Lineart
A commission desk for artists like me. Clients describe what they want, Lineart turns it into a quote from my own prices, and the money is held until each stage of the drawing is approved.
Sketch
Lineart
Colour01Why I made this
Most of taking commissions isn’t drawing
Anyone who knows me well knows I’m almost always drawing something. I take commissions and draw a lot of them live on stream. The drawing part is fun. The rest is quoting the same questions over and over, chasing deposits, and keeping track of who’s at which stage in a notes app.
None of that is hard on its own. It just adds up, and the money side is where it hurts. If a client stops replying after the sketch, or files a chargeback after getting the final files (sadly it happens more than you think), there’s usually not much an independent artist can do.
02How it got here
Three directions
A · A better spreadsheet
tidy, but i’d still be chasing payments
Plenty of artists already work this way. It tracks the work, but money still moves outside it, so a ghosted client or a chargeback is just as painful.
B · A marketplace
the platform owns my clients
Marketplaces bring new clients, but they also set the rules, take a cut and push everyone to compete on price. I’d rather clients come to me directly, from my stream and my socials.
C · The artist’s desk
money follows the stages
Every card shows where the work is and where the money is. Approving a stage releases a payment, so “done” and “paid” stop being two separate conversations.
The spreadsheet kept things organized and the marketplace handled payments, but neither one tied getting paid to the work itself. The desk does, so that’s the one we went with.
03Brief to quote
The model reads the brief, my rate card does the math
Clients write briefs using informal language (like texting a friend). A language model reads and parses the brief into fields: body type, how many characters, background, personal or commercial, and whether there’s a deadline. Every field keeps the phrase it came from and a confidence score.
Anything under 60% turns into a question for me instead of a guess. Pricing never comes from the model. It’s plain arithmetic on my own rate card, so the same answers always give the same quote. Nothing reaches the client until I press send.
Client brief
Hi! Could I get a half body of my OC Mira? She has silver hair and a red scarf and she’s holding a lantern. Simple background is fine. It’s for my profile picture. Need it by the 20th if possible!
What the model read model output
- TypeHalf body93%“a half body of my OC”
- Characters196%“my OC Mira”
- Pieces190%“a half body”
- BackgroundSimple88%“Simple background is fine”
- UsePersonal81%“for my profile picture”
- RushNo66%“by the 20th”
Needs you before it can price
The 20th is 18 days out. Is that inside your normal turnaround?
Quote your rate card, plain math
Answer the question on the left and the quote fills in. Nothing goes to the client until you send it.
Edit rate card
Sample data. Try the emote request: it’s vague on purpose.
More detail: what the model returns
The model is called with a fixed schema (tool use with structured output), so it can only return these fields. Engineering validates the shape before anything is priced.
{
"body": { "value": "headshot | half | full", "confidence": 0.93, "quote": "a half body" },
"characters": { "value": 1, "confidence": 0.96, "quote": "my OC Mira" },
"pieces": { "value": 1, "confidence": 0.90, "quote": "a half body" },
"background": { "value": "none | simple | detailed", "confidence": 0.88, "quote": "..." },
"commercial": { "value": true | false | null, "confidence": 0.81, "quote": "..." },
"rush": { "value": false, "confidence": 0.66, "quote": "by the 20th" },
"questions": [ "The 20th is 18 days out. Is that inside your normal turnaround?" ]
}04Paid in stages
The client approves a stage, and that stage gets paid
A deposit is charged when the client accepts the quote and held until they approve the sketch. The next part is charged at sketch approval, and the rest when the final files are delivered. The client always sees what approving will do to the money before they press the button.
Two revisions per stage are included. After that, a revision becomes a small add-on quote instead of an awkward conversation. If a client goes quiet for 7 days, the stage counts as approved, so nobody’s money is stuck forever.
Commission #14 · Priya · book cover
CA$528
- Sketchdrawing
- Lineart
- Colour
- Final files
Money
- Deposit 50%CA$264held
- Sketch 25%CA$132not charged
- Final 25%CA$132not charged
Revisions left on sketch
2 left
Your turn
History
- Day 1Deposit charged (CA$264), held until the sketch is approved
- Day 1Priya signed the quote
Try asking for changes twice on one stage, or simulate a chargeback and export the evidence pack.
More detail: what happens in a chargeback
Lineart can’t decide a chargeback, that’s up to the client’s bank. But it can make it a lot easier for the artist to prove their side. It keeps a record of everything along the way, like the signed quote, when each stage got approved, every file that was shared and the messages. If the piece was drawn on stream, it saves those timestamps too. So if a client does open a dispute, the evidence is already put together and ready to send.
05On stream
Showing the queue on stream
A lot of my commissions get drawn on stream (on Twitch!). The overlay shows what I’m drawing and how many slots are open, so viewers know the queue exists without me repeating it every ten minutes. It never shows prices or anything private.
06The money tab
Keeping track of earnings and taxes
US clients pay in US dollars and I get paid out in Canadian. The money tab shows both, takes out fees, and sets a share aside for taxes so tax season isn’t a surprise.
07The system
How payments move through each stage
System
Where the money is at every step
More detail: the data model
Data model
Twelve tables
08Design system
Small pieces that carry a lot of state
Stage chips
- Sketch
- Lineart
- Colour
- Final files
Each stage gets its own drawing mark, so you can read a stage without relying on colour.
Money states
- Awaiting deposit
- Held
- Released
- Frozen
- Refunded
Words first, colour second. “Held” always means the client paid and the artist hasn’t been paid out yet.
Confidence chips
- 93%
- 66%
- 41% · ask
- answered
80% and up is shown plainly. 60–79% gets a second look. Under 60% turns into a question for the artist instead of a guess.
Revisions
1 of 2 used
+extra revision, CA$25
no surprise bills. the limit is on the quote from day one.
09Watching artists quote
What other artists caught (and missed)
We sat with other commission artists while they quoted real requests from their inboxes. Most of what the model asks for came straight out of those sessions.
-
One artist quoted a “simple portrait” at her personal rate, then noticed “for my stream panels” a couple of lines down. It was a commercial piece, which usually costs more.
Now Lineart asks how the art will be used before it gives a price.
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A client mentioned their deadline at the very end of a really long message. The artist didn’t catch it until after she’d quoted her usual turnaround.
Now any date in the brief gets pulled out and flagged, in case it’s a rush job.
-
A brief said one character, but the reference sheet had two on it. She quoted for one, and the conversation after that was pretty awkward.
Now when the brief and the references don’t match, Lineart asks which one is right.
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One artist likes to start sketching as soon as a request seems serious. The last client who ghosted her never paid a deposit.
Now the deposit gets charged before any sketching starts (artists can turn this off).