I had a really bizarre experience just recently that begs mentioning.
For those of you who follow DA and CAF, former DC inker Doug Hazlewood opened up for commissions last year or so. Earlier this year, my sister purchased a pair of
Metal Gear pencil sketches that she wanted to get inked. So, me being me, and having liked his work with Tom Grummett on
Superman, I decided to try commissioning him to ink them. Never heard back from him at all, wound up commissioning James Taylor to do the honors.
Months later -- after my accident in April and just after commissioning Taylor -- Hazlewood responded to a comment I'd made on his DA about liking his work at DC and hoping to commission him at some point. He said he was open to it, and took a liking to two of my Superman commissions, one by Grummett and another by Darryl Banks. However, I wasn't too keen on having either of those particular pieces inked (especially since he's inked Grummett and Banks plenty of times over the years), and was interested in having him ink an artist he may not have worked with before. I have a Batman/Catwoman pencil sketch I got at Motor City Con last year that I like a lot -- by Harvey-nominated artists Comfort Love and Adam Withers of
The Uniques and
Rainbow in the Dark -- and after mulling it over I decided that was what I wanted to get inked. So I sent him a scan of the sketch and asked him if he'd be willing to ink it over the pencils. As I
ALWAYS do with every commission I get, be it pencil work, ink work, or digital art, I wrote in my request that if he wasn't interested in inking that particular sketch, to please tell me so I could change my request accordingly.
Never heard back from him. Not a peep. Not even a "Sorry, not interested." So as before with my prior attempt to commission him, I decided to forget about it. Then I saw this on CAF:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...981&GSub=87447
He went and inked my Grummett Superman commission for sale. Which wouldn't be so bad if he'd asked if he could do so first. I think that's what bugs me most. He didn't have the courtesy to respond to my commission request even just to decline it, he didn't have the courtesy to ask if he could ink anything of mine for sale (I would have said yes had he done so), he just did it. (And to be honest, I don't think the inked version looks half as good as the original pencils, which is weird.) I'm not going to lie, I think this was kind of disrespectful, and I certainly won't be trying to commission him after this.
I have to ask...has this sort of thing happened to anyone else? Has an inker ever inked one of your pencil pieces and put it up for sale without bothering to ask first? Or am I just a weird anomaly?