An artist can sometimes be an arrogant [insert noun here] to work with. Some artists seem to think that the client should have little or nothing to say in what is being done with a illustration project.

Of course it is true that an artist is hired for his skill and expertise (which the client doesn’t have). That means micromanaging a project into the ground can have the same results that a patient directing his doctor during brain surgery might expect.

I will admit it. Once in a while I cringe at suggested changes a client may make (and in fairness, some suggestions are right on the mark as well). I will try to explain why I think something might be a bad idea. I may even ask to have my name taken off any credits should the project really go south, at least in my eyes.

But in the end I do my best to give the client what they want. After all, it’s their money financing the project, the illustration will represent them in one way or another. They should have the final say. The client is the real boss.

As the old saying goes, “The boss may not be always right, but the boss is always boss.”

If an artist gets too magnificent to change his work to fit a client’s needs, then it is time for the artist to get out of the art business and start a new religion so folks can worship him properly.

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Duncan Long is a freelance illustrator who has done — and often changed — illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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