To any commissioners, if the payment says 'pending' don't worry about it, it's an issue on my end. My bank was recently bought out and even though I linked my new debit card, I didn't know I needed to get the new account info too. So I'll have to get that sorted, hopefully tomorrow or Monday, but know your payments all went through and I'll be working on everything while I get my banking info updated!

Around 4PM tomorrow I'll start taking commissions for March! You'll see the banner with a few changes. Besides no more hyper, I'm also going to lower my prices on sketches, and I'll be back to 12 slots. I barely made it in decent time for February and didn't even fill all my stuff, so I think I'll stick to fewer slots so I don't get overwhelmed for now. Good luck to anyone interested!

I said all this on Twitter last night in a slight meltdown and I think it needs to be said here, but before I begin this thread, this isn't a callout post to any of my current or previous commissioners. This isn't directed at anyone, but I need to make my feelings heard. Next time I open commissions, I'm adding Hyper to the things I will not draw.

People who know me already know I'm not a huge fan of hyper, nothing against those who like it, it just isn't really my thing. But all of my current muscle commissions are hyper and I'm being pushed to draw at sizes I'm not entirely comfortable or confident drawing. Frankly I'm fine if someone wants a huge size and I give it my all, and they tell me it's fine, but the trend of 'I need to be THE BIGGEST' around and dreading hearing "make him BIGGER' from every note has been weighing down on me. I'm constantly being asked to draw so much BIGGER it's taking time from other commissioners. Thing is I don't mind drawing big guys and I don't even mind drawing gigantic dicks. But being pushed and feeling like I'm floundering with no idea what I'm doing for a community I can't put my head into to even THINK how it's not good enough is too much. I'm not into hyper, it doesn't turn me on, so I literally cannot get into the headspace to do better, but that's what's being asked of me and it's been giving me a crisis for months now. I've been feeling more and more that I'm not doing a good enough job because I'm either not satisfying a commissioner or not satisfying myself and I just can't do it anymore.

I'm not saying this to guilt any of the current commissioners, this has been a long time coming, but I need to throw in the towel and admit if I want to keep drawing freelance I can't do this, or the weight of all that BIGGER is going to bring me down. I told current commissioners I'd do their pictures and I'm not going to rescind on any pictures I already agreed on. However going forward, I'm not going to draw any more hyper except under my own terms.

To be honest it scares me! Because I know bara and hyper kind of go hand in hand, and I'm afraid of how much business I'm loosing, especially with me moving out on my own soon and trying to make this my career. But I need to trust things will turn out well and hope people will respect my limits. If not, I wish you luck finding business elsewhere.

For anyone waiting, commissions will reopen on Wednesday the 5th. Prices will be the same, but I'm making new adjustments to prepare for a big move out in June. I'm going to start allowing multiple characters in pics for an added charge, and I'm finally adding a Sketch option at $50 plus $25 for additional characters. I'm also going to increase my slots to 5 sketches and 15 paintings to see how that goes. I don't want to raise my prices, but Orlando is an expensive place to live in, so I'll see how I handle this workload and if it's too much I'll do more restructuring.

I just heard my grandma passed away last night. I'm okay, but I'll be going out of state to the funeral to support my mom. No word on arrangements yet, and I'll be working to get some comms done before I go and it should only be for a couple days. Thanks for understanding.

I wrote about this on Twitter, but I've decided to take a break in January to finish a few personal projects. I have a lot of WIPs in my folders gathering dust and I've kept going back to them, so I'd like to take a generally slow month to focus on my own art. That said, I do have 4 slots still open if anyone was waiting for a commish. Once 2020 rolls around I'll be locking comms, so this is the last chance for anyone interested who needs a pic soon!

Many know the whole reason I started doing commissions regularly was so I could save enough to visit  aether718 and  renard_defleureax for a few days, so as the title says I'll be gone doing fun Florida stuff at this time. I'll be bringing my new tablet and doing some work on comms in the off-time, not only to stay productive but to help break the new equipment in. But understand progress will be slow and I likely won't check in often if anyone needs to message me. Thanks for your patience!

After almost exactly 8 years, my old Bamboo tablet finally kicked the bucket. I'm going to try finding a new one tomorrow, but if not then sadly comms will be delayed until a new one comes in next week. Just a warning to all my commissioners, but despite this I believe I'll have everyone's stuff done this month.

So a bit of a rant incoming, not because I'm angry but because there's been a lot of questions, mostly about how long people's commissions are going to take. I've explained in the past that all my art is done on a single layer. One. Uno. Single. That's why I call them paintings, I can't go and tweak different layers to fix things, it's all painted and cleaned up on a single layer. Obviously this is what sets my stuff apart, but it means my art takes longer because I have to paint each stroke individually instead of using a smudge tool or gradients. Point is, my stuff takes time.

