The Life of a [Messy] Freelance Illustrator

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butterfrog's avatar
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I've been delayed with 100% of my artwork and I believe I owe an explanation to my commissioners.

For pretty much all of 2013 I've been a little quiet. Very few uploads compared to previous years and precious few professional publications too. This is because I'm supposed to be wrapping up a lot of commissions from previous years, something I'm yet to acomplish.

This past July I had a nice two-week vacation where I planned to finally finish my due work, and I did achieve it to a certain point but no way near what I wanted, because then came the dreaded CONSTRUCTION!...

For over a year now, I've been planning the construction of a bathroom and several other "small" stuff in my home, and part of this planning included securing an affordable cost, which luckily I got. This construction was supposed to take two weeks and to start around mid august (by then I'd clear my commission slate) but the contractor was ready to start by the third week of July and if I let it pass then I'd miss the opportunity to do the construction, so I had to move and start to purchase all the required stuff for the construction detailing (batroom furniture, water heater, lamps, tiles, etc) this took a lot of driving around for choosing nice (and cheap!) stuff, checking prices, placing orders etc. A week after the construction started I found out that part of the deal of "affordable contruction cost" meant there will be no foreman at place, so I needed to be on top of the construction workers or else I'd risk having stuff built not how I needed it or where I needed it (or both!). Also, I never considered that the construction mess would spread to 75% of the house and the couple rooms I didn't lost to construction stuff/mess I lost'em to storage space to cram the rest of my stuff, which left me without a proper drawing place... Then I had to be supervising contruction stuff deliveries and taking care that my two doggies would run out the all-to-often-open-front-door when the contractors were taking materials in... All in all I needed to be "there" all the time until the workers left for the day, and then clean up so that I could get some illo work done, which killed most of my drawing time...

So, vacation time slipped by without much work done, now the so called 2-week construction time has turned to 3.5 weeks (and counting!)... My wife and I (and my doggies!) are growing a bit desperate of the increasing and neverending mess. I had to ask for several off-hours at the dayjob to be at home and continue to supervising job, something that will come around and bite me on my ass when I have to pay back those off hours...

Now the rightly-so eager commissioners are starting to circle abode me...


(a couple pics of what used to be our computer/tv room-studio a week ago. As of today the place is TEN TIMES MESSIER)

I'm SUPER happy that I finally got this construction project going (it is SUPER necessary!) but the consequences are turning a bit dire... At this time I'm reaching a stressful breaking point and I needed to explain myself to my commissioners for this delay before throwing myself at their mercy...

I hope I don't run out of luck!...
Peace out
© 2013 - 2024 butterfrog
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Lallatwittle's avatar
I'm sorry to hear that life's getting in the way again/still.  I really do hope things get sorted out quickly so you can get back to doing what you really love.