OK - I need some input here...
OK - In an effort to helpl out a local animal shelter last fall I offered to paint someones cat as a raffle item for the shelter to raise money ( I uaually sell a basic portrait for $200-300) The tickets were $1 each - so the winner met with me and gve me REALLY bad laser prints of pics of her 2 cats - one black blob with yellow eyes and no other details and the other a dark tabby with greenish eyes and almost no details - but with the light outlining and marks around the eyes as typical - but all the pictures were very dark and nearly useless. So I spent 10-12 hours doing the best I could from the visual references available, did what I thought was a decent little painting (not extremely detailed due to the lack - but a nice portrait all the same) so a day after she picks up the picture the woman sends me an e-mail telling me how disappointed she is with the picture, sigh, so here are the options since I didn't bring her crappy lasers back (who'd thought she wanted them back..)
1) mail back the lasers with no comment.
2) mail them with a polite letter stating that if she had spent half the time I did taking a few useable pictures, then perhaps I would have been able to paint a better picture.
3) send the pics back, along with the $1 she spent for the ticket and repeat the above suggestion that she should have given be better reference material, but maybe not as politely. (she even mentioned in the e-mail that she had just found some better pictures, that she had not given me originally, perhaps as a not so subtle request for another picture?)
any suggestions - because right now I'm kinds stuck between pissed and frustrated since it was a total bitch trying to work from her pictures only to find out that she had better ones that she didn't give me, and surprised that anyone getting a $200 paint for $1 would have the nerve to bitch (she even admitted that the pictures she gave me to use were bad)
1) mail back the lasers with no comment.
2) mail them with a polite letter stating that if she had spent half the time I did taking a few useable pictures, then perhaps I would have been able to paint a better picture.
3) send the pics back, along with the $1 she spent for the ticket and repeat the above suggestion that she should have given be better reference material, but maybe not as politely. (she even mentioned in the e-mail that she had just found some better pictures, that she had not given me originally, perhaps as a not so subtle request for another picture?)
any suggestions - because right now I'm kinds stuck between pissed and frustrated since it was a total bitch trying to work from her pictures only to find out that she had better ones that she didn't give me, and surprised that anyone getting a $200 paint for $1 would have the nerve to bitch (she even admitted that the pictures she gave me to use were bad)