We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Benji Baker. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Benji below.
Benji, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?
In the first years of my art career, I sold drawings and took commissions from family, friends, friends of friends, etc. The first art commission I landed, from someone unknown to me, happened last year. I had been working on building an Instagram portfolio/brand since early 2001. I didn’t want to force my art on Facebook friends or acquaintances through my personal social media profile. I had tried making paper fliers of some of my pet portraits and putting them on community boards in veterinary clinics, pet stores, boarding kennels, etc to draw in pet lovers. I had gotten some inquiries from the fliers, but no sales. I then joined a FB group, that is for Dog Mom’s and Dad’s, and shared portrait examples on their site. I received some encouragement but again no sales. I finally decided to share my portraits on a community FB page, thinking that community members might be more receptive. I didn’t get a billion likes or comments, but I did get a woman who reached out to me for a pet portrait commission. I was so excited that she had responded to my work and my post! She had commissioned a memorial pet portrait of her beloved pug. When I finished the work and we met up, she broke down in tears seeing her beautiful pup in a piece of art. She absolutely loved her drawing! I was so happy to have the commission but her appreciation and love for the artwork was what made me the happiest. She had commissioned two more portraits and is planning on more.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a pastel artist who specializes in pet portraits and animal art. I absolutely love animals and have many animals of my own: 9 horses, 6 dogs, 3 goats, 2 cats, a hedgehog, and some chickens. Spending so much time around animals, my own as well as local wildlife, has made identifying personal traits and characteristics of individual animals much easier. This is very helpful, when I am working from photos of pets or animals, I have no personal history or experience with. As a child and through my teen years, I had always drawn pictures. I immersed myself in every art class available in school. I quit drawing for about 13 years, and took it back up in 2003. I began concentrating on pastel and oil pastel. In 2006, I put my art supplies away and didn’t pull them out again till 2020. I have been very dedicated and committed to my art for the last four years. I found my passion was in drawing animals, and I began incorporating my favorite medium, pastel, into the art. My work is consistent in its style and format. I don’t get bored with the work, so my art pieces share many repetitive elements from color, composition, and technique. I also don’t preserve the pastel with a fixative. The color and texture, of pastel, is much more beautiful in its purest form.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Yes. It’s a story of resilience but not related to me as an artist. At the age of 18, I had been scouted as a fashion model by IMG models. After being with IMG for about 6 months, they sent me to London. It was my 2nd trip to Europe with them but my first one alone. I was with a “sister” agency Premier London who had put me up in a model’s apartment in the Swiss cottage area of London. This place was well out of my price point, since I was broke, and another roommate and I decided to find something more affordable. Anle, who was from South Africa, found us a room in a house to rent in Acton Town…near Heathrow airport. It was being rented out by some Australian guys who had a band and performed in the local pubs. A young couple from New Zealand lived in a van in the back yard. The place was beyond filthy but we took the room knowing we would be busy in London most days and the place was near the tube. We hardly ever saw the guys but would hear them when they’d come in from gigs. When we did see them, they were very respectful and polite. I was going through some bouts of depression. I was homesick for my family and the US, trying to live cheap by eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches non stop, barely bathing in the never cleaned communal bathtub, and not working at all in London. Strangely, out of the blue, I got a phone call on the landline at the Aussie house. It was from a woman who worked at a modeling agency called Plein Sud. They were a well known agency in Hamburg, Germany. She had a copy of my portfolio and wanted to invite me to Hamburg. I just needed to purchase a plane ticket. Everything else would be taken care of. So I did. At 6pm headed back into London to purchase my plane ticket. Thank goodness! I was almost out of cash. On my way out of the house to get into the taxi, I whispered goodbye to Anle, the Aussies, kiwis, and the dead mouse in the glass of water atop of the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. I felt hope coming back. I left gloomy London and arrived in beautiful sunny Hamburg. It felt wonderful in the taxi driving to Plein Sud. In a way, I felt I was being rescued. I walked into the agency and the woman who called me the night before greeted me. I immediately sensed apprehension in her face and voice. She looked at me, then my book and said “you look much thinner here”. I tried to explain my time in London and she sent me down the street to have some lunch…alone. She told me to come back in the afternoon. I did. She had called my NY agent and told them they needed to get me back to the states. Before my NY agent could get my situation resolved, she called a taxi and told him to take me to the middle of Hamburg. I could find a hotel around there. I got in the cab terrified. I was all out of money. The taxi driver took the last of it. I stood during rush hour on the sidewalk across from a park with my luggage next to me. I just started crying. I didn’t know what I would do. Finally, a shop owner came out from a woman’s clothing store and took me and my bags inside. She gave me a glass of wine, asked me what happened, and then made a phone call. Twenty minutes later, a booker from a modeling agency called “Talents” came and got me. They took me back to their agency, found me a room to rent, and signed me to their board. I spent a month there, making friends, meeting clients, and landing the “Panasonic” billboard campaign for all of Europe. It felt like a God moment. I continued to work for Premier models with success.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Keeping in mind that I am trying to grow my clientele and not an established business, getting my art in front of people and producing art that gets me reoccurring commissions. I have my art hanging in a local gallery, and I post my art on social media sites during periods or seasons people might be looking for gifts or redecorating. This area is also seeing constant growth in the housing market so keeping in mind there’s new prospective clients on a regular basis. I’ve had many people come back for new commissioned pieces. Since I draw a lot of pets, clients that love my work tend to add more portraits to their own collection or commission them for friends and family.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: bb_pastelart
Image Credits
Benji Baker