#commissioning art is a luxury

[hatters-workshop]

100% all of this! Also here are some other recommendations from what has worked well for me:

Set up an application form. This is a great way of weeding out scammers as they won't bother filling it out and will either push you to just do what they say, which should give enough of a clue that they're scammers, or just blank you, in which case bye bye thanks for not wasting any more of my time.

Also application forms can be good to help reframe it in people's heads: they're applying to be allowed to get a commission from you. They're not dictating their vision to a poor little artist that needs their money; you're a talented artist that they have to ask if they can buy your time and effort from.

Specify how take you payment, e.g. what you use like PayPal invoicing etc, whether they can split payments, if so what needs to be paid at what stage of the process if they're not able to pay all up front. This is second line of defence against scammers as if they try and bully you into a different thing like e-cheques you can point to it and say "sorry it's right there in the application form I have to treat everyone the same!"

Give your ToS at the top so they have to look at it, and include a tick box at the end that says something along the lines of "I've read the terms and am happy to proceed". Then they can't claim ohhh but I didn't knooowwww/you never said~.

Work out your *starting* prices (and make clear that this is just the starting price, it may be more for complex designs) for the type or types of commissions you're wanting to take, mock up a little collage image to show examples and have them as selectable options on a form to choose from. I'm a traditional artist so I have different sizes available of one type, and line art and water colour for the other. You can also include a section asking "Are you requesting anything like extra characters, coloured background etc that would add to complexity of the commission?" To flag to them that they should probably be ready to pay more for these things.

Get all the contact details they need to give you in the application form so you can't lose contact. I usually ask for preferred name and pronouns, email address, preferred contact method e.g. instagram/fb/twitter messages etc.

With things like Google forms you can ask them to give example images and a description of what they want, which can be useful for collecting references pics, and it makes them have to put down in writing what they want.

I would hope everyone knows the following but when you need money it can slip your mind:

Charge fairly for your time! If it takes you 5 hours, £10 is probably not a fair wage to set that commission! Do some practice ones and time yourself to make sure you can do them for the price you set!

Limit your queue to a set number and only reopen for new applications when you've cleared it, and be as transparent as you can with how long you think it will take you to reach each customer. Let them know if something gets in the way, customers appreciate knowing what's going on.

Digital artists: previews should be in lower quality and/or watermarked. Don't give the full quality finished piece until you've received payment.

Traditional artists: charge for postage separately, don't post until you've been paid fully, if possible get a good quality scan before you send, and always send the appropriate equivalent of recorded delivery with insurance equal or more than the value of the art. This means a) charging separately means youre not out of pocket if they're over seas, b) recorded is usually better service, c) if it's damaged or lost you can at least get money back to repay the customer, d) if you've got a good scan you can at least either send them the scan or get a good quality print made if it gets lost or damaged, e) you've got evidence of it being delivered if they try and scam you by saying it never arrived.

Horrible to have to say this but make sure to screen shot conversations with commissioners regularly. There's enough people out there who will sing your praises throughout the entire process and profess how much they love the design, only for a few months later for them to think "you know. I would quite like some money" and delete their side of the conversation, raise a PayPal dispute that actually you missold them something they hate and they want their money back. Cover your back.

To save stress, I only take payment when I get to that person in the queue so that I'm not worried about holding on to their money without having anything to show for it. You may however wish to have a deposit system in place, but that's up to you. It may also allow people to either save up if they're later in the queue, or negotiate with you to pay at a different time e.g. payday and you can rearrange your queue accordingly.

Build in break time to quoted times! You will burn yourself out very quickly if you are trying to cram art in to every moment of the day, you're not always going to be able to draw either physically or mentally, but also life happens! Sometimes you need to drop everything and see a friend who is struggling or your kid is sick or your parents need your help moving something or a tree falls through your fence or your caravan catches fire or your pet knocks themselves out on a lamp or whatever! Just because it will take you two evenings to work on a piece on a good week does not mean it will on a bad one!

Again burn out related but it takes a lot more energy to draw something for someone else than for you. You may need to go back and forth with them a lot more than you think to get them to clearly explain what they want, and depending on how you work, you may need to check in and amend throughout the process to get to what they want. I would recommend building something into your ToS about when and how much they can and cannot make changes for free and when it will incur costs. E.g. tweaking a hand pose at sketch stage is very different to a full recolour or angle change at rendering stage.

Be ready to say no or renegotiate! If you get an application and they're asking for something wildly out of your wheel house, or that would be many times as complex as the examples you've given, you're well within your rights to say either "I'm sorry, I don't think I would be able to meet your expectations." Or "the design you've asked for is not at the level of the price point examples provided, I will need to discuss proper compensation for that level of commission with you further."

Your milage may vary but I have a clause in my application form that says I will only create art in my own style. I'm not here to draw Disney or Pokemon or Studio Ghibli fanart for you: I'm offering commissions of MY art. I can copy their style pretty nicely and all, and I might do in my spare time, but that's not what I'm here to do. I've told you what kind of think I will do. Pick one.

if you are an artist just trying out commissions for the first time as holidays come up, my advice to you to avoid burnout is have a clear ToS that states what you do and do not want to do.

not what you can and cannot do, but what you do and do not want to do. don't try to be the cheesecake factory of commission artists and take every single commission even if it doesn't suit your style or preferred subject matter. don't write a little disclaimer about how you aren't very good at backgrounds or vehicles but will do your best; that's how you get a client that for some reason wants a full brooklyn cityscape from you and suddenly you have spent five months stressed out and guiltily avoidant of other projects. just say you aren't offering backgrounds.

if you're not interested or confident in concept and design, be clear in your ToS that you need specific references for things like clothes and features. coming up with design ideas is a completely separate skill from rendering them; figure out with what you are comfortable before accepting the task. a lot of clients themselves don't understand that saying "do whatever" is basically tasking you to design for them, something for which you are well within your rights to charge accordingly.

pick your niche and hone it, and stretch your comfort zone with private work. you'll figure out as you go just how far your comfort zone stretches and can update what you offer accordingly.

