Commissions WIP 6-15-22 (Patreon)

I'm working to get everything I owe everyone to them before the end of the summer.  

I still have nine Winky the Pirate girl index card drawings left to do, owed to four customers, dating back to an emergency offer made in September/October 2021. On top of everything that's been going on this past year (we weren't public about Sarah's health situation at the time), and my stupid need to be overwhelmed by everything, I screwed up this entire endeavor in two key ways. First, I didn't realize just how many Winky drawings I had agreed to do until I did a reckoning several months ago (fifty-seven total, plus a few extras here and there). Secondly, I decided to add backgrounds and details when the original Winky drawings were simply a single figure with a word balloon. Yeah. So, that didn't work in anyone's favor, at least not until the drawings arrived and people hopefully were happy with the backgrounds and stuff. Still, not good business sense.

I have ten commissions to still complete, some dating back to...2020. I know some folks wait a long time for these things, and I've heard horror stories about artists dragging things out for even longer -- and also horror stories of artists not mailing the completed art out for months just out of sheer laziness or who the hell knows what. I don't know how artists handle that, because it can keep me up some nights, I see people trying to get commissions owed to them from Kickstarters for more than five years and it makes me want to swallow two Ativan just thinking of dealing with that kind of situation.  Let alone the KS's that ghost people and/or don't deliver anything. I'm amazed that doesn't ever seem to ever kill a career, but there's always people who will defend or ignore egregious nonsense. I try to stay in touch with folks and I've written people back who have inquired about the status of their art letting them know they can cancel and get a refund if they want to because I realize two years is not what they thought they were letting themselves in for. Recently I found that I had inadvertently ghosted someone for months by not replying to an e-mail asking for an update on a drawing. 

I try to own my screw-ups and delays in getting stuff out, I try to be open about things here and on my Instagram. I should have taken fewer commissions but we were broke and I was in a panic, and then other things took off or got complicated. I shouldn't accept as many extra detail requests as I did on some pieces, but I was afraid of not getting the commission (this is not a knock against anyone, it's up to the artist to accept/refuse whatever they are okay with doing, or at least ask for more money to do more than usual thing). I shouldn't add so many more details to everything on top of everything, but I live to overcompensate, and, making matters worse, when things run late, I over-overcompensate. This has been a problem for me for a long time now, if I run late I want the work to be worth the wait, which means I put more time in, and then there's longer to wait, so I add more stuff to it and then...you get the picture. or don't until I finally run out of room to add more stuff and send it to you. 

I happened to see some older commissions of mine recently and I was kind of freaked out by how little there was to them. Just two figures and a word balloon or two, maybe a color background, maybe some squiggly lines or speed lines. 

Here's an example of  what used to be a typical M&C commission:

But then some idiot convinced me to start making them like this:

We all know who the idiot is, right? That's right. Pat Harrington Jr, who you might remember from the original One Day At A Time sitcom. It's a long story, but rest assured, he's the one who sent me on the wrong path. 

Someone once told me 'they don't pay you by the line", and that's true, but then the Pat Harrington Jr. thing happened. What can I say? If I got paid by the line I'd be a millionaire, if I got paid by the apology I'd be doing pretty all right. I'm joking but it's not a way I like living. I'm hoping one day to get to a point where I manage my commissions and schedule better, try to spin fewer plates and deal with what's on the board in a more sensible manner. It's a process, but it's not a process I feel good dragging other people through. I as hoping that going on prescription medication for my ADHD would help, but that didn't work out and I'm gun shy trying something else because Ritalin and the Fluvox withdrawals really messed up April and May for me. At least I'm not dealing with that anymore, thankfully. because that was suck-ola. 

Once I finally finish this batch up I'm going to have to seriously overhaul how I handle these things, especially as dealing directly with my readers/customers/backers is my main source of income. I don't want to take advantage of the people who support me and making people wait so much longer than promised falls into that category for me. Like many cartoonists I'm not a very good organizer or business person. That's still on me, though. I take comfort in the fact that I'm at least not larcenous. 

Anyway. Sorry. Expect more WIP commission updates in the coming weeks as I get down to imitation brass tacks. The Fugazi piece is almost there (I have to admit I'm hitching on it, trying to get everything "right", likenesses are not a specialty), there's another three M&C pieces started and getting penciled, and I still have a late M&C/Spy vs Spy mash-up, a full-page M&C recreation, a weird one involving spiders, and one really late one involving M&C with animals (animals being so out of my comfort zone that i avoided this one too long, then felt shitty and now want it to be really good , which has led to me tossing at least a dozen prelims for it so far).

One thing I will say, I like the finished drawings more than I used to, I think i draw better these days and I definitely do better work with the coloring. I just wish more of it was finished.  

More later, soon. Soon. 

Don't send the drones just yet.