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On Commissions, Compensation, and Contradiction
10 years ago
I talked about this just a bit in my latest journal on DA, but I feel like some of it should be repeated here.
People often complain about the prices that artists charge for their work. Of course it's a shock sometimes to look at how much someone might charge for a piece of artwork. Fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, even five hundred dollars in some scenarios. To some people that seems ridiculous. They might want to buy art but have a smaller price range, or they might be an artist themselves, who can't earn nearly as much from their work.
This needs to be put into perspective. For a lot of artists who charge very high prices, what they earn from that artwork may not just "help" to pay the bills. That $200 commission might be needed to cover their rent for a month, or a car payment, or a dentist's fee. Artists who do commissions regularly oftentimes live off of that money.
Why is their artwork worth so much, you might ask? Some very skilled artists might put ten, twenty, even fifty hours into a piece of artwork. (I've seen some commission pieces that took even longer to make.) That is a significant amount of time--time that could be spent earning money doing other things. For example, I used to charge $35 for a full color picture of two characters with a background. Such a piece of artwork would take 12 hours at a minimum. Doing a bit of mental math, that equals less than $3 an hour. Not even close to minimum wage. I could have earned three times that money spending the same amount of time scrubbing toilets at my old job. And I would hope that my artwork is worth at least as much as a dozen hours of toilet scrubbing.
No, I don't plan on bumping up my prices to match what I earn during my day job. I still live with my family and I have other sources of income, and I like my art to be affordable. But my point is that some artists don't have a day job; doing commissions is their primary, sometimes their only, source of income. Even for those who do get paid elsewhere, it sometimes still isn't worth it to spend their downtime doing work for someone that will only pay them a fraction of what they would earn doing a job that requires much less skill and dedication (i.e. every minimum wage job in the civilized world.)
Also, in regard to the world of furry artwork especially, commissioners ask for weird things. Oftentimes they ask for things that the artist isn't really interested in drawing. Speaking as an artist, drawing something you have no motivation to draw besides the prospect of a $3 hourly wage... It's not fun. It's frustrating, and sometimes turns the artist off from doing any art at all. If you're going to ask someone to draw your six-legged turquoise-and-chartreuse-furred fox-wolf-taur-hybrid fursona with eagle wings and a twelve-foot penis... First of all, the artist has the right to turn you down. Second of all, the artist has the right to charge more if it's more complex than their usual work, or different subject matter. Drawing something different from the norm is oftentimes difficult, and may require extra time and effort than what it takes to draw what they are accustomed to.
The reason I decided to talk about this is because I caught glimpse of someone's journal on here, ranting about how much popular artists charge for their work. The person in question was an artist as well. I'm not sure what encouraged their ill feelings, whether it was jealousy or frustration or what, but they were extremely angry. I commented on the journal to make a couple of the points I've made here. I was just adding to the discussion, to put the situation into a different perspective. I went back to find that the aforementioned member had deleted my comment, un-watched me and blocked me from their page. Now, I'm not so upset about losing a watcher, or about being blocked by someone who clearly has an issue with being slightly contradicted, but this brings me to my final point.
People are way too easily offended. On the internet and in real life. I don't understand what's gotten into the human race. Communities like those on Tumblr and here on Furaffinty are especially terrible about this. The fact that someone says something contradictory to how you feel or believe does not mean that you have a right to be offended. That person is not your oppressor or your enemy. If you're going to cut people out of the picture--like the person who removed me for giving a rational response to their frustrated journal--you have some issues. If you can never cede to someone else's point, no matter how fact-based or sincere it might be, you are behaving like a baby. I'm just being honest here. Part of maturity is being able to live with people who don't always agree with you. The mentality that permeates different cliques today, that anyone who challenges or disagrees with their opinion or lifestyle is being oppressive, judgmental or hateful, is so childish I can't comprehend how it's become so common.