[sleepytroll]

🦌

[entnoot]

Hi everyone! I’ve been hit with some hefty bills recently so I’m opening up a couple of slots for fairytale/tarot-ish style illustration commissions! ✨️

If you’re interested, you can fill out the commission form >HERE<

Terms of service (please read!)

[missjamiekaye]

Hey pay an artist twice or three times more than what they're asking for because they're probably under charging and under paid

[morpheuswillfindyou]

Artist: Jeff Hassing

https://www.instagram.com/thewhitephoenix/

[tickles-tea]

My hours got cut at work so I’m considering spending that free time writing more and possibly opening commissions!!

I wanted to do an interest check first before I went through the effort of touching up my commission info page though lol

Please feel free to comment or send in asks with any questions or anything else you wanna tell me 💕

Edit: this is purely for my own curiosity, but for those of you voting yes- what fandoms would you be interested in having me write for? 👀

[canonkiller]

if you have not experienced accessibility needs you cannot fuckin imagine how expensive it gets to accomodate even the simplest shit let alone anything related to ""luxuries"" like Hobbies or Pastimes

[vampslxsher]

I swear commission prices feel like scams nowadays. Like why am I paying over 100 for a non colored sketch bro.

[smokbeast]

I had a thought for a low lil comm sale of lineart only for this month cause I have things to pay and lineart is usually really fun and easy for me to do! But I also like to know what people look for in commissions in general, if you have any advice or recommendations on what is liked in general for commissions let me know in the comments! (Please be nice and respectful tho;;)

[kurooharuniji]

Commission for Poop132 on FA.

[wetpapert0wel]

my brother's girlfriend: hey one of my friends is looking to get some art commissioned

me: oh cool! here are my prices, which might vary depending on complexity

her: let him make the first offer and go from there

me: .i don't think that's how this works.?

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

guys i don't think karl marx would have had enough foresight to accurately predict which social class freelance artists would fall into in the modern day with factors such as "they don't get health insurance, benefits, or PTO" ... "they pay nearly double the amount of income tax due to freelance tax" ... "art is much harder to make a living off of due to it's importance being heavily devalued" ... "the average person cannot afford luxuries such as art, therefore commissions are scarce and undervalued" ... "it's some disabled people's only option to survive"

So no, I don't think freelance artists fall within the petite bourgeoisie category, the same category described as willing to backstab the working class for a cut of the pie. you guys seriously think freelance artists would willingly uphold capitalist systems? where many of them can hardly put food on the table because they know if they work a stable 9-5, they won't have time or energy to engage with their passions? Many of them being disabled? It's really obvious that some of you think artists live lavishly lol

Let's say a furry artist* living in California puts up an auction for a design and the bids reach 1k. That's a 30% income tax, so it's down to 700.(That is only 200 dollars more than my part-time retail paycheck). The average cost of living in California is 53k a year. That artist would have to make 75 designs a year and hope that all of them would reach 1k in bids. Even if they don't burn out from pumping out designs of lowering quality, chances are all those auctions won't even be close to reaching 1k because that's rare. That would require around 75 people willing and able to spend 1k on a design, which I already mentioned is a luxury that few people can afford. 53K in of itself would be the absolute minimum to cover necessities, so I wouldn't call that living lavishly at all. I wouldn't even call that well-off, that's someone's head barely floating above water. I didn't even factor for payment processors taking a cut of the money, too.

The jokes about furry porn artists with 100k on patreon are the exception, not the rule. That's extremely rare compared to how many freelance artists there are online. Many freelance artists state that they make 20,000 a year, only 5k above US federal poverty level. That livelihood is far more precarious than the mom and pop shop that opened on a street corner. Opening a physical business with products and such requires some level of pre-established wealth and capital. All you need to be a digital artist is, at minimum, an ipad or a phone, which makes it more accessible for people in poverty. Chances are an artist is starting off in a severely disadvantaged position. The majority of artists that I see living in stability have a partner that's the breadwinner, or they live with their parents.

When I had my first job working retail as a late teen, I had taken art commissions a bit prior. I got my first paycheck and thought "I made much more just showing up and standing around doing nothing than I did working my ass off to draw someone's character" and I think that speaks to the trade-off of being a freelance artist more than anything

*Furry artists and adoptables were picked as an example because I saw this exact sentiment expressed towards them. Not at the artists who have their works put up in museums and auctioned off for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[galaxyfi3nd]

[petalpierrot]

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[unluckyxse7enart]

Yes I'm an artist and have been for 2 decades. Yes it only Just Now Occurred to me I can just fucking buy/ask for a scanner to scan my traditional art. We exist

[avinox]

I have like 300€ saved (no income) that I have to spend wisely on courses and learning and things like that, I believe my parents have decided they won't pay for anything, so I just have a roof under my head and that's about it, it's basically like being on my own except I live with a very toxic family that makes me want to die every day. I want to learn and do more before I can finally ask for a scholarship for my master's, but pretty much everything is over my budget. It's a losing game, I'm stuck, I can't get better, I can't get help, I can't leave.