Last Saturday I finally opened commissions and sent out the announcement email to my waitlist. Next day I sent out my first invoice and got paid. That marked the end of the preparation and overthinking phase that I’ve been stuck in for months. That’s when it hit me “Wait… now I actually have to deliver.”
Concept interest
What surprised me is that I was more excited about starting this project than my recent sketches and studies. I thought that I just can’t be as invested into a paid project as I am in my own personal projects. Turns out it’s not that simple. What really changes things is concept interest.
For example, the last study I made took me a whole week of sitting down to draw every day. I could’ve finished it in a day, but instead I kept switching to something else every hour out of boredom. I was drawing it because I thought I had to, not because I was actually interested in the idea.
I used to have the same struggle with commissions. I didn’t want to upset my friends, so I accepted any projects that they wanted to commission me for. I wasn’t really interested in most of those, but grinded through them anyway. I later figured out that doing this leads to burnout. That only reinforced my false belief that professional work had to feel like a chore.
Now, I use a formal process (intake form, terms of service) that acts as a filter. This structure protects my creative energy by letting me commit only to the projects that I actually want to work on. Otherwise, I’d be doing a disservice to the clients and to myself.
Transactional drawing
External motivation destroys enjoyment because it puts you into a transactional mindset. In this state the drawing is just something you exchange for a reward. It’s hard to reach the flow state this way. If the project only exists to go viral, you inevitably focus more on the result and can’t enjoy the actual process.
This is why the studies I post on Twitter sometimes feel boring to make. While commissions also have external rewards like money and portfolio building, the difference is that now I curate them so that every time I start a new Photoshop project, I can’t help but forget about the world around me and focus on the work.
