Antemortem Arts | Fine Art & Custom Paintings

Commissions

Your Life, My Art

So, you want some art. But you don’t want the art you’ve found, you want art that’s just for you.

I can help you with that.

I’m also pretty good at gift giving. Why does this matter? Well, if you’ve got someone really special in your life and you want to give them the perfect awesome thing, we can create something unique for them together. And I promise to do the hard parts.

The Offerings:

• 24″x36″ oil painting on stretched canvas. Inspired by your life, and created by me. This one’s big enough to go over a couch, a mantelpiece, or fill a decent-sized chunk of wall with something you think is totally awesome. $1000, with free shipping.
• 18″x24″ oil painting on stretched canvas. Smaller, but still pretty awesome. $600, with free shipping.
• 9″x12″ oil painting on canvas board or art board. Small enough to brighten up your cubicle but big enough to make a pretty sweet gift. $300 with free shipping.
• 3″x3″ oil painting on either stretched canvas or canvas board, complete with tiny easel for display. $79, with free shipping.
• Want to be a cartoon? That’s got its own page, over here.

Does the thing that you love not quite fit into one of these categories? Contact me and we’ll talk. I’ve been known to take on other projects on a commission basis.

What are commissions, anyway?

Commissioned oil paintings are the result of a client (you) paying an artist (me) to paint something specific for them. It’s a collaborative process involving some back-and-forth, where we work together to create something that you (or the recipient, if it’s a gift) will really love.

You’ll get a completed, unframed canvas that’s all ready to go, in the painting styles seen here or here, with the subject of your choosing.

If you’d like to get a feel for my style, consider starting with a custom Moleskine or tiny painting.

So how does it work?

Well, to start with, you contact me — either by email, phone, or filling out the nifty form below. Then we talk about what it is you want.

Usually, it begins with a Thing. For Gretchen, her Thing was squid — she loves them, and she wanted something she could use as a centerpiece over her mantel that was uniquely hers. Then we talked about her other Things, and which ones wanted to be integrated. In her case, she made partial payment in completely awesome iridescent paints, so her entire painting has a subtly shiny feel to it, because she loves the shiny. Just not as much as she loves squid.

Your Thing might be dragons, or video games from the 1980s, or ninjas. Whatever your Thing is, that’s always a good starting point for us to discuss where you want to go next.

Is there anything you don’t do?

The main thing I don’t do is portraiture — of you, your girlfriend, your dog, your D&D character, or even Angelina Jolie. Portrait artists practice a very specialized craft, and I’m not ashamed to admit it’s not really my area of expertise. Let me tell you, though, if you google “pet portraits” you are definitely gonna find someone who will help you out there — it just won’t be me.

I also don’t want to infringe on copyright. How does this work if your Thing is, say, video games? Well, we’ll talk about ways to do something unique for you, like a placid landscape with Space Invader shaped clouds, a Tetris-like city, or perhaps ceci n’est pas un gateau. (And if you get that joke, you really do need to talk to me. I’m just sayin’.)

So what happens after we get an idea?

Generally, payment is in 2 parts, half at the start and half at the end before shipping. If you need to break that up more, we’ll talk. There’s also going to be a contract that spells out just exactly what you’re getting, when it’s due, and what the various milestones are. Once I’ve got your check in my hot little hands (or hot little Paypal account), I’ll start doing sketches, pulling research photos off the internet, and that sort of thing. There will be a flurry of emails, and possibly phone calls. I’ll paint some sweeping background colors onto a canvas. And then, well, then we’ll wait a week or two while that dries.

Good art does take time. Actually, expect 10-12 weeks, plus delivery time (this means if you live next door, you can have it as soon as it’s reasonably dry, but if you live in the Australian outback, add a couple of weeks onto that for UPS to find you). I have to let the paint dry between layers, and then dry really well before I send it off to you.

You’ll get emails with photos every week or so, and we’ll discuss the progress and if anything needs to be changed or taken out or resized — that poor squid went through a lot before we were happy with him!

I want you to feel, at the end, that you not only got your money’s worth but that you’ll be proud to display your new work of art. We’ll talk, as things go on, about the points where you need to speak up if you don’t like X or Y, too.

And then, eventually, you’ll have your very own oil painting. Cool, huh?

So who are the Right People for this?

Okay, I know you weren’t really going to ask that, but I’ll tell you anyway:

• You have a Thing you love, something you’d talk about for hours on end if you were allowed by your loved ones. Or, you are the loved one of the person with the Thing, and want them to continue loving you forever for finally understanding how awesome their Thing is and having it immortalized in paint.
• A bit geeky or nerdy, especially around your Thing. It’s okay, you’re among friends here.
• Someone who likes art, and wants to support small artists.
• Someone who likes my art, and thinks my style will work well with their Thing.
• Not someone who wants a pet portrait, family portrait, or painting of Lady Gaga’s hoohoo (yes, I said hoohoo. Live with it).
• Not someone who just wants to match their couch, unless the couch is one of your Things. I’m not saying it’s going to clash, just that the couch-matching shouldn’t be the point of it. Ikea is a lot cheaper, if that’s what you’re after.

What if I don’t like it?

We’ll work on it. There’ll be a whole lot of opportunities during the process for you to ask for changes, though there is a point past which certain kinds of changes will delay the process and possibly incur a bit of a fee. More the former than the latter, really. In the end, I’m going to have to rely on you to speak up if you don’t like the direction things are going so we can work together to get them back on track.

I mean, it’d suck to immortalize your Thing, only to find you didn’t like it after all.

All right, I’m curious. What do I do now?

Now you get in touch with me! You can use one of the methods on the contact page, or just fill out this awesomely useful form below: