A few months ago I was approached for a possible commission making a portrait puppet. I haven’t done any work with portraiture before, but was keen to give it a go - especially as the puppet really was going to be caricaturish in style. Well, it was a big deal, and with any potential commissions, I do a lot of research and design work before submitting a proposal.

I’m really bad at drawing - I mean really bad - that side of the artistic talent went to my sister. So to do a design based on a portrait of a real person, I went online to figure out how to do it. I hunted around a few sites to find some free tutorials on caricatures, and came across one in particular.

It was an excellent site; clear, precise instructions. Heaps of examples and interactive diagrams. I went through a few hours worth of free tutes on how to draw people (not as caricatures, but as proper life drawings). Before I knew it, I had a good likeness of the person that I had to make a puppet of.  

I move on to the second phase, learning how to do caricatures, and get halfway through the tutes before I’m shunted into a ‘you have to pay to read the rest’ page. Well, that sucks I think. I’ll just find another site and try again. So I do a couple of hours of searching and find one or two sites that offer free tutes - but none are as good. I go back to the original site, and check out the payment thing. It’s $US 20, no return policy is offered (well, digital goods you know, are hard to return), but you get lifetime access to the site and all of the tutorials, and access is made available within 24 hours of payment.

I really was reluctant to pay up, more because I was sure I could find another tute somewhere, but going from a crappy drawer to a good one in a few hours was such a boon that I really wanted to keep going using the site. Plus, I’d promised to send the designs in the next 48 hours, and I was wasting a lot of time hunting for some other tutorial.

So I give in, and pay up. It’s through Paypal. I wait a few hours; not even a confirmation message had come from PP to say that it had gone through. Another few hours go by and nothing; I try to make my portrait into a caricature on my own, not very successfully. I wait and wait, staying up late into the night hoping it would be sent. I decide to set my alarm for early in the morning, hoping that by then the password would come through and I could redo my designs for my deadline.

Nothing. 6am and I have received nothing. Ok, I think, well, it did say at least 24 hours after payment. I continue on with my designs, now moving into colours and inking. Finally, at 4.45pm on a Friday, I send my designs and cross my fingers. Not as good as I’d hoped, but good enough.

Saturday comes, and I still haven’t received anything - no notification from PP, nothing from this site. I’m pissed off that it didn’t come within the time specified, but too exhausted from rushing the designs to call everyone I know and complain.

I wait another half a week, and by this time still nothing. So I find the website owner’s email address and send them a polite notice, letting them know that something’s gone wrong. After all, problems happen all the time, and I’m an understanding person (I’m not being sarcastic here, you have to be lenient because inevitably there will be 1% of people who just slip through the cracks of customer service by accident). I explain carefully that I’m still waiting, and that if there are problems to let me know, and that if I don’t receive the password within a certain timeframe, I’ll submit the issue to PP.

I wait another week, and nothing. No emails from PP, no emails from the owner - at all. Well, by this time I’m seriously annoyed. I paid $US 20 - ok, not a huge amount, but still - for access to a site that I honestly wouldn’t have paid for if it hadn’t have been a time-sensitive commission, and after two weeks hadn’t received a single message.

I submit a dispute to PP, outlining the issue - I always keep copies of my emails in transactions as well, just in case something like this happens - and hope at least that this way the seller will finally contact me. I make it very clear that I simply want the product I paid for - I’m not really fussed about the time it takes to get the password, as I know very well that I might need to do more drawing in the future, and access to these tutorials would be beneficial.

Another few days go by, and no replies are made from the site owner to my dispute. By this time, I just want a response; I don’t even care what it is, just as long as some sort of contact is made. Another few days… Ok, I can’t handle it. I just want my money back now. I send a second query through the dispute page, and now I’m making it clear that I’m about to escalate the issue to a ‘claim’.

Still nothing. Another few days go by, and I’m just about to login to PP to make the ‘claim’ and get my money back, when I discover the site owner has refunded my money in full. No explanation is sent with the refund, no apologies, no communication at all except for the new (or old) money in my account.

"Thank god," I think. That was really pissing me off. Now I can move on, and forget the whole matter. I still don’t know why nothing happened - or why I didn’t even receive a notification from PP at all when the money was sent - but at least now I have my money back. In this situation, it really was a case of ‘item not received’. Which is sad, because I really did like the tutorials, and found them useful, clear and easy to follow.

So, after all that, I’m not recommending this site to other people: learn-to-draw.com.