Adventures in Licensing Art by Kathleen Hill

It all started back in 1992. I received a letter from a licensing company wanting to use my images to present to clients for their products. They sent a detailed contract for me to look at. Legal stuff that I didn’t know anything about seemed pretty scary and something I knew nothing about, so I missed the opportunity. It did get me started on pondering what “licensing” was all about. This seemed pretty cool, you paint paintings and then you give permission for them to be applied to products and receive a royalty. Sounded easy enough as I was always painting paintings anyway!

So I bought myself a book on how to do it and started sending out letters to companies that I thought would just love to have my paintings on their shower curtains and calendars. Lots of lovely replies back on my inquiries with no one taking the bait. Just not “what they were looking for at this time.” Then I got lucky. I contacted a man from a licensing company who was very generous with answering questions. He really liked my horses but he said it was a “niche” market and he didn’t represent any horse art. He gave me the name of a woman who was a licensing consultant who helped place artists with representation. I paid her a fee and she worked with me and introduced me to a new company that she thought would be a good fit, Painted Planet Licensing. That was the beginning of a great relationship.

To explain, a Licensing Company goes to trade shows, finds manufacturers that will use your art and handles all of the contracts and negotiations. Then they take 50% of any royalties you earn. All I had to do was to do artwork, providing new images several times a year and also working with companies that were needing specific art or modifying the images to fit their needs.

There is a lot more to it but I think I have reached the number of words needed for the Portfolio this time, so I will sign off. Hope this was interesting. www.kathleenhill.com or animalartist1@comcast.net.