Your critiques of a Chaykin Commission, please 2 2

[John E.]

I'm beating a dead horse here, but disappointment is the risk you take with commissions and sketches; that's why I rather not do them or not pay more than $50 for them. Now I understand that Chaykin may never draw and publish Phantom Stranger artwork so you did what you had to do; but, who knows? Maybe he will one day. Buy it, then forget about this commission or sell it. 

I remember reading in an another "commission" thread or in the "newbie advice" thread that throwing more money at an artist doesn't necessarily get you better art. There you go; you are not in solitary company. 

My take is the following: catch Chaykin at a convention and ask him to redo the hat on the spot. Bring a photo reference. I don't think that would be a big deal. Second, hiring a digital artist to clean it up sounds like a good idea to me. Third, knowing that paste-ups is the way Chaykin works makes it all that much cooler to me (but I get how visual wasn't executed to your liking). Fourth, the female (Tala?) is the centerpiece and I wouldn't even pay attention to PS. And lastly, my biggest point, put it away in your portfolio for long while--eventually your strong negative feeling will wane and you'll be able to look at this piece more objectively and not mind it as much. It's happened to me. 

[Brian Peck]

3 minutes ago, J.Sid said:

He's not producing a comic book page for a publisher to use in a book. This is not intended to be scanned/cleaned up/colored and printed. It's a commission for an art collector who is paying much more than his typical page rate.

 

But I have seen commissions which have whiteout in them.

[J.Sid]

So the next question is: 

Would you rather have the artist give you the commission with the f**ked up foot? 

Or have a screwy looking paste-up covering the foot?

 

 

[J.Sid]

11 minutes ago, Brian Peck said:

But I have seen commissions which have whiteout in them.

I guess it would depend on how glaring the whiteout is. In my opinion the Chaykin piece crossed the line and was an unprofessional deliverable as far as commissions go.

 

[The Voord]

5 hours ago, J.Sid said:

So the next question is: 

Would you rather have the artist give you the commission with the f**ked up foot? 

Or have a screwy looking paste-up covering the foot?

 

 

Or PS with or without the designer stubble?

[Rick2you2]

10 hours ago, Brian Peck said:

While I understand your issues with the final commission I think it turned out very well. You seem to have a specific idea of what the finished pieces was to be and Chaykin met it. Its the minor editing and changes that you have issues with . For me it seems like a typical published project for him, he made some minor changes after he had drawn it and his using paste ups over whiteout is what is distracting for you. I do agree I don't think Howard will want to revisit this commission. I do know Mitch has sold a few pieces that were rejected commissions so you do have that option. Like many have said commissions can be a shoot. Getting 90% of your expectations I think he pretty good.

I probably should not have said 90% because it mis-states the impression it made. You can be 99% healthy, and still die from colon cancer.

The 90% figure is roughly the area of the picture which is good to great. But every time I look at it, I see a jawline which my girlfriend said looks like Frankenstein, and a block of black on the hat which pulls my eyes away from the  knockout Tala image. 

[Rick2you2]

Let me try this question another way. 

If Howard agreed to modify the image, what could be done and how long (roughly) could it take him?

I could be way off base, but I should think that redoing the head and hat shouldn't take more than an hour or two. He also has assistants who could do the physical work of pasting and removing. If I offered to pay shipping both ways, why wouldn't that be a reasonable approach?

 

 

 

[Rick2you2]

7 hours ago, Jay Olie Espy said:

Now I understand that Chaykin may never draw and publish Phantom Stranger artwork so you did what you had to do; but, who knows? Maybe he will one day. Buy it, then forget about this commission or sell it. 

FYI, one of the fun parts to collecting a character is to compare different artistic styles to see how the different artists address the same subject matter. Compare Howard's work to the "classic" PS/Tala, below (it's the cover of an old fanzine, not a commission):

[Rick2you2]

10 hours ago, Shemp said:

Now you're being too picky.

