Portfolios vs. Commissions
Billy got me thinking about the way we visual artists profit off of our work a couple months ago, and I figured I’d bring my thoughts to the conversation here for all of us that take on commission work. Most of what I’ll discuss is either influenced directly by Billy or a mangled amalgam of points he made.
The work that gets us commissioned in the first place is our personal work, which due to the principle of how it comes into being at all results in more interesting pieces by default. There is more passion behind the ideas, more love and care put in, and more risks taken then you’re likely going to see in that artists’ commissioned work. It’s just how it is, and rightly so.
With commissioned pieces, you’re working to please your commissioner, and odds are you’re going to struggle to find that same sort of passion and interest for a subject that isn’t really yours to control, never mind give yourself the liberty to experiment with ideas which often get reserved for your personal work. You’re going to fulfill the prompt to the best of your ability, and hope that the commissioner likes it so you can move on. You’re also going to hope that you’ll eventually have time for your own stuff later. Everything is on hold for you personally if you’re in a situation where you have to take on commissions to make ends meet.
An interesting side-effect of taking on commission work too, is that your audience (or at least myself, as an audience member) isn’t going to be as engaged with your work, because the work you’ve made is clearly tailored to one person. This all goes without mentioning what it feels like being the aritst: you become accutely aware of how much time has passed since being commissioned, you’re much more likely to second guess your work, and you much more likely to beat yourself up. At least, I am.
With portfolios, however, the benefits to you as an artist are wonderfully multi-fold. First and most obvious is that the contents of a portfolio consist of a subject or an idea that the creator is truly interested in. This results in a heightened ease of creation for the artist, and much more leniency to experiment and improve. Also, it’s easier to engage your audience because you’re giving them more of what interested them in your work in the first place, that being your personal work and ideas. The biggest benefit that I can see for us as working artists though, is the ability to sell this body of work to your audience rather than to one person, and this benefits your audience further because you are then able to lower your price.
One commissioned work for one person priced at $75, say, which depending on various factors can be stealing money from yourself and drastically slamming down on your audience being able to participate directly with you and your work due to the interests being so finely tailored and expensive (which is the case now) vs:
Multiple pieces together priced at $10, which can be sold to everyone you reach, benefitting you and your audience financially and artistically.
I like to boil it down to a music analogy: It’s the difference between selling an album vs. being paid to make one song that suits someone elses’ interests and that you can’t do much with afterwards.
tl;dr - I want to make a portfolio and hopefully I’ve made something of a compelling reasoning as to why.
