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Thanks Michele. I'd like to have a portrait rep - in fact, over the years I've sent several email inquiries and followed up with snail mail examples to several agencies. To date, unfortunately, I've yet to be granted the courtesy of even a single reply from any of them. I know I am not pushy enough to get noticed and I probably gave up too easily.
Good advice Carlos. I can well relate to those lessons learned about protecting yourself. I can imagine how violated you must have felt after seeing a rip off of your idea. How vile of them.
Sorry for the rant that is about to follow about how I wasted a year with an artist's worst nightmare for a client. A guy from Mexico City contacted me about 2 years ago to make a bust of a famous person. I gave him a quote (at the time my prices were quite low) and he agreed to it. At the time, I also only asked for a small refundable deposit with the rest upon approval of the clay model. I waited for a deposit that never came until 6 months later he contacted me and said he was still interested. I stuck to my same quoted price and he did send a small deposit to get started.
I modeled the bust for 3 months, and when I asked him for approval to mold it, he was thrilled with it, but had a few "minor" changes. The onslaught of changes continued for 5 more months as I cheerfully completed each change request and all the while he kept saying he would send payment "soon" and going on an on about how much he loved it. During this time, he also promised I would do 5 other busts for him, plus he asked me to submit a formal quote to sculpt 9 lifesize bronze busts for one of his business associates. I submitted the bid and he said they had agreed to my price and terms and would begin the project in January 06 when funds for the project were released.
As you can imagine, I was pretty ecstatic about the whole thing, thinking I had enough work to keep busy with for over a year. In anticipation of doing that big project, I actually turned down legitimate work.
Well, to make a long story short, the guy ended up falling off the face of the earth and no other projects ever materialized (although they were never cancelled) and the original bust went unpaid for after spending well over 1000 hours on it.
Finally, after no word in 4 months I wrote to him and told him that I was forced to find another buyer since he had never sent payment after numerous requests. He finally did reply. No explanation, but just a request to please return his deposit - plus he wanted me to send HIM an extra $350 to compensate him for the time he spent working with me on HIS project. What nerve. I think I will only send him back his deposit minus my material expenses which I feel I have the right to be compensated for. I have no idea what his motives were for lying to me and making false promises for a full year.
To make matters worse, it only took me about a week to find another collector who offered a good price for it. I promised the bust to this second buyer, but the problem is that he's been telling me every other week that he promises to send payment next week. This has been going on for 3 months now.
Anyway, life lessons learned are many. First, always make that deposit non-refundable to keep clients from taking your time and then defaulting on an agreement. Second, limit the amount of rework that you will agree to within reason and charge extra for any that goes above and beyond reason (may be hard to determine where to draw the line). Third, never schedule time for a project until you have confirmed with the source that you indeed to have the commission.
I'm sure there are more lessons to be learned from that experience, but one thing I'm glad of is that I have a reliable job and am not dependent on my art to get my bills paid. I am tempted to stop accepting commissions all together and only sculpt things that I want to make and just enjoy my hobby.
At any rate, it all goes back to the idea of having a portrait rep - that would go a long way towards weeding out the nutballs.
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