Don't even think about it for a couple of weeks and then look at it again.

I think what happened is that he originally positioned the head the way he had on the layout and then realized he couldn't get the facial expression he wanted. So, he turned the head ever so slightly to get that expression, but the jawline was now fractionally off which makes it appear over-sized. If you look closely, the chin is supporting an image facing slightly left, but with the paste-up, it faces slightly right. 

[ESeffinga]

I started to post a response the other day, decided against it. Then stewed on it a bit, came back, saw the thread had doubled in length and have just read all the various comments.

The following is simply my personal take on commissioning, and also what I see in this instance.

Personally I can see this through a lot of different perspectives, and I think more or less everyone has good points throughout. Ultimately at the end of the day, finding a resolution that satisfies this group is irrelevant though. What matters is finding a resolution that satisfies yourself. Whether that resolution happens internally, or in collaboration with Howard is between you both. The rest of us have no real dog in this hunt. When the computer is off at night, it’s you and your piece.

I’ve not seen anyone mention it yet, but from what I can see in the posted photos, it looks to me like the “pasteups” are on artist’s white tape. Not on art board that was glued on. Maybe my observation is wrong in that, but that’d probably bother me if for no other reason that that artist’s tape (if it’s the stuff I’m thinking of) is crazy aggressive and not terribly conservation friendly in the long term. It wouldn’t surprise me to see  piece of that tape grow a yellow halo stain  around it over the next 15-25 years. Again, this is just if it is what it appear to me to be (I see the jagged edges on either end and I think the serrated edge of a tape dispenser.

Now if that is also part of Howard’s working process, and widely known, well then that’s just how that guy creates work, and even though it’s not ideal, a guy’s working method is his working method. Why hire a guy who cuts trees up with chainsaws to come cut a tree down in your yard and tell him he can only use an axe?

However, if it’s not widely known that his originals have passovers, etc, and there are no other examples of that cropping up in his commission work, then yeah, I could see saying something to him about it. If no other way than just saying hey, I got in the piece and was surprised to see you taped over the foot and drew on the tape. See what he says.

Anyhow, aside from my own archival hangup regarding the tape…

My first blush response is, the best reason to commission an artist is because you love their work in general, and you ant to see how they will interpret a visual. And the best results come from letting them be the artist they are, using the methods that best yield the result they want.

Getting to the happy place is a matter of knowing who you are commissioning and what you are asking them to do, from THEIR perspective.

Every artist is different, and some are very adept and open to being a trained monkey/hired gun, doing tricks for a customer for a buck. If I ask someone to draw a super specific scenario (not talking recreations here, but a totally new scene)… it leaves little for the artist to actually be an artist on. When I read briefs by certain folks about what they are asking for, it really sounds like they have a pre-defined visual in mind. To me, this is the worst possible way to commission a piece of art

You can give an artist a specific scenario with a checklist of demands that need to be met, and they will work at it until it is what you were intending it to be. And in my opinion they tend to be the artist’s least good work. Creation by committee tends to yield the most static boring results.

The other approach is to be in love with an artist’s work, give an artist a general idea and let them run with it in their own way. I personally feel this yields the very best commissions, because the artist is free to create. They are not trying to reproduce some specific visual I may have in my head, but to create a new visual based on a very loose idea or even just a suggestion of a character, etc… it allows them to be who they are and do what they do. Which is generally why I like them in the first place.

IMO telling an artist you don;t like they way they have drawn this part or that part, is questioning that artist’s voice. Making art is all about making choices. SOM are good, and some are bad. This is where the crapshoot of commissions comes in. The same as a musician making a spontaneous solo up on the spot, or an athlete, all can have a good or bad day. You don’t way, you didn’t knock it out of the park today, so I’m not going to pay you. They get paid to do the best they can on the day they are creating. That’s it.

So maybe Chaikin had a good game going (the female figure), and then hit a bad run on PS or something? I can’t say.

