I, for one, hate 'em.

Okay, hate is a strong word. I generally don't like commissions that much, and that's why I'm not currently offering them and probably won't any time soon. Here's why:

Picture yourself at age 15. You just finished up a hellish day of school, and you're settling onto the couch with a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch). An episode of A Haunting is about to start on The Discovery Channel — and thank god for that. You're home alone with just the dog. Birds are chirping. The sun is shining. It's a perfect, peaceful afternoon. "Things are really starting to turn around," you think. 

But then, it hits you.

Your Math teacher gave you that slog of a homework assignment yesterday, which is now due tomorrow morning! You couldn't do it yesterday because you had Drama Club after school (ugh!), and you used your study block today to catch up on your reading assignment for English (The Crucible (ugh!!)).

Where that feeling of peaceful bliss once sat, there's now a nagging knot of anxiety, and you know it won't go away until that Math assignment is done and dusted. Procrastinating will just make it worse — you know that from experience. And if you don't do it at all, you can forget college, honey! At least, that's what your brain worm tells you. So you simply have no choice but to turn off A Haunting and get to work. I guess you'll never know if that average American family got rid of their poltergeist! UGH!!!

End scene. 

I know that may have caused some stress, but I had to take you there to make the following point:

I get that same nagging, anxious feeling when I take on a commission. To me, commissions are basically homework for adults. And I have never liked homework.

For those who aren't familiar with the word, a commission is the process of creating a custom piece for a specific person. For example, Susie could hire me to source a medium-sized navy crewneck for her and request that I put a large pink S in the middle, and use green and purple in the checkerboard background. That's a commission. That's also pretty ugly, Susie.

Of course, the amount of creative pull you give a customer is up to you as the artist. Some artists and artisans really thrive on commission work, and I get why. Commissions can give you a good idea of how much money may be coming in every month, and they can also keep you organized while presenting a fun challenge. Plus, you can usually charge a bit more for custom work — nice!

But...for me...in my opinion...the commission process oftentimes turns my creative hobby into something I have to do, which really kills all motivation. It becomes no different than the Math assignment from The Aforementioned Scenario. As soon as I'm being told I have to do something, the less I want to do that thing, even if that something is a thing I usually like to do. Ya know?

Even though I'm whining about commissions, that doesn't mean I haven't taken on custom projects that I've really enjoyed working on. I had the honor of making my friends Beth and Tommy a little Masshole Lobstah baby onesie for their pregnancy announcement. (Don't tell D*nkin' I'm sharing this image with you, or else they may vanquish me to hell where I belong.)

Last summer, tweaked an existing design of mine to include a few custom details for my friend Lilly Austin, who gave me a super sweet tattoo in exchange! And more recently, I worked on a few wedding banners for fellow South Shore creative Ray and her husband Chad that really inspired me to branch out and work more with denim.

However, I know that if I were to open up commissions for Masshole Lobstah sweatshirts, my brain would explode (and my brain worm and I are really close these days, so that would be tragic). I can get really burned out from making them as it is, so introducing a list of clients who are expecting them within a certain time frame to my ecosystem would be bad. They're already toeing the line of being an invasive species, so I have to keep them in check as best I can.

As mentioned in my last post, OHpleeze is not my "real" job, and that means I can be picky and work in a way that works best for me. TLDR too late in the blog post: commissions generally dam my creative flow. So that's that on that.

I would love to hear from fellow artists about how they view commissions — why they love them, why they hate them, or why they're indifferent. Sound off in the comments and smash that follow button. Next time, I'll be giving you a more detailed lowdown on the shot heard round the world (a.k.a. the cease and desist letter from D*nkin' D*nuts that I just can't shut up about).