To be fair, there are plenty of judgmental and hateful people out there as well. But more often than not, it's these cliques that become more judgmental and hateful of the people around them. You'll get a little group of people who think or feel the same way about some subject--be it sexuality, identity, or something like commission prices--and they feed off of each other, build up on the things they agree on, their shared interests and feelings. Pretty soon they start believing that everyone else is stupid for not thinking the same way. Even worse, they will start ignoring and blocking anyone who thinks differently, totally shutting out any voices besides their own. Now, this could be a small group of people, or a large community, or just one close-minded individual. No matter how many people are involved, it's ridiculous. You're not being harassed just because someone tells you their opinion, and you're not being oppressed just because another group of people doesn't submit to your inflated sense of superiority in thought. Here's a tip: get over yourself.
At this point, I'm sure that's the key to happiness. Getting over yourself. Stop taking yourself so seriously, and stop reading hate into every contradictory statement from someone else's mouth. I don't care who or what you are--Christian, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, American, Russian, conservative, liberal, butter-side-up or butter-side-down. We're all people, and the world would be so much more peaceful if we didn't get so worked up over petty differences. As a person, I have my own beliefs, my own opinions, my own thoughts and feelings. Everyone does. It's nonsensical to tell yourself that you have the right to be offended when your beliefs clash with someone else's. You don't have to be offended. Again, get over yourself. Stop taking yourself so seriously, and stop interpreting that disagreement as oppression and hatred. If you want to see oppression and hatred, look at the mass murder of Jews between 1941 and 1945. Don't look at your religious neighbor because they won't bake a cake for a gay couple. It is inevitable that ideas and feelings will clash, but keep in mind that freedom goes both ways. Just as you have the right to think what you want to think, so do the people who you feel are harassing you. They might just be disagreeing, and you might have to stop confusing contradiction with oppression.
Anyway, what started as a few thoughts on commission pricing escalated to a bit of a rant, but these are things that need to be said.
Feel free to share your opinions. And don't worry, I'm not going to delete your comments or block you if I disagree. I might parry and riposte, but I'll treat you with the dignity that you deserve as an individual.
-Hawk
People often complain about the prices that artists charge for their work. Of course it's a shock sometimes to look at how much someone might charge for a piece of artwork. Fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, even five hundred dollars in some scenarios. To some people that seems ridiculous. They might want to buy art but have a smaller price range, or they might be an artist themselves, who can't earn nearly as much from their work.
This needs to be put into perspective. For a lot of artists who charge very high prices, what they earn from that artwork may not just "help" to pay the bills. That $200 commission might be needed to cover their rent for a month, or a car payment, or a dentist's fee. Artists who do commissions regularly oftentimes live off of that money.
Why is their artwork worth so much, you might ask? Some very skilled artists might put ten, twenty, even fifty hours into a piece of artwork. (I've seen some commission pieces that took even longer to make.) That is a significant amount of time--time that could be spent earning money doing other things. For example, I used to charge $35 for a full color picture of two characters with a background. Such a piece of artwork would take 12 hours at a minimum. Doing a bit of mental math, that equals less than $3 an hour. Not even close to minimum wage. I could have earned three times that money spending the same amount of time scrubbing toilets at my old job. And I would hope that my artwork is worth at least as much as a dozen hours of toilet scrubbing.
No, I don't plan on bumping up my prices to match what I earn during my day job. I still live with my family and I have other sources of income, and I like my art to be affordable. But my point is that some artists don't have a day job; doing commissions is their primary, sometimes their only, source of income. Even for those who do get paid elsewhere, it sometimes still isn't worth it to spend their downtime doing work for someone that will only pay them a fraction of what they would earn doing a job that requires much less skill and dedication (i.e. every minimum wage job in the civilized world.)
Also, in regard to the world of furry artwork especially, commissioners ask for weird things. Oftentimes they ask for things that the artist isn't really interested in drawing. Speaking as an artist, drawing something you have no motivation to draw besides the prospect of a $3 hourly wage... It's not fun. It's frustrating, and sometimes turns the artist off from doing any art at all. If you're going to ask someone to draw your six-legged turquoise-and-chartreuse-furred fox-wolf-taur-hybrid fursona with eagle wings and a twelve-foot penis... First of all, the artist has the right to turn you down. Second of all, the artist has the right to charge more if it's more complex than their usual work, or different subject matter. Drawing something different from the norm is oftentimes difficult, and may require extra time and effort than what it takes to draw what they are accustomed to.
