written by NEMO from Art by Nemo
For an artist, commission work could really pay some bills and if done right you can find yourself doing a lot of interesting pieces that you may have never thought of on your own. I didn’t go to school for art so I never had assignments or a teacher telling me to make art, but commissions make me feel that way.
I love the commissions that come in and are totally different than anything I could ever come up with. Pieces that make me think a little are really cool. I don’t take the commissions that I feel are going to be too much back and forth, I like when I have full rein over everything. I love it when people say “I don’t know, just do whatever you feel, you’re the artist!”
Finding the commissions is the hard part; you just have to always be telling people about them and really celebrate the ones you do get. I like to tweet about them as I’m making them on Twitter and I post the finished pieces on Facebook and Myspace. I also blog about the better ones so people can see them and hopefully it will spark an idea in their head about something they might want. I do it over and over and I find that when people start seeing more and more of what I can do they will take the plunge and order one too.
The way I make it easy on myself is I only make one style of art so when people come to me for art they pretty much know what they are going get. I provide only one size – a 4”x6” in an 11”x14” bamboo frame. I also try to keep a list of people who have had interest in one thing or another and when I have down time I will contact them and tell them I have time if they are ready, or I’ll take them off the list once they say they don’t have money to do it. My prices go up 10% every 6 months and if they can’t afford it now, they won’t later, although sometimes people do surprise me.
A lot of people start talking about getting custom work done but I find about half of the people really come through for me. So I really don’t spend much time talking with them, I just send over the part in my website that talks about custom art. I often find myself asking “are you for real?” and if they seem for real I send them a Paypal invoice as fast as I can, and I never even start thinking about a piece until they pay ½ down. That’s the most important part right there, don’t ever start working on anything or even think about anything until they pay something, I have spent way too many hours on something that didn’t even pan out.
Commission work isn’t for everyone or for every style, my advice is to really look at yourself and your art and find out if it’s for you. I hear a lot of stories that make doing commission work look bad, but everyone should do a few to see if it’s right for them.
