commissions: how do they work?

It's Latecomer, with a question for the art community here. 

In perusing the image gallery, I see some pieces of art which are tagged or otherwise labelled as "commission" pieces.

While I understand the concept of a "request"- of which I have sketched out a couple for various people who have commented positively on my posts here- how does a "request" differ from a "commission"?

Also, I have noticed in the gallery that there are more than a few exceptionally cleverly-rendered pieces there which have relatively few "reads" tallied for them. Does the "read" tally accurately reflect the number of people who have looked at those particular images over the months and years?

Please excuse my ignorance of these things, Latecomer is a newcomer after all-

Best regards

Latecomer 

LutherVKane
LutherVKane's picture

A commission is a paid work. You can find a partial list of inflation artists who do commission work here.

As for pictures with a low view count, the counters were all reset when I switched servers and site software back in August 2011. So what you're seeing is less than a year and half worth of hits.

Also, pictures that can only be viewed by registered users get significantly fewer hits than those that are viewable by the public.

latecomer

Got it, mystery solved- thanks. 

And thanks again for the great website.

-Latecomer