Ok, so here you sit. You have a little extra cash, and you were thinking of having a really special image created for someone you know. Maybe it is a loved one, a friend who needs a little pick-me-up. Or maybe you are a small business that would like to have some pics made as advertisements.

So you decide to look at the largest repository of artistic talent on the net; DeviantART/DA/dA/dART/etc etc. You look and look and look...and while you know there are artists who use the site as a portfolio, you can not seem to find the right one. Or you do, but that one is not offering commissions. You get frustrated, and finally, exhausting all available methods on the site, you decide to forgo the image and go buy the latest Barry Bonds "I Sing Sexy In The Shower" CD instead.

Ok, so maybe you did not go to that far an extreme, but that only illustrates what could potentially happen. A potential client to over several thousand artists on DA may get frustrated, and instead of spending a from $5 USD to $100 USD with an artist, they go to Wal-Mart (use your local big store if you live in another country for reference) and buy something that may or may not have as much meaning as a custom ordered image that you put heart into coming up with for someone.

After being on dART for over two years I have seen a lot of journals come across my message center from the over 500 artists I watch that offer commissions. Which helps if I need to make a commission with an artist, but I could be missing out on a lot of others, and there is a strong chance that some of these artists do not know that there are others out there who could be looking for potential partners or whatever. So I created a journal called Commission Networking about a year or so ago to provide folks a list of artists who offer commissions, their art style, preferences, prices, some personal comments about what the artist does (as far as I can tell) and payment method, which you can see here. [link]

I do not know how effective it has been but as they say, every little bit helps. Getting an update in a message center helps, but it may not be enough to help make setting up for commissions a good/profitable venture.

So, sometime down the road, maybe it would be a handy addition to the site (after all the other bugs have been hammered) if a Submit Commission Information form was created that the artist may fill out and submit into a searchable database that artists can update as necessary. It would certainly be more useful than a single journal with but a handful of artists on it and only one individual to update it. It is not very efficient, and again, it is limited by the fact that not everyone watches me to see when the journal is updated.

With a set up database you can search by price, style, art type, etc with great ease. Too, it would help provide some currency to the hard working artists, create a artist-client relationship, and comes with another potential bonus. It may very well provide networking among the artists themselves. After all, there are some comic and graphic design professionals on the site who work for some well known companies that may, upon linking up via fellow artists, put in a good work with their company for the non-industry individual when their company begins looking for new talent. Or maybe some artists are trying to start up their own small business and need partners and other artists to work with to help bring this to fruition. Or assist up-and-coming artists in learning the ropes in how to create good commission information. Or any number of things. I certainly do not know all of the different ways it can be made use of.

At the least, as before, every little bit helps. A little helping hand from dART certainly could assist. In the end, what is there to lose? Oh just their life, seeing as they are starving artists after all. Come on...do it for the hungry artists.