A lot of things have changed in the past 2 years since I posted my last journal jotting down my ideas on how to effectively take commissions. Turns out, one of the best solutions to the problems I was originally facing is just- don't do commissions.

I have a job now that's not related to art, and keeps me comfortable to the point where I don't feel the need to take commissions or do YCH's anymore. That's why most of my recent art has been gifts, requests, or personal stuff. But I'm starting to see the main problems with this approach:

• I enjoy drawing people's characters, particularly characters I see getting a lot of commissions and recognize. With no commissions, I never attract these people because they're constantly scanning for open coms slots.
• It puts a lot of effort on my part to reach out and contact people I want to draw for or trade with, and with my anxiety that just means I rarely ever do. So artist's characters and random characters I find and like are usually off the table too.
• Drawing solo art of my chars when I can't find anyone else is boring me to death

I tried to solve this by posting a request thread, but understandably it doesn't attract enough of what I'm looking for (I know I don't like posting my refs in request threads personally). Though I do find some cute inspiration there at times. Now I'm stuck with this new problem and have to think of a solution. I came up with a couple below and I wanted some opinions on them:

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1. Open commissions anyway
I'd temporarily open cheap commissions as a way to get easy inspiration both for characters and for ideas. Opening commissions offloads the work onto the commissioner to both 'approach' me and provide the idea, and unlike public request threads commissioners would be more likely to submit ideas in private (I think). By submitting specific ideas, I wouldn't be as worried about 'blanket consent' like the request thread gives, and I can get back to drawing harder stuff.

I'd open for a couple days to let everyone submit the ideas and characters, then I'd close them. The price will be low enough to hopefully not be a problem for many like my YCHs, but high enough to prevent it from getting overloaded. Then, I'd close them, pick up to 5 to keep the line short, and let everyone know the chosen have been contacted. This lets the others know their idea wasn't picked and prevents them from being in limbo so they can go elsewhere or stash it for next time.

After I'm done with that batch, repeat. Hopefully with only a couple pics at a time, I can repeat this every month or two and people will have more chances.


2. Figure out a way to have private requests again.
I used to have a request page on my old website, but I have since redesigned the entire site from scratch and lost them all. I used to have a second request site after that, but then Twitter's API went paid and I could no longer authenticate who you were, so that got scrapped too.

One solution is I could make the request page again on the new site, a private area you can upload refs and ideas and I can draw from. Unfortunately that means you won't know if I plan on doing your idea, or if it's doomed and you should move on.

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Anyway I hope I can fix my art machine a bit because sitting around after work and not knowing who or what to draw is starting to wear on me. Any ideas appreciated.