Here is a question for you? Why commission someone. Not just me. Anyone.

First I wrote this knowing that when I put this up my commissions will be closed for a short period of time. So, I am not just fishing for jobs.

There are of course a few reasons you should commission someone.

Economic

It’s quite simple you have a set number of hours in the day, time is the currency of life and no matter what we do we cannot create more of it. Your dollars are worth less than the time it would take you to paint something to the level you desire. However… this is something other people don’t think about…

How much have you spent on paints and brushes? How much have you spent on pigment powders, static grass, tufts, cork, dropper bottles, paint shakers, airbrushes, plastic shot glass mixing cups and so on and so on? When you add it up… it can be very expensive. And if you only have your one team or your one squad or your one thing… economically it just makes sense to commission someone.

Skill

I believe in everyone’s ability to paint their own models and I think that it is wrong to put people down for their skill level. You will always care more about something you painted than about something you got given to you painted.

However…

Let’s not be disingenuous, I have a skill level that many hobbyists don’t possess, there are other people who have more skills than me I am not saying I am the world’s greatest I am just saying… If someone is offering commissions there is a greater than chance level they know how to paint well. So if you want things to look a certain way…

Result

One of my clients was surprised just how quickly I got things done… Which is confusing for me because I am a professional and he ordered a rush job. I am guessing he has dealt with people who are unprofessional at best…

Results matter. This is why it’s important to know who you are commissioning and why and how quickly it will be done. Having a product finished is important. This is what you SHOULD be getting when you commission someone however some people are… let us say… not the best when it comes to commissions. So

Caveat emptor

Let the buyer beware

Especially when it comes to commissioning people so make sure they have a good record. Make sure they are known, and make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. but… once again this was all trick!

This was all so I could lure you in… for my reveal of the true article!

Why do I paint commissions?

I know why I paint, I paint to try and make something I am proud of, something I can share with other people. I want people to enjoy my painting. Now here is the thing to get good results with miniatures you have to put in a painstaking amount of time and often for the greater majority of that time you have to have clarity of vision because for the majority of the time… It’s going to look uglier than sin.

This is why I believe a lot of people stop painting or feel inadequate because of it, they see only the finished products of other people and it frustrates them to no end…

The reason is this, in short, the reason is this.

I help people make their vision come true

Let me share a bit about each of my commissions and what I got out of it.

The Start of it
or…
The White Black Orc Commission

When I received these they weren’t in the best shape…

This is even with me putting quite a few hours work into them. Here is the thing… My client hadn’t had the best advice or was mixed up on what people said… Let’s just say things weren’t going well for him, he had applied multiple layers of contrast as a base and… well he felt left in the lurch.

He had a vision of what he wanted but he was frustrated that he couldn’t get it there. So my goal and what I got out of this is simple.

I helped him see his vision come true. I help him translate what he wanted in his head into actual reality, I made a dream come true, just a small one but I did it. That is what I got out of this…

The Follow up Commission

I did some other small commissions but this was my next big commission for the same person, now lets just say I put a ALOT of work into those ones above when I should have probably just stripped them and then started again. However this is still my biggest commission. He wanted a new Blood Bowl team and he had gotten the latest hotness. The Khorne team but thing is he didn’t have a full team and as a thank you to him… Well I wanted to make a full team so out of the spare parts I had plus a little 3D printing I made him a full Khorne team with the box, that means I made two Khornegors, a Bloodspawn and some extra linemen for the full 16.

What I got out of this? Probably my most ambitious attempt at true metallic metal ever and I went hard with the converting and he still uses many of the converted miniatures. What I got out of this is simple. I made something he loved and I made something which was very technically difficult to paint.

The Dad Commission

This was my first Malifaux commission and when I went to meet my client he had his boy with him and he was crawling all over him and I was asking about very particular things and he was nodding along and finally I asked him…

Do you just want me to make him look good and he just smiled and said yeah.

And so I did, as close to the box art as I could for a character level commission.

What I remembered was how happy that little boy was with his dad, and I was honestly envious of that. I want to be that kind of dad, maybe in the future I will be but for the moment I could give that dad a bit of my life and make something great for him something that would bring him joy like his boy’s smile brought me.

So despite being a Malifaux commission this will always be the dad commission for me. That’s what I got out of it a moment of happiness that I hope to share with my son or daughter in the future.

The oh yeah its all coming together Commission

So I had been working on my brothers Blood Bowl team and I had been using my lady as model for trying to understand light and hair and darker skin. Then I get this commission and its Dwarves and I thought okay… Its going to be a ton of armour…

As it turns out the Dwarves are wearing a lot less armour than you think but you know what they do have a surprising amount of? Hair! and Beards!

But their beards in fiction at least have lot more in common with normal hair than beards which is actually pubic hair and generally a good sign that someone has matured at least in that way. So will my work with skin and hair come together to make some beautiful hair and lovely skin?

Here is the thing a lot of people don’t realise… to be a good painter… you have to practice all the time and you have to work at getting better it doesn’t just happen. This is where I saw my work really coming together. I think my Maybelline style hair/beards created a product that people could get excited about that would make people interested in commissioning me. I thought this piece showed off a lot of my talents and I was really happy with that and apparently so was the client, because he commissioned me again but not before…

The Rush Job

This was a tabletop job which is fine because usually, I paint at my leisure because certain things take time… and you would be surprised what they are… like waiting for glue to dry… waiting for paint to dry… yeah… that’s something I have to factor into my paint jobs. Because when I do basing and that’s one thing a lot of people like from me is my basing…

So I was asked to do a rush job. How long did I have to get these bad boy’s finished? 2 days. Now can I spit out miniatures in that time? Easy! Can I spit out miniatures that I can be happy with the quality of… well that’s another story.

Luckily… my client only wanted tabled top so I was spared sleepless nights and if it wasn’t for a long conversation with the misses on one of those nights I would have been cruising the whole time. As it stood the biggest problem I had, in the end, was as I said… drying time.

This job made me feel more confident in my abilities than ever before because… I was able to show I could get a project in a very short amount of time and turn it around super quick. That’s what I got out of this.

The Turn Around

There is an old adage, he who represents himself, is represented by a fool. My misses and my brother had been on me to up my prices…

I am very blessed to have some of the clients I do because… My client was the one who suggested a clean 300 which has now become my base rate for Blood Bowl teams at character level. What did I get out of this, if you invest in your work and work hard your clients will notice. And they did. Because this meant a lot to me.

There is a Scott Sigler book which is about ‘Fantasy Sci-Fi Football’ but it has a lot of real moments in there and during one moment the lead character says he realised ‘It wasn’t about the money it was about what the money represented, a recognition of the quality of the player he was.’ I was quibbling over adding 20 dollars because I know that things can be tough for people… but I am a person too and that small ‘jump’ to a neat 300 helped me recognise my worth even though my brother and my misses told me I need to charge more.

That was recognition of my worth.

I see the worth in my client’s visions and I want to bring those visions to life. To turn dreams into reality and my clients help turn my dream of working for myself with my own individual talents into reality.

Until next time friends

Keep sharpening those visions, I want to make them a reality.

Why commission?