One place (besides here) to find commission work is over on eLance.com It is a site that anyone can post to looking to hire anyone or to do a job for someone. I have gotten several of my maps from people there.

You would be competing with people from all over the world at small (and sometimes large) projects that need lots of various design skills. With their escrow system you can be sure you will be paid for your work. There is a nice system of milestones to keep the job on track and agreed upon by both sides.

Of course as said above all you need is a log in to Lulu, Amazon, CafePress, just about any sales site. The percentage you make from each sale is important for you because you can only expect to sell a handful of each piece. 99% of your purchasers will be GMs so if there are a few hundred to a couple thousand gamers who come across your product maybe a few dozen will actually be people who would lay down money.

In my opinion the hardest part of selling RPG artwork is the price.

I can buy a great map from 0onegames.com for $3 and use it in 10 different sessions. Or I can pay someone a commission for a campaign specific map that costs me 500 times that. Both have value for me but I am going to buy the cheaper version far more often. Plus with each map being useful for multiple weeks/sessions that leaves someone with a need for perhaps a dozen maps per year.

If you have a long running campaign like mine (18+ years) that does build up to a considerable amount of maps but most people run on the much shorter term.

Not to throw cold water on your plans, I try my hardest to not buy from any large publisher anymore (after all I am still running AD&D 2nd edition for my campaign) and I joined here exactly to find good artists.

Put together a small portfolio to show off on a website and everything should include some sort of watermark or image built into the art so you can verify it is yours. Have fun doing what you love to do and count yourself lucky that you can make at least enough money from it to have it pay for itself.

BOB

of course YOMV