The reason I decided to talk about this is because I caught glimpse of someone's journal on here, ranting about how much popular artists charge for their work. The person in question was an artist as well. I'm not sure what encouraged their ill feelings, whether it was jealousy or frustration or what, but they were extremely angry. I commented on the journal to make a couple of the points I've made here. I was just adding to the discussion, to put the situation into a different perspective. I went back to find that the aforementioned member had deleted my comment, un-watched me and blocked me from their page. Now, I'm not so upset about losing a watcher, or about being blocked by someone who clearly has an issue with being slightly contradicted, but this brings me to my final point.
People are way too easily offended. On the internet and in real life. I don't understand what's gotten into the human race. Communities like those on Tumblr and here on Furaffinty are especially terrible about this. The fact that someone says something contradictory to how you feel or believe does not mean that you have a right to be offended. That person is not your oppressor or your enemy. If you're going to cut people out of the picture--like the person who removed me for giving a rational response to their frustrated journal--you have some issues. If you can never cede to someone else's point, no matter how fact-based or sincere it might be, you are behaving like a baby. I'm just being honest here. Part of maturity is being able to live with people who don't always agree with you. The mentality that permeates different cliques today, that anyone who challenges or disagrees with their opinion or lifestyle is being oppressive, judgmental or hateful, is so childish I can't comprehend how it's become so common.
To be fair, there are plenty of judgmental and hateful people out there as well. But more often than not, it's these cliques that become more judgmental and hateful of the people around them. You'll get a little group of people who think or feel the same way about some subject--be it sexuality, identity, or something like commission prices--and they feed off of each other, build up on the things they agree on, their shared interests and feelings. Pretty soon they start believing that everyone else is stupid for not thinking the same way. Even worse, they will start ignoring and blocking anyone who thinks differently, totally shutting out any voices besides their own. Now, this could be a small group of people, or a large community, or just one close-minded individual. No matter how many people are involved, it's ridiculous. You're not being harassed just because someone tells you their opinion, and you're not being oppressed just because another group of people doesn't submit to your inflated sense of superiority in thought. Here's a tip: get over yourself.
At this point, I'm sure that's the key to happiness. Getting over yourself. Stop taking yourself so seriously, and stop reading hate into every contradictory statement from someone else's mouth. I don't care who or what you are--Christian, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, American, Russian, conservative, liberal, butter-side-up or butter-side-down. We're all people, and the world would be so much more peaceful if we didn't get so worked up over petty differences. As a person, I have my own beliefs, my own opinions, my own thoughts and feelings. Everyone does. It's nonsensical to tell yourself that you have the right to be offended when your beliefs clash with someone else's. You don't have to be offended. Again, get over yourself. Stop taking yourself so seriously, and stop interpreting that disagreement as oppression and hatred. If you want to see oppression and hatred, look at the mass murder of Jews between 1941 and 1945. Don't look at your religious neighbor because they won't bake a cake for a gay couple. It is inevitable that ideas and feelings will clash, but keep in mind that freedom goes both ways. Just as you have the right to think what you want to think, so do the people who you feel are harassing you. They might just be disagreeing, and you might have to stop confusing contradiction with oppression.
Anyway, what started as a few thoughts on commission pricing escalated to a bit of a rant, but these are things that need to be said.
Feel free to share your opinions. And don't worry, I'm not going to delete your comments or block you if I disagree. I might parry and riposte, but I'll treat you with the dignity that you deserve as an individual.
-Hawk
As for the easily offended people.. i think its because they get away with being offended. When i was little if someone said something i didn't like, I was told to ignore it and go on with my life. and I did. I'm fine :P But today if someone says something you don't like, you are pretty much encouraged to argue with them, call them names and tell them how wrong you think they are. if someone says you are wrong to do that then they are even more wrong to critisize you.
Its all just very stupid..
That's true. They act offended, throw a fit and everyone who agrees with them pats them on the back. Why can't we all just be friends? :P