Commissions

Getting paid to do art is hard. I'm pretty good at illustrating, yet I'm horrible at making money doing it for some reason. I have sent off my strongest work to many, many publishers, game companies, comic book publishers, and I've never even gotten a response. Not a "no thanks", or an "Are you serious". Nothing. Crickets. I'm alway hoping to hear something back like a "Hey, we're not looking for artists right now but keep trying" or even a "hey your art's good but you need to work on these areas..." So getting employment as an artist seems to be a non-starter. Making my name as a freelance seems to be my path, but even that is a road into the the desert. People who want to commission a piece of fantasy art are people simply looking for a character portrait. And no regular Joe or Jill wants to shell out a living wage for a piece of art that I will spend a whole day on, maybe more. So am I to work for $20-$40 per day? If I can even find someone who wants a piece of art?

This is a pice that I've started and I'm currently waiting to see if the person wants to pay me to finish it. I found the description of their character in a forum post where people look for artists, and this was a post offering money, yet it didn't say how much. So here I sit. 

Ok, it's the next day and I have heard back from the client. He wants the portrait finished and we worked out a one hundred dollar price. I'm happy to have the money but I'll end up getting about eight or nine bucks an hour for the job because I'll put in a lot of time doing detail to make it awesome. 

I'll post the finished piece when I'm done with it.