Personally I don’t have a big issue with PS, his hat, etc. To me it all looks stylized a certain way. you may not like the way Howard chose those stylizations (not talking about the pasteups so much as the linework and shadow fills, but those were his artistic choices. As for the pasteups (tapeups) if I’m honest, i can’t recall seeing someone do that before on commissions. Published work, sure, but most folks know commissions are going on the wall, and tend to try and deliver a more “expected” final finished product. But then as a fan of weird art processes, to me it’s just quirky and wouldn’t personally be a deal killer. I’d be surprised, but possibly amused. BUT I can clearly see where others wouldn’t be so accepting of it, or would even be downright livid. I could totally understand it. But that’s neither here nor there.

Some folks are saying let it sit for weeks and then see if it’s an issue later when seen fresh. I think that’s a different kind of mistake. If I’m saying something to an artist, I’m saying it on the day it arrives. Saying it 3 weeks later makes it seem like buyers remorse. Asking about it now at least alerts him to your disappointment about it’s condition on arrival.

But the thing is, if it’s me, I know commissions are a shoot. I went though years of that stuff, and I can say 2 month turnaround is pretty phenomenal for a “name” artist. There are a great many such artists that owe people for years (decades) before getting around to finishing work. Not that that is OK or should be accepted as the norm, but let’s just say it comes with the territory.

So you may think of Howard having cut corners on the piece in a rush to beat your deadline of before his trip, and he might see it as having bent over backwards to conscientiously get you your piece before he left, knowing that sitting on it might have meant many more months of waiting for you. Looking at the female fig, I think it’s clear it wasn’t a rush job. Depending on how Howard does work these days, he might not have given the pasteup bits (I still think it’s tape) a second thought.  It might be as natural as some artists whipping out the whiteout bottle, or the white gouache and brush.

I can say, going in making demands isn’t the way I’d tackle it. I’d just let him know what you love and what you found surprising, or a bit off. If it’s the paste overs, he may at least understand if he hears where you are coming from. The hat… to me that’s just you being nitpick about what kind of hat you wanted him to draw and how he should have drawn it. Every artist interprets characters differently. You start telling him he doesn’t know how to draw certain things, and it increases chances of the defenses going way up.

If you talk to him about the paste over stuff and he sounds like he wants to fix it for you (some artists really want commissioners to be happy and will go the extra mile for them), then you chat about the and maybe ask about the choice of filling the hat with shadow. maybe he had a reason for it? Or maybe he reassesses it and decides he wants to make it right?

Either way you gotta feel him out and see if he gets super defensive. In that instance, some artists might way send it back for a refund, just to get rid of someone they see as being a needy pain in the butt. Is that justified? Some would say never. Me… like I said, I’ve seen some things. Some folks are just not possible to please, because again, they have very clear preconceived ideas of what a (insert artist name here) piece would look like if they drew a very specific thing.

And in closing, when OP ran his idea past him, and Howard said he didn’t think he could pull off the face he wanted, that was the first red flag. Telling him to do his best is a pass to do exactly that. With all of it. So if I hunan idea past someone and they aren’t super excited right off the bat, I either change it up until we hit on something we are both excited about, or I don’t move forward at all. I definitely don’t ask them to proceed knowing they were uncomfortable with my request.

 That’s just my .02¢.
-e.

[Rick2you2]

10 hours ago, SquareChaos said:

Starting this thread at 90% happy is just plain silly. I mean... lets just cut to the chase, 90% happy  means that you're happy with the commission. I begin to wonder what the point was.

You got it "right" earlier. Note my comment, above, on the colon cancer analogy. Being 99% healthy won't do you much good if the other 1% is fatal.

I'm also thinking what I want to do. Tentatively, tell him:

(a) that I am not happy with the head (jawline or hat) or the foot trim; 

(b) I would estimate the re-work should take an hour or so (his assistants can do the paste and remove);

(c) offering to pay shipping both ways, and

(d) if he feels I am asking him to perform extra work, offering to pay for it.

