The excitement of a commission request tends to override the practical questions, which is exactly how artists end up three weeks into a project realizing nobody agreed on the size, the deadline, or what happens if the client hates it. Ask these six before you say yes, and the commission stays a good problem to have instead of a slow-motion headache.

1. What size, medium, and subject do they actually want?

"Something like your other work, but bigger" is not a brief, it is a feeling, and feelings do not fit on a canvas. Get the exact dimensions, not a rough sense of scale. Get the medium confirmed (oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, mixed media, encaustic, etc). Get the subject pinned down to specifics, not "their dog" but which dog, which photo, cropped how, against what kind of background. A client who says "surprise me a little" at the brief stage is the same client who says "this is not quite what I pictured" three weeks later, and by then you have already spent the hours. Pin it down before you quote, not after, even if it feels like you are being a little annoying about it. You are not. You are the only one in the conversation who knows how expensive a vague brief actually is.

2. What is their actual timeline, and does it work for you?

A commission with no real deadline is a very different job than one that has to be framed and hanging by someone's wedding. Ask directly, is this for an event, a gift date, a holiday, or genuinely whenever it is done. A hard external deadline changes your math, it might mean turning down other work, painting evenings you had planned to rest, or quoting a rush fee because you are compressing weeks of normal pace into days. Find this out before you agree to anything, because "sometime this year" and "needs to be there for the baby shower in three weeks" are not the same commitment, even if the client describes both the exact same casual way.

3. How many revision rounds are included, and what happens beyond that?

Name a number, one or two rounds is plenty, and say what happens after that number is used up. Without this line in writing, "just one more small tweak" becomes a request you get five separate times, each one small enough to feel rude to push back on and each one quietly eating into hours you never billed for. This is not a hypothetical, it is the single most common way a commission that started as a good rate turns into an unpaid part-time job by the third week. Naming the rounds up front is not you being difficult, it is you protecting the exact math you did when you quoted the price.

4. What deposit are you requiring, and when is it due?

A nonrefundable deposit, usually somewhere between 30 and 50 percent, paid before you pick up a brush. It does two things at once, it commits the client so this is not a maybe-project you are holding space for indefinitely, and it covers your materials and early hours if they ghost you halfway through, and some of them genuinely do. Waiting until the piece is finished to ask for any money is how artists end up finishing full commissions for clients who ghost at delivery. Get something in hand first, every time, no exceptions for how nice the conversation felt.

By default, you do, the artist keeps the copyright and the right to photograph and show the piece in a portfolio, unless you have explicitly agreed to something else in writing. Do not assume the client already knows this or that it will not come up. Say it clearly in the quote, before the piece exists, not after they have seen the finished painting and then assumed it belongs entirely to them now that they paid for it. Assumptions are exactly what curdle into disputes later, and the fix costs one sentence at the start instead of an uncomfortable conversation at the end.

6. Have you actually priced this using Time + Materials, not your standard size-based number?

A commission is custom labor on someone else's timeline with revision rounds built in, and your regular size-based number was never built to capture that. Price it instead as your hours times your hourly rate, plus materials and overhead, then multiplied by a profit factor, not the number you would charge for a similar-sized piece you made entirely on your own terms. The full formula and a worked example are here, but the short version is this, if you are quoting a commission using the same math you use for inventory you chose to make on a Tuesday afternoon, you are almost certainly under-charging for the extra risk and labor you just agreed to carry.

Notice that none of these six questions are about being difficult or killing the excitement of the request. They are the difference between a commission that funds your month and a commission that quietly costs you money while looking, on paper, like a win.

Quick version

  • Confirm size, medium, and subject specifically before quoting, not after.
  • Confirm the timeline and whether it realistically fits your current workload.
  • Name the included revision rounds and the cost of anything beyond them.
  • Require a nonrefundable deposit, 30 to 50 percent, before starting.
  • Spell out who keeps copyright and portfolio rights, in writing, before the piece exists.
  • Price with Time + Materials, not your standard original-pricing formula.

A commission that starts with clear answers to these six questions rarely turns into the story you tell other artists as a warning.