning; to name a few.
What a valuable service! No wonder it attracts so many galleries and artists to devote
themselves. However, portraits need higher level of painting skills, thus in each medium-
sized city, only no more than 100 painters are qualified for portrait painting.
A few years ago, portraits painters were a hit since their scarcity. Pricing of portrait tops
paintings of all quality standards. Suddenly, in recent 2-3 years, its pricing decreases at
unexpected rate, at the same time, lots of portraits painters seem coming out from
nowhere. Does it mean its skill is no longer a secret, and easy to master now?
NO. The answer is PRINT. You may wonder, I did receive oil portrait. Yes, but the print
is underneath and you can’t look through it. No wonder the degree of resemblance is
even better. The rate of rejection is even lower than 100% hand-made ones.
God seems to award those less skillful painters with latest technology to earn more
money with quicker speed. Unfair, isn’t it?
The truth is, a layer of print is firstly printed onto canvas and the second layer is painted
onto. Then some maybe 3rd layer. But time and labor are substantially reduced due to
omission of first layer, furthermore, the time and labour spent on the second layer is
much less, and finally, since the rejection rate is low, painters spend less time on
correcting the final portraits. All the bad feelings, including impatience, frustration,
overpaid labor, no longer obsess painters. What a relief!
Is the latest technology application wrong? Or we’re so stubborn to stick to 100% hand-
making?
The result is, end-customers may not be happy to get easy come, easy go work! After 2
years, the first layer and the second one become not sticking together so well, and trace
of print will be found somehow, by comparing to the 100% hand-made ones, making it
not nice-looking any more and you have to decide to take it off from your important
place. Or, customers may feel being cheated from the first moment of knowing the truth,
with their expectation of 100% hand-made portraits, but ending up a printed plus painted
one. They would rather go to a photo shop to print it anyway, why bother to make it a
hand-painted portrait?
Suppose, if some customers are not against such application of print, as long as final
effect looks the same as 100% hand-made one, and as long as it is cheaper. As a gift
presented to others, they don’t care how long it will last. Two years, pretty enough.
So we need to inform all customers the difference with different pricing before they order
portrait, making the service process transparent, thus all customers get what they want,
by paying higher price for higher quality, lower price for quasi-hand-made paintings.
Then it becomes fair once again! Rule comes back.
Who are gonna be the pioneer to tell our “Source of Profit” – customers the truth?
I am, in China, while, who is the first buyer overseas, to tell the truth?
Written by
James Jianyin LIU
Sunshine Promising, Inc.
www. SunshinePromising.com
Best Arts Provider
Sunshine Promising Inc.
Monthly Newsletter
Aug. 27, 2007
Our Oil Painting Biz – A Small Democratic Seed in China
Edited by Sunshine Promising, Inc. Your Best Arts Partner from China
Putian City of Fujian Province, P.R.C.
My friends keep asking me why Sunshine Promising can expand its oil painting biz
quickly without taking part of any fair, with 10 employees within as short as less than 2
years and keep profitable under pressure of domestic inflation and appreciation of RMB
currency. It is really “promising”. I wish to declare to everybody proudly, it is because of
DEMOCRATIC system that attracts personnel.
Several months ago, when I read Living History written by Hillary Rodham Clinton, I was
greatly moved, somewhat stunned by Clinton’s courage to greet a random unfamiliar
crowd by walking down the steps and shaking hands with them somewhere out of
Washington with another state leader (I forget where or which country he was visiting).
As everybody knows, in China, lots of city mayors even have not such courage. That is
because Clinton’s courage is based on his confidence of the democratic system of his
country, while a mayor in China is not really elected but quasi-designated with disguise
of election procedures, they are not sure about what the probability of a bullet crossing
their chest is when they greet them without police’s protection since their behavior is not
related with supervision of the people they are leading, on the other side, why they need
to greet them who are simply like a handful of grass.
China at the moment is still a very autocratic country, comparing to quite of a lot of
western democratic countries, which, we as a young small business, have not any
power at all to alternate, since it was founded by our state leaders who have their own
design of the country at their will, for instance, they may want the next generations of
their family to inherit most of huge assets of the state as like their own private assets.
However we can at least do our best to build a democratic company by ourselves, as if
planting a small seed of democracy in this soil. I hope every individual or company can
bear the same mind as mine, then a more evolved China with democracy will come into
being in coming years that can be counted with our fingers.
Written by
James Jianyin LIU
Sunshine Promising, Inc.
www.SunshinePromising.com
Your Best Arts Partner
