Just read an exchange in an artist's journal between them and a dopey 'expert' commissioner. It was painful to wade through, but it did remind me of a decision I made awhile back.

I don't want to commission an artist again by paying everything up front. Half up front, half on delivery of the finished piece is reasonable from my point of view.

I've been burned by artists before too many times to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. I haven't commissioned much art in my time with furrydom, and yet I'm out roughly 300 dollars from the ones who never delivered.

I realize that this will bar me from a large number of artists who've established clear guidelines on the commission process. I accept that, and won't try to argue the matter with them; I'll just go elsewhere.

(This only concerns commissions that cost more than fifty dollars, by the way. Splitting the payment for a conbadge would be pretty silly.)

I certainly don't want to offend anyone with this post, but I wanted the few artists who might read it to see the perspective of a commissioner who has been mistreated by artists to the point of having to make a policy like this. Is it a small percentage of the whole who cheat and lie to their customers? Yes. That doesn't make a small measure of safety unreasonable.