I've admitted and apologized for how long my art used to take in the past. I was in college full-time and had a full-time job, and art was difficult for me due to projects and just how tired I was. People used to wait for months and I'm not proud of it because I think it gave me a rep for being slow. And I am a slow artist. Even now that I'm graduated and working on building a business from home, I still take my time with my art so it looks right to me. But I don't appreciate being constantly asked about how long a commission is going to take. I know you're waiting, so are 10 or so other commissioners at a time. The simple fact is with my process it can take anywhere from a couple weeks to two months to clean up your commission, especially if you (or another client) have a lot of detail that needs to be rendered. I'm more than happy to provide updates and keep communication open, but I don't enjoy being spoken to condescendingly or pestered every few days for an update. I've finished 11 paintings for people in just about two months (not including the 4 I've gotten final approval on and will be posted in a batch of 6 sometime this week hopefully), which is MUCH BETTER than my old turnout, but somehow this has made people even less patient and it's begun to stress me out.

I'm sure part of this is compounded by my posting personal art in-between batches, but please keep in mind often those paintings are done over a couple months too. My Twitter is full of sketches I'd like to color someday, and sometimes the muse strikes and I'll decide today's the day I color them. I've made it a point to work on personal projects alongside commissions in order to combat burnout, which was a huge factor in my struggle with commissions during college. Just because I decide to draw my OC's doesn't mean I'm ignoring commissions, I'm simply working on multiple images at the same time; Mine, yours, and the 10 other commissions in my queue all being worked on in tandem.

To that end I've updated my commission rules with a general timeframe for each step, as well as adding a Refund amount for which step the drawing is in if the commissioner decides they are no longer interested in my work. I've also updated a few areas on what I will and will not draw, as well as a few charges because of certain incidents I've experienced lately.

I hope you all can understand, but if you wanna have a go at me in the comments you're welcome to as well. This was just to clear some things up and get this off my chest, and hopefully help people understand my processes in the future.

Exactly as the title says. I've gotten a few comments about how abruptly I tend to open Comms, so I'm trying to give those interested a bit more of a heads-up. I'll be opening 6 new slots, 3 on FA and 3 on Twitter tomorrow at 3PM EST. Good luck to anyone interested!

So now that my last batch of commissions are finished, I think it's time I addressed this: I will not be taking commissions anymore, at least not for a long time. I've had several people send in notes about it and I've told them all the same thing, that I've been mulling it over and considering, and in the end I am simply not at a point, and have not *been* at the point, where I can keep drawing for people on top of everything else.

I'll be completely honest, this last batch was my worst yet. They look good imo, I wouldn't have shown them to everyone if I thought they were sub-par, but my semester in Italy was simply too taxing and paintings took longer than I personally consider acceptable. It was fully my fault for not anticipating how grueling the courses would be. On Twitter and everywhere else I was putting up a front that it was just a dream, and it kind of was, I mean I got to live in Florence for 4 months. But it was also taxing, I hardly had any free time due to my courses, and near the end I actually had a breakdown.

Now that I'm back in the states I am fully committed to setting up my business. Everyone who knows me knows that fashion and dressmaking is my passion, art has always been just my way of unwinding and relaxing when I just got tired of messing with yards of fabric. I don't think it's fair to keep charging for something that my heart isn't completely in. I love painting, I want to improve, but it's never going to be as central to my life as my sewing, and I need to stop using art as a crutch to provide for myself.

Along with my poor time management, there was a lot of drama a couple months ago about Jailbird's commissions and how they had people waiting for years. Now I would never allow myself to get that bad, and I would never accept new commissions until my current batch was completed. But there were several posts about 'warning signs' when commissioning, about policies to look out for. I'm going to be honest, a lot of my policies when I took comms were to protect myself because I used to be taken advantage of on DA years ago. Not only that but I think most of my past commissioners will tell you I do my best to communicate, and whenever they're curious about how their painting is going, I'm always willing to send a WIP. But the incident with Jailbird and certain comments made just made me feel like I was still doing things wrong.

Ultimately I need to be honest with everyone and myself. I am not at a point where I can keep taking commissions. I am starting a business, I have never been adept at managing my time or schedule and I need to work on that, and even though I'm graduated now there's just too much I'm trying to do to realistically add commissions on top of the pile. I'm seriously grateful to everyone who's supported me and to all my clients who were more patient with me than I deserve, and I hope you all can understand. I will still be drawing and making personal sketches, but they will be at my own pace.

https://twitter.com/brosb4does

Like, a metric fuckton more active. A lot of stress doodles and shitposts while I avoid my responsibilities.

This is also in case anyone needs to get a hold of me, because I hardly check FA except one every couple days, at least recently. Hopefully I can be more active after the holidays.

