It's Andy Fish!

Okay we covered how you order- what’s the price? Depends on the artist, depends on the piece, depends on how quickly you’d like it. Now traditionally commissions taken at shows should be ready by the end of the show– but if you go to an artists table on a Sunday late morning and you notice his or her commission list is 15 long and they’ve only crossed off one or two they are not going to deliver your piece by the end of the show.

That means that they’ll “finish” it back in their studio and mail it to you. In the commission world this makes me nervous, because a lot of times once they’re back home they have to resume working on paid publishing assignments and some of these artists do a LOT of shows and take commissions at those too, so you just fall further and further down the delivery chain.

Anyway pricing– it can vary- someone like Jim Lee, President of DC Comics and a pretty amazing artists charges $1000/USD for a simple quick head sketch all the way up to a finished 11×17 cover quality piece for $35k/USD.

Most artists fall well under those rates, but expect $200-$800 for “simple quick sketches” and $900- $5k for full quality cover pieces. Why so high? Many “collectors” are just flippers and when you start to see a piece you did for $250 as a “favor” for a fan on eBay sell for 10x what you charged you decide you won’t feed their business. Personalization is one way to ensure someone is a fan, but personally as I buy commissions I don’t like them personalized because I recognize I’m not going to be on this planet forever and it’s going to better for my sons to be able to sell non-personalized art when I’m gone. I don’t consider that flipping.

Personally, Veronica and I when we are accepting commissions, we typically charge $30 for a sketch card (trading card sized which is becoming increasingly popular) and then rates like this;

9×12 – BW Head Shot – $200
9×12 – BW Bust Shot – $250

10×14 – BW Full Body – $350
10×14 – BW Up to Three Characters – $500

COLOR – Add $100

One thing to understand with commissions, you are not buying a commercial piece, which means you don’t get to art direct, you can give specifics, for example if I order a WEREWOLF BY NIGHT commission, I always specify
“short snout 70s version” because that’s what I like, most artists draw the character like the Howling with the long dog snout, and I don’t care for that version.