Art Commissions

Back in 2010, I went to Ohayocon and met Leanne Peacey of Chi Studios who was doing quick chibi portraits. For $10 I got a kawaii picture of myself. This first purchase began a pattern of commissioning artists for my portrait.

I found an artist online who had posted that she was having some financial difficulties and was pushing for commissions. (I’ve lost Karen’s contact information.) I liked the style and commissioned for her to do a portrait of me. I was disappointed. Primarily, she did not deliver in a timely fashion. After my sending her the money she sent me a draft drawing and then I didn’t hear from her for months. I tried to send an email to her and it bounced and I had to track her down through another series of links. When she finally delivered, I was unsatisfied with both the pose and the style. It seemed significantly different from her other work on which I had based my decision to commission her and it wasn’t quite what I had hoped.



I was grumpy.

I did, however, cheer up significantly when I returned to Ohayocon and had Leanne do another chibi portrait of me. I like her work a lot.

The next year when I didn’t go to Ohayocon, I emailed her and commissioned her to do several portraits.


And then, after commissioning her to do portraits of some other people for me to give as gifts, I asked her to do a piece with Pike and Aimi Somerton. I gave her some references to use in drawing Aimi (Emma from the anime and manga “Emma: A Victorian Romance” and Roberta from “Black Lagoon”), adding that her left arm was mechanical, something like “The Terminator” but, of course, steampunked.

When she sent me the first sketches, I felt I needed to have her correct the arm because she had drawn Aimi’s right arm as mechanical. That was important to me. Also, she had drawn her with glasses. Now, in my initial concepts of the character I hadn’t considered glasses, and the period references I used didn’t have glasses, but both Emma and Roberta had glasses so it wasn’t surprising that Leanne drew glasses.

And it was better that way. If you are going to have a Japanese android battle maid, she better be meganekko.

In the final product, she had forgotten the glasses but when I saw her at Steampunk @ Gettysburg I had her add them back.

Last year, artist MeggieFox posted on the Steampunk Facebook page that she had lost her job and, like many others, I helped her out by commissioning a portrait. What she produced had some significant differences from the source photographs I had provided her. She drew me with a pocket silk that I’ve never worn, an arm garter that I’ve never had and a gun that I don’t own. And she drew me with a full beard.

My reaction was different from what I had three years before when Karen had not produced what I had expected.

Even though I created the persona of Vitruvius Pike, he was created as a dime novel character. In that perspective, he is not me, nor am I him. I am cosplaying a fictional character. It is as if I were dressing up as James West from the “Wild Wild West” TV show. So, when I commission an artist to do a portrait, it is not necessarily my portrait they are doing, it is a portrait of the character that I am cosplaying. And, because of that, I really don’t have a place to be overly critical should they not produce art to MY exact specifications. Would Robert Conrad be justified if someone’s James West artwork didn’t meet his expectations?

I also believe that once art is “released into the wild”, it no longer belongs to the artist. It is no longer the artist’s place to tell the beholder what it is their eye sees or how they interpret the art. No matter how much an artist puts into his art, he has no place telling me what it should mean to me. In this case, I am the artist releasing the Pike persona into the wild. If other artists reinterpret that art, who am I to tell them they are wrong?

I have matured in my attitudes about art and should apologize to Karen for being dissatisfied with her interpretation of my character. (I do, however, still hold her responsible for not following through with the commission like a professional, but that is a completely different matter.)

OK, these are not things that give absolute freedom. I mean, I am paying for the art so it should in some way be the art I am paying for. When Meaghan sent me the final art with numerous “errors”, I responding with the single comment that having drawn me with a full beard made me look like my father. It wasn’t meant as a criticism. There’s nothing wrong with looking like my father. It was presented as an observation. As it was digital art, it was easy for her to change it but I wouldn’t have groused if it wasn’t doable.

I am still on the lookout for artists that I can commission art from. I like supporting artists when I can. Or maybe I’m just that narcissistic.

I would like to find someone who could sketch out some story boards for a Vitruvius Pike movie trailer. I would like someone to do a few manga-style story pages.

In the meantime, art has moved slightly further outside my control. Based on a picture he took of me at Old West Fest last year, Brandon Batie did a photoshop painting of me.

Now, this brings up something that conflicts with my otherwise generous attitude about artistic interpretation. Friends have been telling me that because Brandon did not get a signed model release, it is unethical and perhaps illegal for him to make money off of my photograph. On the other hand, he’s not selling a photograph of me. He is selling a digital painting based on a photograph. How far do my rights as a subject extend?

My artistic “complaint” is that the angle makes it very clear that my nose is crooked.