“Art commission” means two different things – here is which one you want
Art commission means two unrelated things that share the word and almost nothing else: commissioning an artwork for a place, a procurement process run by an organisation and what this site covers, and paying an artist directly to make you a personal piece, such as a portrait, a character illustration or a digital drawing, which is a private transaction between two people. The two differ in who commissions, what is bought, what it costs, who owns the result, how it is agreed and how long it takes. The table sets them side by side so a reader can tell at a glance which one brought them here.
The two meanings side by side
| Question | Public art commission | Personal or illustration commission |
|---|---|---|
| Who commissions | A council, developer, health board, university, school, trust or transport body | An individual, sometimes a small business |
| What is bought | A work that does not yet exist, made for one place, plus the design, consents and maintenance information with it | An image or object made to the buyer’s request, usually delivered as a file, a print or a framed piece |
| How it is agreed | A written brief, a selection process and a commission agreement with milestones, insurance and warranty clauses | A direct message or a commission form, an agreed brief in a few lines, and often 50 per cent paid up front |
| Typical price scale | £2,000 to £20,000 for a painted exterior mural of 20 to 100 square metres, £8,000 to £40,000 for a small freestanding sculpture up to about two metres, £250,000 upward for a landmark work on a major site | Tens of pounds to a few hundred for a digital piece from an individual illustrator, and hundreds to low thousands from an established professional or for a painted portrait |
| Who owns the result | The commissioner owns the physical work; the artist keeps copyright unless it is assigned in writing, and grants a licence for reproduction | The buyer owns the file or object for personal use; the artist normally keeps copyright, and commercial use is bought separately if at all |
| How long it takes | Twelve to twenty four months from brief to installation on a permanent work | Days to a few weeks, longer where the artist works through a queue |
| Who else is involved | Panel, engineer, fabricator, planning authority, contractor, custodian | Nobody, or a platform holding payment |
| What goes wrong | Consent refused, budget set before the design, no maintenance owner at handover | Scope creep, unlimited revisions, non payment, unclear usage rights |
The public art figures in that row are the bands used throughout this site: working ranges, not survey data, since no UK body publishes a price index for public art. Their width comes from who holds the fabrication contract, what the ground turns out to be, which consents bite and how long the work must stand.
Meaning one: commissioning an artwork for a place
A public art commission starts with an organisation that has a site and a reason, usually with money that arrived attached to something else. In the UK that money most often comes from a planning obligation, Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 in England and Wales or Section 75 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 in Scotland, or from a capital budget or a grant. The organisation writes a brief, selects an artist through an open call, an invited competition, a direct appointment or a roster, and signs an agreement paying in stages against milestones.
What makes it a different activity from buying art is that the work is designed for one location and has to survive everything that location does to it. A planning authority may have to consent. A structural engineer signs off that it stands up. A fabricator builds it. A main contractor decides when the artist gets on site. A maintenance department inherits it and is still cleaning it in twenty years. The artwork is the visible part of a process that is mostly documents.
Meaning two: commissioning an artist to make you something
A personal commission is a private agreement between a buyer and an artist for a piece made to request, and the online illustration market is where most happen. The buyer approaches an artist open for commissions, describes what they want, agrees a price and a delivery format, and usually pays half up front and half on completion. The artist works through a queue, sends progress images at agreed points, allows a stated number of revisions and delivers a file at a stated resolution or ships the piece.
This is a real economy with real conventions, worth describing accurately rather than dismissing. Artists in it publish commission sheets setting out what they will and will not draw, what each tier costs, how many revisions are included and what the buyer may do with the result. Prices are tiered by complexity, a bust, a half body, a full body, with backgrounds and extra characters charged as additions. Copyright normally stays with the artist and the buyer receives personal use, with commercial use priced separately, the most common misunderstanding in that market. A short written agreement covering scope, revisions, deadline, delivery format and usage rights prevents almost all disputes, and templates for it circulate among illustrators.
Open commission means different things in each world
The phrase open commission is used in both meanings and means opposite things. In the personal market it describes the artist’s availability: the queue has space and requests are being accepted. In public art it describes the brief: an open commission does not prescribe the outcome, naming the site, the budget and the objectives but leaving the form to the artist, as against a brief specifying a sculpture of a particular subject in a particular material.
Open call is similarly split. In public art it is a published invitation to apply for a named commission, judged by a panel against criteria, usually in two stages with only the second paid. In the personal market it is often just an announcement that an artist is taking work.
Which one you are looking for
Three questions settle it. If the artwork will belong to you personally and hang in your home or sit on your screen, it is the second meaning. If it will be somewhere the public can reach it, paid for by an organisation, and someone will have to maintain it, it is the first. If the money came with conditions from a planning obligation, a grant or a capital programme, it is certainly the first, because private commissions have no funders.
Setting Out covers the first meaning only. It is an independent, non commercial reference on how public art is commissioned in the UK: it commissions nothing, represents no artist and sells nothing. Readers who want the second meaning are better served by the illustration community’s own material, and this page names no platform, no marketplace and no artist, because a reference that abstains from recommending in one field should not start in another. What can usefully be said is what to look for: published terms, a written scope with a revision limit, and an explicit line on whether commercial use is included.