I finished this tryptic painting for a client yesterday. Creating this work was a positively joyous experience.

Comissions can be a lucrative part of an artist's income stream. However in an artist's eagerness to sell their work, its easy to become too much of a pleaser painter. A pleaser painter is a term I just invented which means you want to please the client and paint whatever they want in whatever colors they want. If someone is paying for a work of art it is understandable that they need to be happy with the painting, however we artists need clients that love our style of painting and trust us to take their ideas and imput and create our painting our way.

A contract needs to be given to a client stating specifics like: once rough drafts are okayed a non refundable deposit must be paid, what the final cost will be, art material are included in the price, completion date and how many small changes are included in the cost + the cost of additional changes.

I must admit I had no contract in place for this painting (below) but the client gave me a deposit, asked for only one minor change and trusted me to do the painting my way. I am sure that's why doing this painting was such a positive experience for me.

One last positive thing my client did was to match her new bedroom accessories to the colors in my painting!

Have you had any experiences with commissions that we need to know about?Send them to me in the comment section.