No More Commissions.

This is a tough bastard of a blog entry to write. Most of these, when I update them, are pretty meaningless and not well thought out. Hell, half of them are stream-of-consciousness, so there's no forethought in them at all.

This one's gonna be different. I've been thinking about this one for weeks now.

I'm going to stop doing commissions.

I still have a few on the deck that I'm going to finish up, and there are a handful of people that have been excellent to me, and I will always be willing to whip up some work for them.

But this commission phase of my life, for now, is over.

I've been oddly successful with the commission work, which is great. The problem is me. That sounds like a "It's not you, it's me" breakup line, and I guess it is, sort of. You see, I need to be very very selfish with my art. I don't have it in me to make art for other people, to bring their vision to life. I can do it, but it's not what I need.

My art needs to be my own stuff, my own vision, my own whatever.

Because if it's not for just me, then I'm going to lose my shit and wind up in a straight jacket somewhere, drawing stuff with crayons on my padded cell wall, because that's all they give to the patients there. Crayons. It's hard to hurt anyone with a crayon. Not impossible, but difficult.

See, I had one of those things that people refer to as a "completely fucked up childhood". I don't talk about it much on here, because a few years back I decided to work towards becoming a professional artist. Professional meant that I had to censor myself; can't offend potential clients or anything, since who knows when the next job would come in. I had this lofty goal of quitting my day job and becoming some kind of freelance renegade artist type. It sounded so exciting on paper!

The reality of it is that it is, in fact... work. Lots and lots of work. I'm not opposed to work; I've been working for most of my adult life and quite a bit of my teenage years too. But that's different from turning your cherished pastime into a regular day job.

I had been warned that this might happen. By multiple people too; but this is one of those things that you've just gotta go and try for yourself, even if other people can tell it's probably a shitty idea for you. Sort of like that friend who's going to get married to a complete fucking lunatic, and you just have to let them go through it and be there when the dust settles. Maybe not quite that severe, but you see what I'm getting at.

So I turned my hobby into a job. Works for some; not for me. I killed the joy in it. No more therapeutic outlet, just a second night job after my day job. No more diving into my own brain to escape the other bad shit in my brain. No more creative juices flowing, just a meager trickle to get the jobs done.

As a person with a "completely fucked up childhood" I need to put my coping mechanisms back in place. Turning a hobby into a job is fine. Turning a coping mechanism into a job is a recipe for a nervous breakdown.

So that's what I'm going to do.

I know this is probably getting way too emo at this point, so let me lay it out: No more commissions. but I am going to work on my personal art again. And lucky for some of you, Steamvolt is among my personal art. Steamvolt makes me feel good. The little monsters I draw, the pretty girls, the creatures I now sculpt... all that's my personal stuff. Keeps me grounded.

My goals are simple: I just want to make stuff that I think is interesting and cool. If someone wants to pay me for that; awesome. If not, that's fine too. I'll just keep doing my thing either way.