If he feels it cannot be properly fixed, tell me that. 

Also, he deserves to be complemented on Tala, big time, and I like a lot of the other parts. 

I do not agree with a number of comments suggesting I should just put it away and look at it in the future. Things like this must be addressed promptly or they never get addressed at all. 

Thoughts?

 

[Rick2you2]

 

1 hour ago, ESeffinga said:

I started to post a response the other day, decided against it. Then stewed on it a bit, came back, saw the thread had doubled in length and have just read all the various comments.

The following is simply my personal take on commissioning, and also what I see in this instance.

Personally I can see this through a lot of different perspectives, and I think more or less everyone has good points throughout. Ultimately at the end of the day, finding a resolution that satisfies this group is irrelevant though. What matters is finding a resolution that satisfies yourself. Whether that resolution happens internally, or in collaboration with Howard is between you both. The rest of us have no real dog in this hunt. When the computer is off at night, it’s you and your piece.

I’ve not seen anyone mention it yet, but from what I can see in the posted photos, it looks to me like the “pasteups” are on artist’s white tape. Not on art board that was glued on. Maybe my observation is wrong in that, but that’d probably bother me if for no other reason that that artist’s tape (if it’s the stuff I’m thinking of) is crazy aggressive and not terribly conservation friendly in the long term. It wouldn’t surprise me to see  piece of that tape grow a yellow halo stain  around it over the next 15-25 years. Again, this is just if it is what it appear to me to be (I see the jagged edges on either end and I think the serrated edge of a tape dispenser.

Now if that is also part of Howard’s working process, and widely known, well then that’s just how that guy creates work, and even though it’s not ideal, a guy’s working method is his working method. Why hire a guy who cuts trees up with chainsaws to come cut a tree down in your yard and tell him he can only use an axe?

However, if it’s not widely known that his originals have passovers, etc, and there are no other examples of that cropping up in his commission work, then yeah, I could see saying something to him about it. If no other way than just saying hey, I got in the piece and was surprised to see you taped over the foot and drew on the tape. See what he says.

Anyhow, aside from my own archival hangup regarding the tape…

My first blush response is, the best reason to commission an artist is because you love their work in general, and you ant to see how they will interpret a visual. And the best results come from letting them be the artist they are, using the methods that best yield the result they want.

Getting to the happy place is a matter of knowing who you are commissioning and what you are asking them to do, from THEIR perspective.

Every artist is different, and some are very adept and open to being a trained monkey/hired gun, doing tricks for a customer for a buck. If I ask someone to draw a super specific scenario (not talking recreations here, but a totally new scene)… it leaves little for the artist to actually be an artist on. When I read briefs by certain folks about what they are asking for, it really sounds like they have a pre-defined visual in mind. To me, this is the worst possible way to commission a piece of art

You can give an artist a specific scenario with a checklist of demands that need to be met, and they will work at it until it is what you were intending it to be. And in my opinion they tend to be the artist’s least good work. Creation by committee tends to yield the most static boring results.

The other approach is to be in love with an artist’s work, give an artist a general idea and let them run with it in their own way. I personally feel this yields the very best commissions, because the artist is free to create. They are not trying to reproduce some specific visual I may have in my head, but to create a new visual based on a very loose idea or even just a suggestion of a character, etc… it allows them to be who they are and do what they do. Which is generally why I like them in the first place.

IMO telling an artist you don;t like they way they have drawn this part or that part, is questioning that artist’s voice. Making art is all about making choices. SOM are good, and some are bad. This is where the crapshoot of commissions comes in. The same as a musician making a spontaneous solo up on the spot, or an athlete, all can have a good or bad day. You don’t way, you didn’t knock it out of the park today, so I’m not going to pay you. They get paid to do the best they can on the day they are creating. That’s it.

