First off, the Painted Serpent will not be a traditional artist’s shop, meaning that people don’t just walk into the store, see a picture they like and buy it to take home. Upon entering the shop, there will be some examples of art hung on the walls, but these are not for sale. They are instead meant to be demonstrations of the artist’s skill, and therefore give potential clients a broad spectrum of things to choose from.
Most of the profit would come from people in need of a specific image, for a specific occasion. The Painted Serpent is, at its core, more of a contracting business than it is an actual shopping place. In the more “educated” places, such as Kenash, imagery can be essential to have on hand, while the skill itself is a bit scarce and its low income has the potential to frighten off many people who would otherwise do it for a living.
Here are a few ideas of what the Painted Serpent’s services could include:
The Sitai Dynasty is arranging a long-distance marriage between one of their daughters and an especially influential Syliran Knight. As the two have never met, the Sitai need someone to draw a highly detailed picture of their daughter that they can send to her potential husband.
A Freeborn architect wants to impress the Radacke with an architectural plan they have made, but their version is grubby, smudged and raggedy. The Freeborn needs someone to reliably ink the plan onto fancy paper and make it look presentable.
A writer just wrote a book about herbs and useful plants. Since proper identification is very important, and they have no artistic ability, they need an artist to illustrate every single plant they talk about. In every single copy of their book.
Someone just won a horse race. They want a picture/painting of themselves atop their racehorse to commemorate the event.
A painting of a raven has made the Dynasties sigh. Suddenly, ravens are the “in” thing of the season and everyone wants a picture with a raven in it.
A Freeborn wants to ask for a loan from a Dynasty to start up a business, but wants to make the idea look attractive. She wants an artist to make a beautiful picture of her imagined store-front and some of her wares to increase her chances of approval.
The above-mentioned freeborn successfully got their business approved and built, and they've just carved a sign for that shop. They now need that sign to be painted.
A rival artist has begun to set up shop in Kenash. Offer them the chance to work at the Painted Serpent. If they refuse, crush them.
A Morealis mother has decided that she wants her daughter to be more cultured and well-rounded. She hires an artist to teach her daughter to draw.
Since there are no other artist shops in Kenash, I’m hoping to gain a corner market as the go-to person for portraits and images, whatever the need. This will, of course mean that the main artist and proprietor(Adrian) will lean towards a more realistic style in terms of subject, although might deviate into different styles when it comes to background and detail. The most major element, however, is that he isn’t advertising himself as a visionary painter with new and edgy pictures to sell, but as a professionally skilled artist who is selling his skill. He won’t usually sell his own work unless the circumstances are weird, and will stick mostly to drawing what other people need drawn. Since this will cause him to become acquainted with both Dynasty brats and up-and-coming Freeborn, I’m also hope that this will give him the opportunity to develop good will amongst fellow businesspeople, generating more invitations to parties and therefore more chances to impress potential clients.
