Agreed, and well remembered. There was a time when you could get the ol' black sketchbooks filled for free at furry parties and the like. With the far-increased skillsets of modern furry artists, the prices have remained amazingly low.
I have hundreds of color pics from comissions and con auctions and the total layout over decades, would be around $1000.00 U.S.

One has to wonder, though...are furry artists underpaid? Or is the rest of the art world OVERpaid? May be a bit of both, and certes is a complex issue.

Certainly when I see something that looks like a third-grader's art project made from pipe cleaners, paid for with a million-dollar grant from the NEA, I'm left wondering if the whole key to success as an artist is, "You're just not dishonest and pretentious enough."

Testify! I mean, *I* could take a whiz into a beaker, dunk a crucifix into it and take a photo. Instant NEA success!

Feh.

Lots more about your argument here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....comprehensible

And here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....ArtIsOffensive

Ooooo! Excellent! Thanks!

Thank you, kind sir. I could not have said it better myself.

You are very welcome!

Part of the problem is not knowing how much work it takes to produce a piece. It would take me ten times as long to produce a piece as it would take someone like, say, Blotch.

Of course, Blotch's work is also ten times as good a anyhting I could do... nay, one hundred! So one of her pieces takes her four days to do.

That wasn't in reference to how much pieces go for at auction btw. I meant in regards to deciding how much to pay for a commision.

There was a Dilbert strip that captures the idea perfectly, as so often happens: the pointy-haired boss saying, “Any task I don’t understand must be simple.”

Like any other such problem, it’s a matter of educating people.

Problem is, ideally, you want to make as much money as possible for as little work as possible. So maybe you don't want them to know how much work it is.

I remember Furries in the 90's. They always wanted their art for free. They said that, as we are all "family" we just give everything to everyone, and we'd all be happy!

I LOL'd.

Today we call it open source.

*ducks*

Furry art is decidedly lower in price because the content is 70% porn and I would same the same percent is crappy art (myself probably included in both those lists). I may not have been in the furry art scene forever, but it seems that though an artist may not get as much per piece there are many who have entire journal's worth of commission to go through and they end up making more in the long run. The content is like a limbo contest, it's how low you can go. Having just got into sculpture, I realize now that a sculpture piece whose price was recently debated over was priced at over $500. I saw someone offering a 5 page inked comic for $300. But when it comes down to it, there are few true professionals in this genre. And while part of it is that furry art appreciators are a frugal lot, they are also willing to pay for what they want and there is always someone who's doing it cheaper and faster.

There is an old story in science-fiction fandom.

Old Ted Sturgeon was a guest at a talk somewhere in NYU during the early 1950s. According to the story some fellow stood and said, more or less, “Mr. Sturgeon, sir, I’ve read some of this sci-fi stuff and, you know, ninety percent of it is crap!”

Ted looked back at this fellow wearily and replied, “Son . . . ninety percent of everything is crap.”

I do not accept the seventy-percent figure for porn, and even if I did, I doubt art of any other kind contains a significantly different proportion of porn than does furry art.

I do not accept that furry art is of significantly less quality overall than other genrés of art—especially nowadays, when furry artists from our community have exhibited in museums.

I do accept that these two axioms are responsible in large part for the unnecessarily difficult struggle for respectability experienced by aspiring furry artists. Moreover, they create a Catch-22 that perpetuates the problem: as long as people continue to believe they aren’t worthy, they won’t be worthy.

It is time and past time to reject that view and move on to bigger and better things. It is possible; there is existence proof.

Accursed reply system! \/

Wait... what about my peanut butter?

Smooth or crunchy?

I have given away most of the art I've done for people in the fandom, but I'm not trying to make a living at it, and yes, most of the artists in this field should be charging a lot more for their labors...

Indeed!

I'd be curious if the fandom would be able to support a ton of artists charging much higher prices for their art. Personal experience would lead me to think not, but of course I have only a small sample size. I've always supported artists charging whatever they please and don't complain about prices, I simply don't buy things I don't think are priced in my interests. So, when I say this, I'm curious about the should charge more, no one can stop them from trying but would there be enough demand and would furries have enough money that they could even make what they are making now, however little it might be?

It is true that furrydom is glutted with artists, which means there is lots of supply—but demand is less elastic. That is one element I neglected to mention in my essay, and it does have an influence on prices. Still, the cream should rise to the top, and it should not be constrained artificially by the atypical norms of the furry community.

Another possibility is gradually opening as furry art and the furry community moves closer to the mainstream, which it has been doing slowly but steadily over the last quarter-century. When and if folks off the street become accustomed enough to furry art that it becomes an everyday genré alongside other specialty forms like hot-rod art, naval art, aviation art, landscapes, and so forth, the wider market might spur a positively Darwinian centrifuge of talent and pricing. Those willing and able to rise to that challenge will find themselves a good living. Heck, there are artists on Fur Affinity who already have exhibited furry art (often, admittedly, among other works they have produced) in major museums!

I have mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, I often encourage people to charge more for their art (even before I pay). $5 for anything involving ink is pretty unthinkable unless you draw chibi stuff like I do. I have gotten some good, or at least "low-risk" deals from people, but it's obvious they are pretty bad at marketing, or the demand just isn't there.

