I'm not going to go into length about the subject, but just wanted to say a few things on the matter which was inadvertently brought up when someone was asking for a quote on a commission.

Artistic freedom is the insight from which an artist produces art, the extent of such can deviate from any particular custom or method of producing work, such as a school of art or directives of the assigner (or commissioner). It is essentially what gives an artist his or her unique "style". On the surface it is simple, you can tell one drawing from another if they are done by two different artists because they are unique in their representation, regardless if the subject matter is the same or not. However it isn't something that a lot of people understand.

It isn't uniform with every artist, and it isn't limited to just how thickly he makes his lines or how roughly she blends her colours. It varies a lot from person to person. For example, give two artists the job of drawing an anthropomorphic character from a photograph of a rabbit. The assignment is the same, but the outcomes could be completely different. One artist could have given the anthro rabbit his natural quadruped legs and regular body shape, and the other could have simply juxtaposed a rabbit's head and tail on a human body. Both are correct, but it came down to each artist's interpretation of the subject.

(See this guide on anthropomorphic drawing for more on the subject: http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/study-in-anthropomorphism-disneys-robin.html)

This brings me onto my next point on character representation. Most of the time this isn't a problem, with the wide use of references there generally isn't a lack of visual information. Within the furry community however, there seems to be a very conservative paradigm as to the ownership and representation of characters. Again, this isn't too common, and most people I've been commissioned by are really easy going. The problem I've found is with the complexity of characters. I'm a believer in imagination, regardless of notions like originality or stereotypes, but it can be a delicate thing. Sometimes, and I quote Robert Browning, less is (indeed) more, but even that is something I use seldom. A lot of people tend to over complicate their characters in order to be unique, but only end up cluttering them and end up becoming more of a stereotype than not. Now it would be unfair of me to judge a person purely for what they find aesthetically pleasing, since such a matter is purely subjective (that is open for debate but for the sake of this journal I'm not going into it), but in saying that, artists too have their own aesthetic sensibility. It's fair enough that if you pay someone to draw something based off your own creation, you would want them to be as accurate as possible, but you need to give a little. Some people like their characters represented in a very specific way, but forget that not every artist is truly representational in their drawing.

To restate my point earlier, artists have their own interpretive way, or "style" of working, so it wont always be exactly how someone else has drawn something. As such, I add my own flare to everything that I draw, but keeping mind what the original concept is so that I don't stray too far from the idea. My work after all, and every other artist's work for that matter, is representational of our skills as art makers, but more so than a skill, it is a representation of our selves, and to deny that is to deny our credibility as artists.

I say this so that people may take this into consideration if they decide to commission me.

Thank you for taking the time to read! :)

Cheers

-Hel