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.
Sep 10, 2008
A difficult time in China for export
By Sunshine Promising, your best art partner in China
Up to September 10, 2008, Eur depreciates by 10% against RMB, meanwhile, the U.S.
economy is still in stagnant state. As the two major markets for China, their shrink of
demand looms up great threat to the sustainable development of small and medium
enterprises in China which mainly oriented to export business.
Let’s take a family as instance here to better exemplify what has been going on for the
last 3 decades.
We are a big family with parents of family very autocratic and self-centered who ravish
most fortune made by other family members by offering either physical or mental labor to
two big landlords, i.e. the U.S. and EU. Our parents finally took over total foreign money
from us and forbid us to use it for circulation in the family or around, and compensates
us with RMB. Our parents own everything of our house, land and major utilities and we
only have right of using them. If the parents are angry or unhappy, they could withdraw
their property from us anytime.
According to the statistics, after 30 years of opening up policy, 70% of total fortune
made the populace of China has been siphoned by the government and the rest 30%
distributed to the civilians. Meanwhile, central government only stimulates export-
oriented efforts while constrains the people from stepping into domestic public service
sectors to protect established interest of all levels of government and their derivatives,
which causes all firms in China heavily rely on the U.S. and EU markets and thus the
low value of RMB against Euro and USD. The people in China realizes that only
through selling or making products for the foreigners will they earn better income than
they do anything for their fellow countrymen. The whole country is being ushered to a
single direction rendering most people only care about what foreigners think, consume
and demand about, but not our more dear and near countrymen’s.
Now the landlords are angry or just unhappy because their fortune has been transferred
so much to the parents of this big family due to huge long-term trade-deficit, they set up
trade barriers, force RMB to appreciate to its deserved value (they didn’t complain it too
much before). Then those family members who get used to work for the landlords go
crazy. Why? What? How?
It is time for us to reflect ourselves. Have we been misled by our government for the last
30 years? Is working for the foreign countries our solo way of making a living?
Have we paid enough attention to the people’s need around us?
The neighboring widow might have needed desperately a guy helping her to repair the
old house. We ignored or just skipped such opportunity of serving her, since we might
have earned little money of RMB from her, vis-à-vis the money we could earned from
foreigners. The community that you were living in needed some service of teaching
residents Taiji Boxing, but we might have calculated the opportunity cost and thought it
not worthwhile.
It is hour for us to think about the ordinary people around us.
I have had many ideas before and never put into practice. I had wanted to create local
basketball small league; I had wanted to make an alarm accessory alerting near-ending
of liquid in bottle during transfusion for patients, especially when I was taking care of my
Dad in hospital; I wanted to dedicate to sports courts construction for local people; I had
many wants of help when someone was in need, but I really didn’t go further than wish
per se since I have been devoting myself to the rich countries for long time.
When I reflect, I really cherish each time I help local people translate English and
Spanish, though I might not have charged them high. Their smiles and relievement from
questions are the best reward to me.
Although, if we think bigger, all important service sectors in China are all monopolized or
well controlled by the government and repels any new comer, such as communication,
construction, medical service, and nearly everything, even the translation service here
in my city, is monopolized by local government, except those government thought too
trivial to bothered themselves.
Whatsoever, we can start from very small things by helping the neighbors or the
community.
Luckily, for oil painting industry, since paintings are handmade, and don’t utilize any raw
material (so nothing to do with PPI), so the industry generally absorbs the shock of trade
friction and stays in a quieter harbor. We may take a breath and watch undergoing
erratic waves!
Jianyin James LIU
