Art Commissions Guide: How You Can Avoid Nightmare Clients

This video provides practical tips for art commissions. There are many logistics to doing an art commissions that you need to know: how to advertise, setting rages, creating a commission schedule, drawing up a contract with your client, making an invoice, and more. Discussion led by RISD Adjunct Professor Clara Lieu and Art Prof Teaching Artist Lauryn Welch.

TIME STAMPS
00:00 Opening
01:47 About commissions
06:24 Publicity for commissions
08:16 Style in commissions
10:33 Clients don’t know anything
11:03 Meeting face to face
13:12 Commission chart

18:18 Pricing
23:45 Get it in writing
25:59 Scheduling & checkpoints
29:36 Non-refundable deposits
31:13 Don’t lift a finger
32:47 Protect yourself
34:20 Invoices

25:41 Framing
37:51 Commission agreement
40:13 People skills
44:51 Legal aspects of commissions
46:43 Bad experiences
56:29 Gaining exposure

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Clara Lieu was an Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design from 2007-2020. Her artwork has been exhibited at the International Print Center NY, the Currier Museum, Childs Gallery, the Davis Museum, and more. Lieu received an artist fellowship from the MA Cultural Council, has written for the NY Times, and lectured at Brown University, the NAEA conference, and in Vancouver & China. She has been profiled in Artsy, Hyperallergic, KPCC, & WBUR.

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[danyamariegeddes]

Oh wow I love the way Neil took your critiques and came back! That second painting was phenomenal!
And how brave of Neil seriously.

[lizj]

Love the ‘combo’ of Lauryn and Prof Lieu - you two are so different and yet both are sincere and candid! Thank you for sharing! I couldn’t stop but kept laughing when Prof Lieu mentioned her horrible experience, though I hear the pain... this video reminds me of my late father, who did so many commissioned art/design projects and who enthusiastically taught me drawing and painting but gently and yet firmly opposed me going to art school... now I totally get it; but still, I feel the call of going back to the art world

[danyamariegeddes]

Oh wow@, when you talk about the woman being upset about "seeing her mortality" oh wow I guess you did a really good job 😮

[karinmitschang]

This video saved me, I was just about to get into a project for a friend's office spaces without any paperwork. He's super open and nice and not thinking about any deadlines or even themes, but I'll be extra cautious and mindful of how we go about it. Thank you!
Also, how mind blowing was this artprofshare 😱🤯😍 it's like it was from another person entirely ❤️ the light in the waves 😍

[neilagangitlog]

O wow, I didn't know that i was featured in this video! I always get cheesy feelings when u guys look at my work. Really great community, lots of love 😍😍

[Slepnir]

Lots of stuff to consider, but important. Since we don't have others to do the business, we need to know what to do. This is the tough side of art - necessary - but not the fun.

[bitesizeart]

Interesting insight, and completely different from my own experience lol.
Been doing furry and character commissions for 5 years now, you couldn't pay me to communicate with a client by anything but email. Also the digital art commission market online is extremely oversaturated due to a lot of extremely young artists being willing to do work for 5 -15 usd, but it's interesting to hear about what fine artists do.

Non refundable deposits : in the furry and character art community it's pretty widely accepted to take full payment up-front, or at least 50% up front. There's websites that track scam artists, usually an artist is represented by their previous clients.

[denisehiltebrand]

I don‘t know what‘s going on but it seems like you always can sense what video I need right now 👀

[amira_the_drake]

this is a great help, thank you so much!

[parthsavyasachi]

It is best not doing art as profession. It's much fun when done for pleasure.