No, not a sarcastic question. I genuinely want to know what kind of art you would be willing to buy.

Here's the sitch: I'm in Florence until December. I wanna do a really good Ezio cosplay. I figure I need around $500, and art is my only income because students aren't allowed to get jobs in Italy, at least not foreign ones.

I honestly enjoy doing adoptables a lot. I like trying to create something unique and interesting, and I like the thought that someone can buy them off my hands to give them more love than I would, since I tend to go long stretches without drawing my oc's.

But what do you guys want? Would you be interested if I re-opened commissions and did full-body colored pics again? Or something more artistic like the paintings I did for Rip? Or do you just want small sketches? Or more adoptables? I actually have a few more I'm working on right now, but I want to really see what you guys are interested in buying from me.

So as you guys saw, I finished up the last of my commissions. It's been hectic trying to get my Visa, passport, and everything sorted out but I'm happy to announce in a little over a month I'll be in Florence, Italy! Although I'm there to study, it'll be four months where I can't do any serious sewing outside of class or cosplay stuff. So I'd like to focus on art and trying to draw regularly to keep a semi-steady income. I've saved up quite a bit thanks to commissioners and working 2 jobs, but still a little extra to take on trips during Fall vacation would be nice, so here are my plans so far:

A Huge YCH pic, I'm talking a series of 6-7 panels worked from warmups I did while sketching. I'll fix them up a bit, but I think the theme I got going for it is a body-type switch where a fat guy becomes buff and vice versa. Still debating this one but I've got most of the rough sketches done, so I figure why not. It would naturally be in color, and I'm down to talk other minor changes with the winners if it goes well.

Adoptables: I also made a few new characters while sketches: A buff Pomeranian, a buff Horseshoe Crab, and a fat Moth. I got the sketches on Twitter already, but I'm planning of making a colored ref sheet so I can put them up for adoption. If it goes well maybe I'll do more?

I'm also going to offer more expensive, Artistic Commissions. These aren't going to be fetish material, if you guys check my Twitter you'll see I really want to get back into doing some serious paintings where I can just unwind and have fun with poses and forms, colors, compositions, etc. That's not to say I won't draw muscular/fat characters, I just want these to have a focus on the artistry than on getting your rocks off, y'know?

IDK, what do you guys think/ Would anyone be interested in stuff like this?

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/26514522/

Long story short I need my passport within the next week and money is tight, so I'm taking an additional 5 sketch commissions. Please be Paypal ready, with Spring Break next week I'm hoping to get most of the rough sketches for these finished in the coming week.

https://twitter.com/brosb4does

I should be in bed but I'm in a Mood so hey I might post doodles here

I try not to be nosy with people's business, so when dealing with people's payments yesterday I didn't ask for names. Unfortunately that means in the initial surge of requests I got a bit overwhelmed and didn't realize someone's payment didn't go through. I have five people who said they've paid, but only four recent payments. If you guys could send me a note telling me what the name on your payment was so I can confirm there wasn't an issue, I would really appreciate it and IO promise I'll be more organized and on top of things next time.

I just finished the last of my current sketches, so tomorrow I'll open slots for the next batch. Once again it'll be 10 slots, first come first serve so keep an eye out. ^^

As you guys saw, I've begun uploading the first finished sketches from this batch. I've been in contact and been updating the progress on my page for everyone's, and if things go well I should have most of these done by Sunday/Monday when I have time off. I didn't intend for them to take this long, but everyone should get their pics soon. ^^

So, good news, as part of my department's study abroad program I can finish my degree in Europe, which is huge because I'd get exposed to the real fashion capitals of the world. Downside is I need to start saving up, so I've been thinking of taking commissions again.

Let's be clear, I absolutely don't have the time to do fully colored, shaded, painted pieces. Besides homework and sewing for actual fashion degree things and a job, commissions stress me out. Last time I disappointed people and took ages and because I couldn't tell certain people "I can't draw that" my work suffered or I had to give a refund.

This time I just want to do tiny sketches, probably like $15, uncolored and unfinished but in enough of a polished state where I would normally begin painting over them. Something like the bottom pic here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/17776867/ They'll be much more standardized, i.e. everyone gets a full body shot, whatever size, no special effects or clothes or activities, I'll pick the pose I think will work because a lot of the 'I can't deliver' problems I had were because people don't get that as size increases mobility decreases and I can't put a hyper bodybuilder into a complicated yoga pose.

I don't know, would anyone be interested in that? If I opened about 10 slots would that be fair? Really I just want these to be quick, 2 hour things I can get done when I need a break from sewing that way I can open them again soon-ish and put away the money for the semester abroad and not stress about. Would anyone pay for that?

Or does anyone else have to physically stop themselves from drawing to resist using the smudge tool for shading. I know it's 'lazy', but? I'm also tired of working on the picture so?