I wonder why no one asks for commissions any more? When I drew Bobbins, people asked all the time! Draw my wife, they'd say, draw my wife. Draw a cover for this periodical! Draw "Rich Tweedy" in a hat. I guess my art has deteriorated a lot since 2000. But it is so versatile! Look! My compositional boo-boos are an open goal for opportunity!
13 comments:
Hi John - very nice drawing! Just out of curiosity, how much do you charge for a commission? Or is that like asking how long is a piece of string?
It is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string, yes. If someone asks for a picture of Shelley in markers like that one there, I might charge £40-50? The more complicated the request and the wider the use, the higher the price.
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I would feel weird about essentially ordering you around (even if I am paying you) -- the mental image I get is of me standing on a chair pointing imperiously and commanding "Draw, slave! Draw as you have never drawn before! This time I require three cats next to Shelley, and one of them must be ginger, wretch! Ginger!"
Well, I've personally never thought of approaching you for a commission because I just presumed you'd be too busy and it wasn't a service you'd offer.
A little bit on your website plugging the service, with a few examples of past commissions and examples of prices would probably result in a flood of requests.
So much so, that in a month or so you'd be making a blog posting saying that you were no longer doing commissions because you no longer had enough time to do the daily strip. :)
Ah, see now whenever people complain, err...comment, about the open spaces in my photographs rather than go on about spiral compositions and negative spaces and golden means I tell them that's where the ad copy goes.
They always seem so much more satisfied with that.
Jon:
there's a sort of reader drawing request that I call "the eye roller", where an enthusiastic person says something like "please will you draw Amy drinking a cup of tea sitting at a table surrounded by monster trucks - and everyone is dressed as Roundheads". And I say "no."
Like a mule, I can only be lead where I want to go.
Rob: I actually used to put intentional mistakes into graphic design jobs so that clients would have something to ask me to change. I also found that the bigger the customer (the biggest website I ever designed was Childline), the fewer picky amendments they would ask for.
Yes... you know, if I had known before that you even did commissions... I suppose I thought cranking out four comics a week, plus T-shirts and whatnot, would keep you too busy.
You gave me ideas. The next internet meme for sure.
http://indiecock.com/terrorizer-july.png
Please sell the New Yorker one as a print!! <3
Yes, I also assumed you did not have time nor interest (though I have a book in which you drew a Shelley-like creature reading a Jane Austen book so I guess I know you did/do custom comics with your autographs). I would like a picture of a farmer (vegetables, not corn), with blonde hair, and maybe a black and white dog and some chickens. I am totally serious. How should your loyal fans contact you to arrange these sorts of things?
Wait, does this mean my chances of getting a drawing of Gordon Brown kicking a Gurkha while Shelley looks on in horror has just gone up?
I'd love to pay you to draw! If 'the band' (there is always 'a band') ever starts to make money, you'd be the first person I'd approach with a wad of cash for designing an album cover or poster.
One day, John Allison. ONE DAY.
I once asked for a picture of a monkey, and you told me that it would be one hojillion dollars. I wept and then lost all hope. It was all downhill from there.
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