Greetings everyone. I was asked to make a news article at one point about how should one go about taking commissions, and I decided to do one better. I'm going to make a short series of them, broken up into several parts. I state for the record, that I am not an expert by any means, nor that what I tell you is absolutely, positively, 100% the correct way to do things. These articles are guides that will hopefully help you get started and beyond as you find your way.

Part I, this article, deals with an artist who is starting out to take commissions. Future articles will cover what to expect from their clients, what the clients should expect from you, how to protect yourself, how a client should protect themselves, and anything else that people suggest. I know not everyone will agree with these articles, but please, if you don't agree, make suggestions so that others can see some alternatives.

Without further adieu, let's begin.

There comes a point in time when an artist feels they make some good art, and they know this because they get a lot of requests and trades. So they think, "you know...I should get something for this."

And rightfully so. Your time is as precious to you as you make it be. So you put out the word; you're taking commissions!

First, what is a commission. Well, from the ever present wikipedia: "In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another." And from Free Online Dictionary, it's apparently a verb that means "place an order for". Among a dozen different things it can mean. You get the idea though. A commission is where someone goes to an artist and, basically, says, "I am willing to pay you for art that you created specifically for me."

Sadly, you will get more people making requests for your art than commissions at first. Time will correct this.

But say you didn't actually ever do art trades or requests before, and just started out with commissions. Well, hopefully this article will be useful for both of types of artists.

So how do you know you're ready to take commissions? That is pretty subjective I think, but the way I would look at it is this: if you are doing more art for others for free than you're doing for yourself...you should be charging something.

I am not saying you should slap prices on everything though. Do a little 'market research' as it were. Test the waters, ask around, see if people would like to pay a reasonable price for your work. If it's good, they'll probably tell you something to the effect of, "OH GOD YES! GIMME!" Well, maybe not that exuberant, but they could be. Ya never know.

Now that you've decided you should get paid for your work, you should lay out some ground rules out for YOU first. Figure out what you're willing to create. Will you be a 'clean' artist, or will you draw hentai/porn/whatever? Will you just create licensed characters or will you create any characters? Will you charge by the character, charge for the background seperate, or make a discount for a 'ackage' deal? Will you color/paint it? Ship it? How much time are you willing to set aside to work on others art? How will you accept payment? When will you accept payment? What size will the image be that you send them? How many commissions will you accept at one time?

Once you know what you will do, now you need to let your potential clients know that too.

I would tell what you should or could do for all of those questions, but just like the question of if you're ready to take commissions or not, they're all subjective. While I may not have a problem drawing or coloring naked boobs, you might. There is no cure all answer to them. I can tell you what a lot of artists do on average, but again, it's subjective.

Now comes the tricky part. You have to name your price. How do you determine your price?

Again, it's subjective, but the most common method is to take into account the cost of your materials that you're going to use, how much time it normally takes you to make something, be it a drawing, coloring job, sculpture, etc, and then put a price on it. If you can rip out a rough sketch in 10 minutes but an inked version takes 4 hours, you're not going to charge the same for each. At the same time, you don't want to charge so high that you drive potential clients away. It's a bit of a balancing act, and, especially since you're starting out, it's going to be difficult to pull them in.

My suggestion: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The KISS method works here. Look at what other artists are charging for something that is similar to what you're going to offer, and take into account the quality level they're offering. If they're all charging about $5-$10 USD for a rough sketch at about the same quality work that you can do, then that's probably a safe amount to work within. The key is the quality level and amount of work put into it. If you're charging $50 for stick figures...well...that better be one hell of a stick figure. I probably wouldn't buy, but someone else might if it kicks enough tail.

On average, this is what the prices are for various items. Keep in mind, these are averages, and not set in stone by any means. There are extremes both ways. I've gotten a commission for one image that was huge and colored that was over $100, and another that was high-res and colored for only $20. So with that in mind...here's the general averages I've seen.

Rough sketches: Anywhere from $1-$10.
Clean sketches: Again, anywhere from $1-$15
Clean, inked Lineart: Anywhere from $15-$60
Colored: Anywhere from $20-$75+
Backgrounds: Usually an extra charge to your image of anywhere from $5-$20, depending on complexity
Extra characters: +$5-$25 to the price of your image.
Sculptures, 3D Art: I haven't seen anything below $100 yet, but I freely admit I have been in a position to get either as yet. The most I've seen charged for a large commission would be nearly $2,000 USD (naturally I didn't get it )

So you've figured out your prices and what you'll do. How do you get payment? There's a few ways to do it. You can create a Paypal account (I believe it's a Merchant account, but someone will likely correct me quickly on that, and I hope so), you can accept checks in the mail, or you can use money orders from places like Western Union.

I will go into more depth on the payment deal in the next article, which will deal with protecting the artist. But as a quick note: be wary of checks. Checks do bounce. Paypal might hiccup or just be jerks. Western Union's system might screw up. I personally prefer Paypal (I just don't leave money in it) because it provides protection from people possibly sending me letters or whatever, and it's generally pretty fast and easy. And it's everywhere. If it's not in your area, there's proxies, such as XOOM which work as go-betweens for Paypal and others.

Now that you've got all that set up...ADVERTISE! Tell people you're taking commissions, and keep letting them know. I recommend priming the pump, as it were, and starting small, with say $5 commissions that are nice to look at but decently fast, and taking only 5 commissions. That way you get used to working at a fast pace with a set number of works that you must do.

Oh yes, I should also recommend you not put them off for too long. I will go into more detail in a later article, but suffice to say...if you've taken payment of some sort, it would behoove you to do the work in a fairly timely fashion. Cause now it's your reputation at stake. And if you burn a commissioner, they will tell others, and that burns you.

Hope you found Part one helpful, any questions just ask, and I will see you all in the next article, hopefully in a week or two.

Until then!

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