This week, Alice and I answer a question from a listener. AJ wrote:

“I am an up and coming artist with a handful of commission requests. I would love to learn about the professional way to handle commissions. How do you and Alice do this? How much do your charge? What do you do about edits? Should the client pay upfront or give a deposit?”The question led us into an interesting debate about how formalised a commission process should be. Alice sets clear parameters and her process has worked very well for her, while I have found that any kind of commitment feels heavy. I am therefore taking a much more informal approach (including refusing commissions unless they feel just right).

We discuss practicalities (pricing, process, deposits etc), share our successes (as well as those that didn't go so well), and debate the pluses and minuses of allowing client input during the creative process.In the end, we both agree that there is no one-size-fits-all "professional" methodology and that the most important thing is for each artist to determine an approach that works for him or her (and make the parameters very clear to the buyer in advance).This week we also share some exciting studio news, celebrate the success of a fellow artist, and (literally) get a little bit potty-mouthed (!)