Whose going to pay the artist?
Everyone. That's the point: to allow a group of people to join together and share out the cost of a commissioned piece of artwork. The fact is that many, if not most of us, can't enjoy quality custom artwork. It's just too expensive. Buying such artwork as a group would be an easy way to reduce the basic cost. An 100$ pin-up is something you can usually afford only once in a while. But if the price is reduced to 10$ because there's 9 other people buying, it's much more of a bargain.
How does the money get divied up?
Equally between the buyers, where the buyers are everyone who decided to join up for a certain commission. You don't have to join up if you don't like what'S being proposed for a certain commission. Sometime you can have 20 buyers and sometime you can have only five. That's what you agree to when you join up.
How do you deal with international currencies, since artists come from all over the world?
PayPal is the obvious choice here, taking care of all international considerations.
Who will continue to keep paying the artists if the original person does not have the funds, or do not wish to pay?
The group of buyers. Of course trust is very important here and bad payers would quickly get blacklisted by other fellow buyers. If the artist produce the artwork, the group has to pay. It's that simple. If (let's say), three people refuse to pay, the other buyers have to pick up the bill. And if nobody is willing or able to do so, then the project leader for a certain commission is the one responsible.
How will payment be handled? Paypal? Checks? Money order?
Again PayPal would probably be the easiest way to this. Most everyone had access to a Credit Card and it's fairly easy for an artist to set things up on his side. As far as how payment would be handled, some arrangement would have to be taken between the buyers and the artist. As someone who's paid for a few thousand dollars in commissions in the past, I can say that most often it's 50% up front and 50% once the artwork is completed.
Of course, let's keep in mind that this is a very rough draft. That's why it's important for people interested in such a concept to discuss it at length.
