Journal

Commissioning a painting: what happens, and what it costs

By Volodymyr Myriyevskyy · 7 August 2026 · 4 min read

A commission sounds like an intimidating, formal thing. In practice it starts with an email that usually begins "I don't know if this is possible, but…", and most of them are.

What people actually commission

The most frequent requests, in rough order: a place that matters to somebody — a house, a coastline, a forest path they walked; a larger version of an existing painting in different colours to fit a specific wall; a subject from the same world as the catalogue, so a different fantasy scene, a different sailing ship, a different season of the same forest; and memorial pieces, which come up more often than you might expect and are handled with the care they deserve.

What does not work well is a copy of another living artist's painting, or a photorealistic portrait — that is not this style, and saying so early is more useful than trying and disappointing you.

The sequence

1. You write. Email contact@myriyevskyy.com or use the form on the commissions page, with the idea, roughly the size you have in mind, the wall it is for, and when you need it. Photographs of the room help more than you would think.
2. We agree the brief in writing. Subject, composition, size, materials, price, expected stages, estimated completion and anything else important — before any paint is mixed. That written agreement is what governs the commission.
3. Any deposit is agreed individually at that point, not assumed.
4. The painting is made, and you see it as it goes if you want to. Many collectors ask for photographs at the block-in stage and again near the end; some prefer to see nothing until it is finished. Both are fine — say which you want at the start.
5. You approve the finished work. Unless we agreed otherwise, the balance is paid after you have approved it.
6. It ships like any other painting: stretched, signed on the front, signed and dated on the back, with a certificate of authenticity in your name, and tracked and insured to your door.

How long it takes

The painting itself depends on size and subject and is agreed case by case. Then there is a stage people forget: oil paint has to cure enough to be packed safely, and thick knife work takes longer than a smooth surface. If your commission is for a date — a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas — say so in the first email, because that drying window is what decides whether a deadline is realistic.

What it costs

Commissions are priced like the catalogue: by size and by how much work the subject takes. The paintings on this site run from around €135 to over €1,000, and a commission of a given size sits in the same territory as a catalogue painting of that size. There is no premium simply for the word "custom".

Shipping is the same as everything else: free to the EU and the UK, and a flat rate elsewhere.

The one thing to know before you commit

A commissioned painting is excluded from the 14-day right of withdrawal that applies to catalogue purchases. That is not a piece of small print invented here — it is the standard exception in EU consumer law for goods made to your own specification, and it exists because a painting of your house cannot be resold to anyone else.

So once work has begun, a commission cannot be cancelled for a change of mind. What that exception does not touch is everything else: if a finished commission arrives damaged, or is materially not what was agreed in writing, your rights are exactly the same as on any other purchase. This is precisely why the brief is agreed in writing first — it protects you at least as much as it protects me.