What I'm Actually Thinking When I Paint a Commission
People ask me a lot about commissions. Whether I do them, how they work, how much they cost. What they almost never ask is what it actually feels like to be the one holding the brush.
That's the part nobody writes about. So I'm going to.
The first thing I do isn't paint
When someone sends me a commission inquiry, I read the whole message twice before I respond. Not because I'm slow, but because most of what someone wants from a commissioned painting isn't spelled out directly. They'll say "I want something warm" or "she loved the beach." What they mean is usually something closer to: I want to feel the way this memory makes me feel, but bigger, and on my wall forever.
That's not a painting request. That's an emotional brief. And I have to figure out how to turn it into something visual before I ever touch a canvas.
The reference photos help, but they're almost never enough on their own. A good reference gives me information. A great conversation gives me direction. I ask questions that probably seem weird: What's the light like in the room where this will hang? Is the subject more playful or more serious? What do you never want to see them look like? That last one almost always produces a useful answer.
The painting that lives in my head before the real one starts
There's a version of every commission I paint before I paint it. It happens in the time between saying yes and putting oil to linen. I'll think about the composition in the shower, sketch it on a receipt, lose sleep over whether the background should be warm or cool. By the time I start the actual painting, I've already made most of the decisions that matter.
This is why rush commissions make me nervous. Not because I can't work fast, but because the thinking phase has a minimum viable time. You can't compress it into a weekend and get the same painting.
The best example I have of this is a pet portrait I did a while back. The client sent me a dozen photos. The dog was always in motion, always mid-bark or mid-run, never quite still. Every good reference photo of a dog is like that. So I had to figure out: which version of this animal is the truest? The playful one, or the calm one the owners see at the end of the night?
I picked the calm one. They cried when they saw the painting, which I take as a good sign.
What I'm actually doing when I paint someone else's subject
Here's the thing I've figured out after doing this for a while: I'm not painting the subject. I'm painting the relationship between the subject and the person who loves them.
That sounds abstract, but it changes everything in practice. The light falls differently when I think of it that way. The palette gets warmer or more contemplative depending on what the client has told me. I'm less concerned with photographic accuracy and more concerned with emotional accuracy, which is a different target to hit.
Portraits that feel exact but not right are a real category of bad painting. I've seen plenty of them. The likeness is there but the life isn't. I'd rather be slightly off the nose and completely alive than the other way around.
What happens in the last hour
I've noticed that my best commissioned work usually clicks into place in the final session, not the first. The early stages are structural. I'm blocking in shapes, getting the value structure right, figuring out where the painting is going. But it's the last pass, when most of the decisions have already been made, where the actual painting shows up.
That's when I'll add the highlight that was missing, soften an edge that was too hard, pull something from the shadow that changes what the whole face is doing. It's a weird hour to work in because I'm simultaneously finishing the painting and discovering it.
If you've ever commissioned something and gotten updates along the way, this is why the final version can look dramatically better than the WIP you saw two days ago. It's not magic. It's just that the painting wasn't done yet.
A note on what a commission actually is
I do oil on canvas for commissioned portraits, pet portraits, and a small number of landscape commissions for specific locations. Turnaround is typically around three weeks. Prices start at $395 for a small single-subject piece and go up from there depending on size and complexity.
I'm selective about it. Not precious — I just think both parties are better off if the project is right for the work I actually do. If you've got something in mind, the best thing to do is reach out and describe what you're after. We'll go from there.