Well I just woke up from taking a nap and catching up on some sleep. I was up late last night working on this music poster for a friend (I won't reveal the whole thing as I haven't heard back from her yet and I'm not completely 100% done). I'm pretty happy with it so far, just hoping she is too.
Staying up late last night reminded me of the 'commissions' I used to do in the eighth grade. It started out as one friend in my class venturing out and asking me to draw a portrait of her dog in colored pencil, so I did and things kinda went from there. After I did that for her, more students started to come to me with various projects. I was both surprised and thrilled at how much people seemed to appreciate my art skills, so much so that I accepted their requests free of charge. Eventually the drawings became bigger and I was experimenting with making them more 'professional', by making them larger, more colorful, and extra photo realistic (even though that really isn't my strong suit). One young man particularly seemed to enjoy giving me projects to draw.
Now don't worry, no love stories here. He lived and breathed bull riding (a rarity even at our tiny country school) and was even competing in a few local rodeos every now and then. He started out by handing me torn out pages from his favorite bull rodeo magazine, and I would draw them during art class that day. Eventually he started to give me snap shots of him actually riding (which were pretty spectacular!). I loved them becuase it had so much movement and excitement than the pictures of dogs and hamsters I was usually getting. I think the last drawing I did for him he just gave me the whole magazine and let me pick out what ever I wanted to draw, after I did that he paid me in chocolate, which I happily accepted. Any other commissions I did that year I don't think I'll remember as much those ones. Maybe becuase I felt connected to a part of my community (my family were sorta isolated in that we were really part of the farming community), or maybe I honored to do something I love to do, from something he loved to do.
I've done other little commissions since then, never really getting paid very much, but I figured it's good for the experience. The one's I really enjoy tend to go along the same theme: doing something I love, to celebrate something they love. It also tends to be them taking a gamble on my drawing skills, a challenge, and it's always nice to surprise them and my self. I just have to make sure that I keep that in mind throughout the next coming years, I've already experienced how the stresses of life can take away the joy of art from me, so I'm gonna take it easy today and work on some crochet, and maybe head over to the horse barn to help out and draw horses. If I have the time....
Peace
