I am a commissioned artist; most of my clientele is online, and most of my commissions are of a sexually-explicit nature. Consequently, I get a lot of commissions involving multiple people, so I have my prices set up to account for that. I have some flex room depending on the complexity of a scene, but as a general rule, each extra person adds 50% of the price of a one-person piece.

As with all things sexual, there are certain things I will and will not do, and I have outlined these on my contact page. Someone contacts me for a commission, and their request involves five people and one of the subjects I do not do.

Me: “I’m sorry, but I do not draw artwork involving [subject]. Ask someone else.”

Commissioner: “That’s bulls***. You draw p*rn for money. Are you really going to be picky about your options?”

Me: “Even prostitutes are allowed to refuse service if they’re not comfortable with what they’re asked, my friend. I am not going to draw your commission.”

Commissioner: “Yes, you are. Anyone will do anything for enough money. Now, are you going to keep wasting my time, or are you going to give me a price?”

At this point, I have every reason to block him, but his phrasing (and my own remark) reminds me of an old joke — the woman who would sleep with a stranger for a million dollars has “established what kind of woman she is, now we’re just haggling over the price”. I decide to put a few zeroes on the end of my usual pricing to see if this commissioner is willing to put his money where his mouth is.

Me: “All right, if you want me to draw this, that’ll be [six-digit figure].”

Literally as I’m sending that, I realize that I’ve scaled up my price for a one-person piece, whereas the request is for a five-person scene.

Commissioner: “You can’t charge me that much!”

Me: “Actually, I forgot that you have five characters involved. That’ll be [figure times three].”

Commissioner: “Who in their right mind would pay that much for someone to draw p*rn?”

Me: “As you said, anyone will do anything for enough money. That is enough money. If you don’t like it, ask someone else.”

The commissioner responded with some colorful language I see no reason to reiterate here. I blocked him and got on with my life.

I post art on Behance, a social media platform designed for artists to share their portfolios. On checking my inbox there one morning, I found a message from a company in another country, linking to an illustration I had completed and posted.

Company: “Really like your artwork, please send the file.”

I replied.

Me: “Thank you! If you’d like to discuss licensing terms and costing, I can arrange that.”

Two days later, I got a response from the company.

Company: “No, just send the file. You have completed it already. We don’t pay for it.”

Obviously, nothing transpired!

We do metal fabrication, public art pieces, and such. Every now and then, we get a new client who thinks they’re hot s*** but has no idea what goes into these projects.

At the end of last year, we quoted a job, and the client revealed that his entire budget was considerably less than what it would take to order materials alone. He demanded that we take the massive financial hit because “it would be great exposure.”

I guess he didn’t know we have pieces on five continents — including one for the Tokyo Olympics.

Related:
Exposure Doesn’t Spend As Well As Cash

After a weeks-long search for the perfect unique, eye-catching font for my client’s project, he spotted one he loved on some website. He tried to show me by copying some text and pasting it into our chat window.

Of course, when you do that, the text loses its formatting and reverts to Arial (or whatever the default chat font is). Despite my repeated attempts to explain this, he just kept getting irritated and pasting the same thing again.

Eventually, I convinced him to just give me the page’s URL so I could see this font myself.

The font turned out to actually be Arial.

After being asked to design a simple invoice layout, I was sent a list of sections to include: time, quantity, price, tax, total, etc. Three proofs and a lot of conflict later, the client decided she didn’t want to pay the design fee. She then sent us her own file (with the exact same layout) to be printed.

Client: “Will this file work?”

Me: “This is the layout I just designed.”

Client: “No, it isn’t. I designed this one in Excel.”