So maybe Chaikin had a good game going (the female figure), and then hit a bad run on PS or something? I can’t say.

Personally I don’t have a big issue with PS, his hat, etc. To me it all looks stylized a certain way. you may not like the way Howard chose those stylizations (not talking about the pasteups so much as the linework and shadow fills, but those were his artistic choices. As for the pasteups (tapeups) if I’m honest, i can’t recall seeing someone do that before on commissions. Published work, sure, but most folks know commissions are going on the wall, and tend to try and deliver a more “expected” final finished product. But then as a fan of weird art processes, to me it’s just quirky and wouldn’t personally be a deal killer. I’d be surprised, but possibly amused. BUT I can clearly see where others wouldn’t be so accepting of it, or would even be downright livid. I could totally understand it. But that’s neither here nor there.

Some folks are saying let it sit for weeks and then see if it’s an issue later when seen fresh. I think that’s a different kind of mistake. If I’m saying something to an artist, I’m saying it on the day it arrives. Saying it 3 weeks later makes it seem like buyers remorse. Asking about it now at least alerts him to your disappointment about it’s condition on arrival.

But the thing is, if it’s me, I know commissions are a shoot. I went though years of that stuff, and I can say 2 month turnaround is pretty phenomenal for a “name” artist. There are a great many such artists that owe people for years (decades) before getting around to finishing work. Not that that is OK or should be accepted as the norm, but let’s just say it comes with the territory.

So you may think of Howard having cut corners on the piece in a rush to beat your deadline of before his trip, and he might see it as having bent over backwards to conscientiously get you your piece before he left, knowing that sitting on it might have meant many more months of waiting for you. Looking at the female fig, I think it’s clear it wasn’t a rush job. Depending on how Howard does work these days, he might not have given the pasteup bits (I still think it’s tape) a second thought.  It might be as natural as some artists whipping out the whiteout bottle, or the white gouache and brush.

I can say, going in making demands isn’t the way I’d tackle it. I’d just let him know what you love and what you found surprising, or a bit off. If it’s the paste overs, he may at least understand if he hears where you are coming from. The hat… to me that’s just you being nitpick about what kind of hat you wanted him to draw and how he should have drawn it. Every artist interprets characters differently. You start telling him he doesn’t know how to draw certain things, and it increases chances of the defenses going way up.

If you talk to him about the paste over stuff and he sounds like he wants to fix it for you (some artists really want commissioners to be happy and will go the extra mile for them), then you chat about the and maybe ask about the choice of filling the hat with shadow. maybe he had a reason for it? Or maybe he reassesses it and decides he wants to make it right?

Either way you gotta feel him out and see if he gets super defensive. In that instance, some artists might way send it back for a refund, just to get rid of someone they see as being a needy pain in the butt. Is that justified? Some would say never. Me… like I said, I’ve seen some things. Some folks are just not possible to please, because again, they have very clear preconceived ideas of what a (insert artist name here) piece would look like if they drew a very specific thing.

And in closing, when OP ran his idea past him, and Howard said he didn’t think he could pull off the face he wanted, that was the first red flag. Telling him to do his best is a pass to do exactly that. With all of it. So if I hunan idea past someone and they aren’t super excited right off the bat, I either change it up until we hit on something we are both excited about, or I don’t move forward at all. I definitely don’t ask them to proceed knowing they were uncomfortable with my request.

 That’s just my .02¢.
-e.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I draw an imaginary line between "design" and "execution". How an artist chooses to visualize and interpret something is where I give a very wide berth. I want that interpretation, just as you do. But the execution of that design is a different issue entirely.  A jaw line should look like a proper jaw line. A paste-up, if done at all, should be done properly. And as for the hat, the more basic problem I have is that it badly serves the whole picture. Being a big black blob pulls the eyes away from Tala, who is magnificent. 

Tape, which I had not thought of, is a legitimate issue. The foot, by the way, is tape (can't tell about the face). I think I may have to live with it, although, trimming makes sense. 