On the other hand, there are spectacular examples of people charging a fair price for their technique, but their actual art skill is very, very inconsistent. The bad thing about furries is that they are easier to draw than humans, and it's easy to make a set of example images that look pretty good, but the artist is incapable of delivering without resorting to specific poses or depending on a limited collection of anatomy references. Yes, this happens with human or mechanical artists, too, but it's nowhere near as bad. Real talent, and especially consistent talent, is very rare in the fandom. I don't feel comfortable paying more than $30, no matter what it is, because I've been sorely disappointed way too many times, even when an artists tries to fix a few things in the sketch. This is not a professional market, even if some rare individuals do genuinely try to behave that way. Nobody wants to pay $50 to $100 to a person without a real business identity.

Overall, I like $10 inks or sketchy color just to see how my characters look in other peoples' styles. As much as I may want a really nice rendition once in a while, there's virtually no artists out there I feel I can trust with more than $40 of my money, even if I have the option of paying half-and-half. In general, even good furry artists are just not that good, which is why I tend to commission a large number of amateur artists just for fun and variety, rather than focus on specific, more detailed works.

“The bad thing about furries is that they are easier to draw than humans [. . .]”

Aye, there’s the rub. Because of this assumption (with which I disagree, incidentally), too many furry artists don’t bother with the fundamentals—life drawing, light, color, perspective, and all the other basic elements that every artist must learn if he or she expects to master any style of art. It’s a form of intellectual laziness, and it is the root cause of the inconsistency of ability. Therianthropic characters by definition are based on the human form, which means it is just as vital for a furry artist to learn how to draw humans well as it is for a non-furry artist.

Roommate  baroncoon works in an art-supply store for a day job. Practically every day he brings home stories of idiocy on the part of customers, prominent among which are attitudes that boil down to “I don’t want to work at it! Just show me a shortcut to artistic brilliance!” Few if any of them are furry artists, so it seems clear that this stance is prevalent today throughout the arts, not just in our community.

“In general, even good furry artists are just not that good [. . .]”

I take issue with this statement as well. Furrydom does not lack professionalism; Fur Affinity alone showcases quite a few exhibition-grade furry artists with good business practices, all of whom have studied the aforementioned basics either formally or through hard unremitting self-study. The problem is that within furrydom there is a wide range of talent, skill, and integrity, and Sturgeon’s Law reigns here as it does in every field of human endeavor. It seems that way because artists are more prominent in and central to the furry community, so they are unusually visible.

All that said, it is true that furrydom is glutted with artists, which means there is lots of supply—but demand is less elastic. That is one element I neglected to mention in my essay, and it does have an influence on prices. Still, the cream should rise to the top, and it should not be constrained artificially by the atypical norms of the furry community.

The problem is that within furrydom there is a wide range of talent, skill, and integrity, and Sturgeon’s Law reigns here as it does in every field of human endeavor.
I'm not too sure about that. Looking back at all the comics in the 90's, it really seemed like even low-end mainstream comics were on par with or better than some of the best furry comics out there. Granted, furry has always been a niche market and much less popular than mainstream stuff (a print run of 3,000 wasn't exactly respectable even back when comics were still selling well), but I was always pretty disappointed with what was available, especially in terms of creativity. Portfolios, in particular, went well beyond Sturgeon's Law.

One weird thing is that people who draw avians and dragons seem to fare better than most.

But, that's just my observation. I love furry art, and it's a lot of fun, but it's not often that I see something that makes me say, "wow, he/she really knows how to draw."

Remember that it’s been more than ten years and as many as twenty since the 1990s, and the furry community has changed enormously in that time—and so have comics. Furrydom is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger now than it was then, based on my memory of the period; comics, on the other hand, have been withering gradually, as an industry, since the middle of the last century.

I don’t think I agree that other comics were superior to furry comics overall, at least not to a large degree. I collected quite a few comics, both furry and not, and kept a finger on the pulse of the industry throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and my observation was that furry comics were competitive, at least generally speaking. I stand by my assertion that Sturgeon’s Law, and the principle behind it, obtain.

As for excellence in furry art, I can say only that I see quite a bit on Fur Affinity that impresses me considerably, in a wide range of styles and subjects. I admit, when there are thousands or tens of thousands of artists posting work, it can be difficult to catch the really good ones going by—but they are there, and there is a sizable absolute number of such artists. Not everyone on the list of people I’m watching falls into that category, but several of them do, and checking their watch-lists is a good way to discover more.

My china painting teacher does wonderful, detailed chiritmas ornaments, which she sells at shows. They are all hand-painted, and are beautiful. It takes her several days to do each one, as each layer of color is fired seperatly.
She charges $15 for them.
I was dumbfounded. 'These are worth so much more...just by the time it took you to make them!' I told her.
She said 'maybe so...but it's painted on a porcelain ball, it looks like a 'craft', not an art, so people won't pay more for it.'
At other art shows, a simple watercolor sells for $100, and a 'craft' item, which is just as beautiful, sells for $15....go figure.

Yes. I think this is a factor in the artificially low prices of furry art—that perceived lack of value, that treatment of it as a craft rather than an art. Your example demonstrates clearly my point in commenting earlier that the problem extends across the art world and is not exclusive to our community.

Your teacher might benefit by displaying a placard showing the steps through which those lovely ornaments must go before they appear magically in front of customers. As an old Dilbert cartoon put it, “Any task I don’t understand must be a simple one.” The best way to combat that is education. Admittedly, designing such a placard is a graphic-design challenge in itself, as I can attest, being a professional graphic designer by trade, but if she has some talent in that art or knows someone willing to create one, it would provide a visual attraction and give people a better appreciation for the work involved.