#commission. now

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

#shut up e #long post #Saturday thoughts #this has been in my drafts for a week haha #also this is the heart of why AI art feels so wrong #forget the discussion of copyright and theft etc - even if models were only trained on public domain they would still feel very wrong #because they’re not art. art is the labor of creation #even commercial art and art commissioned by the popes and kings of history: there is humanity in the labor of it #unrelated: I did not know living in the Bronx was now something to brag about. How the fuck do y’all New Yorkers afford this city???

[gr0undr10tz]

unfinished chimera falin wip

#i wanted to post this before the hype was over so its unfinished for now #twitter really liked her though ! #trying to finish her in between commissions #falin touden #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #chimera falin

[kewpiekills]

some fish women i drew during college orientation

#kewpie's art #fishwoman #shark #betta #platy #first lady has a wrist brace on #and the last gal is sooo transgender #ALSO IM IN COLLEGE NOW!!!!!! #i’ve never been to school before (homeschooled) so this is like. huge for me #also why commissions are closed. i need to get smart now

[starrysharks]

my little human?

some ref sheets i finished down below:

#zeno's art #mlp #my little pony #mlp fim #equestria girls #twilight sparkle #rainbow dash #fluttershy #pinkie pie #appledash #rarity #also human names for the other three girls: #pinkie - didi pinkerton #aj - angie jonamac #rarity - beauty bello #ok i gotta lock into commissions now #might do other characters in the future #applejack #NOT APPLEDASH 😭😭😭 #that was a typo sorry

[mienar]

close-ups of a commission i did a while back! 🌱

instagram | shop | commission info

#artists on tumblr #animated illustration #animated gif #digital art #2d animation #backgrounds #environment art #environment illustration #myillust #cozy #rainy days #there were so many details in this commission that i rmb thinking to myself that they could be like b-rolls in a film heh #so i cropped it to 21:9 to get that ✨cinematic look✨ and it turned out so cool!! #i'm sorry for being so inactive for so long ;-; i really havent had the time to make new art #things are calming down for me now that i can get back to making more art #thank you so much for sticking around all this while ;; please know that i really appreciate it like really really really! #i hope you'll like this! :D

[nolvini]

Opening c0mms for Palestine! I’ll be donating 75% to Care for Gaza and eSIMs! If interested, dm or email me, and please share this around! get a cool drawing while helping a good cause 🇵🇸💕

#commissions #ceasfire now #free palestine #palestine #gaza

[obsob]

despite, despite, despite!!

#mine #original #fun fact when i first started colouring this i like couldnt remember what th trans flag looked like #i just like. did it then was like . hmm. that is the flag of slovakia i think #anyway #i missed tdov by a mile but. hello #i missed th day bc i was at my bfs house. thats t4t love baby #i hope u hve all had a good easter!! #thank u to everyone who inquired abt commissions i am surprised abt th amount of interest!! #when this batch is done i will open more. will probably b a regular thing :3 #i will now do exercise and have a bath i thinky #i need to make myself read this book...im so not use to horror anytime i read anything remotely unsettling im like oohoohohohmmhhmm n #dont read for like. 4 days #ive read like 200 pages in 10 days KSFBSBJ get a GRIP #anyway. good evening

[sinlizards]

CONGRATULAATIOOOOOONS !!~

#beatrice umineko #umineko #umineko when they cry #my art #fan art #undescribed #still on episode 5 but we are working thru o7 i just really like this beato fit and also her drunk off her ass #cant play much now cuz Moving and Work and Commissions and [collapses]

[astrolavas]

an emerald trio commission for @rileyclaw, featuring his au! hehe

#also commissions are now open again! RAHGHH 🦅🦅🦅 #the owl house #toh art #toh fanart #toh #hunter toh #gus porter #willow park #willow #gus #hunter #hunter noceda #hunter deamonne #toh hunter #commission #my art #fanart #emerald trio #also go wish him happy birthday it's his birthday

[floweroflaurelin]

Please undo what I’ve done, Lord. I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.

—

The Descent of Gideon Nav, inspired by the statue El descendimiento by Virginio Arias ✨ Prints are available here! ✨

#the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb fanart #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #griddlehark #kiriona gaia #gtn #gtn fanart #htn fanart #htn #floweroflaurelin art #worked on this a little bit at a time between commission stuff :D #now that HC s10 is out though I want my ‘between comm work’ painting to be something for that hehe so i finished this wip up to make space #genuinely beige is my favourite colour scheme to work with nobody does it like her #cw blood

[otakoma]

Minthara's such a wife, I love her.

#baldur's gate 3 #minthara #minthara baenre #she lives rent-free in my head #i love her so much #drew this a couple of months ago as a treat #didn't post it because didn't feel like it was finished #but now i thnk it's kinda fine #there's a ton of other stuff to work on #a bit tired of portraits and commissions

[baph0meat]

u should also be opting out whether ur an artist/writer or not. the stuff u post is not less vulnerable just bc u don't think of it as being something that will feed directly into the kind of art/prose generation that has been at the center of most of the discussions on this stuff, and u still deserve privacy and security -- however impossible that may be to attain on the current internet. u may talk to ur friends on here, talk abt ur life on here, some of us share selfies. u should feel as protective of that as anyone feels abt creative works. it matters

#was feeling sick earlier today thinking about. like. commissions i've done that are couple portraits or avatars based on selfies #even filtered thru my work like. thats somebody's face. #we live online. that's the way it is now. the traces of our lives are precious and important to me

[oooocleo]

ive done it..... angel choir singing behind me laying motionlessly on the pavement 👼👼👼

more slots will probably open for these soon (tho a bit less than this previous batch lol)

#my art #commissions #will be sending out all files tomorrow morning so i can become grub now #🫡

[mustlovesteve]

thanks so much to @toktopus-art for this awesome commission that she drew! based on a scene from my vamp!eddie steddie fic.

#steddie #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #not my art #there was only one bean bag chair................. #she'll be posting a bunch of commissions together later so she said i could share this one now!! #i'll reblog with a link and scene excerpt probably for those who already read it and didn't recognize the scene #i changed some details for the sake of having more striking visuals lol

[oobbbear]

I’m back on doll making so here’s a little sunny for the warmup :]c✨

His eyes weren’t originally planned to look like that but I umm messed that up so I added an eyelid to cover it now he has this smug face going on which I honestly like more than the plan hehehe

#my art #sundrop #fnaf sun #art doll #clay doll #I have superglue on my hands now I can’t get off :’) #note to self #change glue to a safer option #Oh also if anyone’s interested I might open art doll commissions during the summer #I’m getting used to the process #will make a poll post later on #:]✨ #guess who I’m gonna make next

[heckitall]

Same As It Never Will Be

Part 7 - (Part 8) - Part 9

_

not me drawing Renet's time scepter from memory ----

I CAN NOW UNVEIL THE COVER FOR ARC 2!!!! drawn (and helped direct SAINWB) by @hellishgayliath!! i literally love it so much

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #2003 tmnt #tmnt 03 #2k3 tmnt #rise donatello #rise leonardo #rise michaelangelo #rise raphael #donatello #2k3 donatello #sainwb #same as it never will be #heck draws #ayoooooo okay thats pretty much all the spoilers done now #NOW YOU ALL WILL SEE ALL MY DOODLES #and all my commissions i've been hoarding lmao #helli's cover went above and beyond what i asked for hgoeusgheughsoeughesg #i have such talented friends what the heck #also helli may be opening commissions soon ~ #you'd be remiss in not getting on that