Art production for art consultants, painted to the approved schedule

Send the deck as it went to the client, with one row per position: where it hangs, the wall size and the image you showed. Say what is fixed and what the painter may decide: “keep the palette and the loose brushwork, change the subject to the coastline” is a brief a painter can work to.

References come in four kinds, and each becomes a different line on the order:

• A catalogue work you proposed, ordered by its code, as painted or at a new size.
• A mood image, such as a photograph, fabric or interior: it sets colour and feeling, and the painter composes a new picture.
• An artist's way of painting, followed in new work; where the line sits is explained further down.
• The client's own material: a view, a building, an archive photograph or a crest, painted from their own image.

Deck still being written? Send the brief and photos of the walls, and we shortlist catalogue works per position, or design pieces for the project as its budget allows.

Consultants often show a living artist's work to set a direction: the palette, the size of the marks, the way a figure dissolves into its ground. A manner can be followed; a particular picture belongs to the person who made it. So the painter's brief becomes “a new composition, in this palette, with this handling”, and the result is a new work.

When the client has fallen for one specific painting, there are three good routes:

• Ask the rights holder. With the artist's or the estate's written permission, the work is reproduced by hand at the size the wall needs.
• Choose a painting out of copyright. Works by artists who died long ago (in most countries, over 70 years) can usually be reproduced; IA#047, pictured, is painted after a famous starry night over a river from the 1880s.
• Commission a sibling: a new picture in the same manner, sized and coloured for the room.

Mood-board photographs work the same way: the photographer usually owns the picture, so it guides colour and feeling, not composition. Unsure about a reference? Send it with a line on where it came from, and we tell you before quoting.

Spend the commission budget where the client will stand and look, and build the repeated positions from catalogue works, some 1,300 of them, each painted to order.

For the repeated lines, browse abstract, Impressionist and textured works.

On a large schedule every piece is painted and approved stage by stage, so the voice has to live in the brief rather than in anyone's memory. Five lines are enough:

• Palette: three to six colours as physical references, plus any that must stay out.
• Handling: soft brushwork, knife-laid paint, flat colour fields or plaster relief, and how heavy.
• Subjects: what may change from piece to piece.
• Scale of mark: broad gestures for a lobby seen from the door, finer work for a room seen from a chair.
• Presentation: frameless throughout, or one frame family.

The two works pictured show the idea: different subjects, one palette of cream on warm brown, one loose figurative hand. A schedule can hold several voices, such as quiet Wabi-Sabi in the bedrooms and bold abstracts in public areas, each with its own key and lead piece.

Consultants often want two prices for one position: the commission the deck proposes and a catalogue-based alternative, so the client decides where to spend. What moves each line:

Route

A catalogue work as painted is the simplest line; a commission takes more of the painter's time.

Size

The price follows the canvas area.

Surface

Plaster relief and heavy knife work take more material and drying time.

Finish

Rolled costs least, and sending it to your own framer keeps framing, and its margin, in your hands. Stretched costs more, framed the most.

Quantity

Volume pricing from 10 pieces, counted across the whole schedule.

Shipping

Quoted separately and confirmed before dispatch.

Your fee appears nowhere in our paperwork.

A pattern that works on large schedules: you approve every stage, and the client sees two moments, the composition of each commission and the finished canvas. The client shares the decisions that matter without every stage becoming a meeting.

• Agree a turnaround. Each stage waits for approval, so a week's silence on one zone moves that zone's date by a week.
• One approver per zone. Three people commenting on one photo pull a painting three ways.
• Ask for the view the client needs: a close-up of a plaster surface, the canvas beside a fabric sample, a short video in raking light. Say so with the order.
• Keep the final photographs. One per piece, approved before dispatch: a ready record for the handover file.

The quote, the proforma invoice, the stage photos and the shipping updates all come to you. The client's name appears where you put it, usually as a delivery address, and the pieces go to the site, the installer or your framer as you instruct.

A design commissioned for one client can be kept exclusive to that client if it is agreed before painting starts; ask with the quote. When the client opens a second property, the schedule can be painted again from the same codes and approved references, or shifted so the new building reads as a sibling. If your firm also frames and installs hotel art packages, see hospitality art companies.

That sentence is accurate and can go into a presentation or a handover file as written. If the client asks about the backing, Siji Art Hub is an art complex that opened in December 2021, with a collection running to more than eleven thousand works and over 50 exhibitions held since 2022; about iHomeArt has the detail.

On wall labels and in the handover register, give each piece its title or position, medium (acrylic on canvas, or oil where ordered), size and “hand-painted original, made to order”; a reproduction is a hand-painted reproduction after the original artist. The programme itself is yours: the curation, the selection and the story belong to your practice.