Regarding the expression to be placed on PS's face, that's just not an issue anymore. It's a design function where the artist gets a wide berth. And, I knew it would be troublesome so any choice would have likely been okay with me. The poor paste-up of the face, however, goes to execution.

In terms of time, I had told Howard he could have as much time as he wanted. I simply wanted to know when I could expect something. And, if he were going to be delayed, just drop me a note. My main concern was that I would be completely forgotten. 

 

Edited December 18, 2017 by Rick2you2

[delekkerste]

5 hours ago, The Voord said:

Or PS with or without the designer stubble?

I think Chaykin should draw in a full beard - voila, no more Franken-jaw line & problem solved! 

But, seriously...if the OP does follow-up with Howard, I would definitely NOT mention the hat - that is what it is.  I think the paste-ups are the only areas that might be able to be negotiated. 

Edited December 18, 2017 by delekkerste

[F For Fake]

I don't even SEE Phantom Stranger in the drawing, because all I'm seeing is a righteous Chaykin babe. The foot paste up is annoying, but I'd get over it pretty quickly because I tend to be fairly meek in these situations, and again, I'm just looking at the babe.

[eewwnuk]

for me, the problem isn't the hat or the foot.  its the face, which appears to have a paste up.  and the face you cant do anything about at this point unless you get another paste up to the paste up. 

but I do agree with the OP on not placing the piece in a folder and seeing if you like it again in 3 months.  if it bothers you initially, it will bother you in the future. 

aside from the face paste up, imo its a good commission.

[SquareChaos]

3 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

You got it "right" earlier. Note my comment, above, on the colon cancer analogy. Being 99% healthy won't do you much good if the other 1% is fatal.

I'm also thinking what I want to do. Tentatively, tell him:

(a) that I am not happy with the head (jawline or hat) or the foot trim; 

(b) I would estimate the re-work should take an hour or so (his assistants can do the paste and remove);

(c) offering to pay shipping both ways, and

(d) if he feels I am asking him to perform extra work, offering to pay for it.

If he feels it cannot be properly fixed, tell me that. 

Also, he deserves to be complemented on Tala, big time, and I like a lot of the other parts. 

I do not agree with a number of comments suggesting I should just put it away and look at it in the future. Things like this must be addressed promptly or they never get addressed at all. 

Thoughts?

 

The handful of commissions I've done... I'd say I was only thrilled with one of them. And that is the expected result really, when you do a commission you're taking part in the artistic process and it rarely ends up as a home run. Especially on your first few times at bat - I know I've learned a few things, but it isn't my wheelhouse as I've decided that commissions are only rarely something I'll do.

If someone mentions having had these conversations with artists before... I'd go with their advice on how to do this. I honestly don't know how you approach fixing that hat in particular without going down the road of an even larger paste up.

[The Voord]

Sorted . . . end of thread.

[alxjhnsn]

I like it.

[Bronty]

I like it, I do think you're being too critical here.     You wanted a commission, he delivered his best, and its a solid piece of work.

The paste ups would bug me a bit as I do prefer it when the art is clean, but I couldn't fault the artist if that is his method these days.

[Rick2you2]

I'm no artist, and I'm not looking for perfection. But I would think that Chaykin can fix my complaints in less than an hour. That's not a lot of time. If anyone has some technical input on how to fix this, I'd like to know.

First, I don't mind a paste-up too much, as long as it's not obvious.  The one on the face is obvious. Can't it be redone so that the line of the paste-up doesn't make the guy look like he has an iron jaw? Maybe make it a little bigger to change the jaw line?

For highlighting, can't he just add some highlights with white paint or white out? Maybe shrink it with a little white out in the process? It keeps pulling my eyes from Tala, and I'd much rather be there than on the dam'n hat.

And the foot should be easy to fix. Can't he just trim the paste up around it?

 Does any of this sound unreasonable? I don't think so.