Demystifying the commission process
A.k.a “How to get me to paint exactly what you want”
As an Artist I get to be selfish (I kind of love it) and often get to paint for myself; I get to choose the view I want, use the colours I want and pick the style I want. I paint for the Joy of painting and hope that by the time I’ve finished someone will love my painting as much as I do and buy it. Unfortunately sometimes the painting I paint isn’t quite the painting you want.
A commission is the solution.
A commission is the solution when you have already found and fallen in love with my work, I just haven’t painted your perfect painting yet. It’s for when you look at my work with a friend and say “I love her stuff; I wish she’d paint my view” or when you browse through my shop and say “That painting would be perfect, I’d buy it if it wasn’t sold already” or “I wish that painting had more red in it then it would go in my front room” and so on…
You could wait and hope that one day I’ll paint your favourite view, in the colours you love and that no one else buys it before you do OR you could send me a message (I’m not scary, promise).
You could say “Hi Sarah, I love your work and wondered how much it would cost for you to paint me a landscape in the colours I love? I want a painting that reminds me of a special place, I love red, I want it to go in my living room and I need it to be about 100cm long.”
This is when I would do a little happy dance because every artist loves to get a commission enquiry, it makes us feel seen and valued.
I would probably send a message back saying
“Hi, I would love to paint your picture, here’s a little bit of information about commissions. Let’s organise a chat and talk about it.”
Then we would arrange a call and if you liked me and the things I said we’d meet in person via zoom or in a nice coffee shop. I would show you some pictures on my iPad and ask you a bunch of questions like: Do you like the sky in this painting? How does your view make you feel? Which colour do you like best? When you say red do you mean like a tomato or like that ladies jumper? Show me on google maps exactly where you mean? or Have you got any special memories of this view?
And then I’d tell you roughly how much a painting would cost, usually a lot less than people think and I’d explain that I keep the price down by selling a set number of prints of the painting and that if you didn’t want me to sell prints that’s also fine but the price would be double.
If you are still happy and excited about the idea of a commission I’d tell you about THE CONTRACT – it’s a promise between the two of us. We decide on the price and then you pay me a deposit of 50%. If possible I visit and explore your landscape for myself. I produce a couple of quick sketches and send you pictures or we meet up again and look at them together.
You tell me what you like or don’t like, sometimes you’re not sure and you take them away for a week to really look at them and think, then I do another sketch and we look again. You decide you love it, it's perfect and I’m brilliant (or something along those lines). I'll tell you how long your painting will take to complete and that I’ll send you pictures every now and again so you can see the progress. Sometimes I make changes as I go along, sometimes you do, sometimes you come and look at the “real thing” in progress, it’s all totally up to you.
When the painting is finished and had some time to dry you come and have a look, then you make THE DECISION
You either decide you love our creation, you pay the outstanding balance and go home with your perfect painting.
OR you decide that actually for whatever reason you no longer want the painting – no problem, I keep the deposit and the painting and you leave with no hard feelings (this has actually never happened to me before but I expect it will do one day and that will be fine).
It’s all really quite simple and fun. You get a bespoke piece of original art which you can hang at home and I get the chance to create a little bit of happiness to send out into the world.
Other artists will have different terms in their contracts, some might not offer commissions at all but I suspect that every artist is happy when a commission comes their way because it means that one of the people we need to love our work has found us rather than us having to find you.
If you’ve got any questions about my commission process just ask, questions are always free and welcome. Contact me about a commission, just here.
S x