Qinni on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/qinni/art/Dear-ppl-who-asks-others-to-draw-for-exposure-442319405Qinni

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Dear ppl who asks others to draw for 'exposure':

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on my tumblr.

Edit: for actually industry pricing for freelancers and graphic artists, this is a good book to refer to:  The Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook i have freelance friends who use this book and say it's really good, so....yeah, it's probably a good investment if you're starting out. i totally forgot about it before i saw that tumblr post, sorry~!)

for anyone still thinking it's okay to underpay or not pay artists because they're "new", please take a look at this.

Some excerpts include (quotes are the excerpts, comments are mine):
"simple illustration - Ext. Budget $5.00" - meaning that even if you spend 1 hour on a simple but finished, professional illustration, you'd only be making $5.00/hour.
"Children's Book Cover Illustration - 2 illustrations that are 18x18x in full colour; Est. Budget $25" - so even if you spend a very short 2.5 hours per cover painting, you're still getting paid $5.00/hour. But realistically we all know full-colour illustrations take longer than that so let's not kid ourselves and price it at $2.00/hour. Slave labor ftw :dummy:
"Cartoon Children's Illustrator - $70.00" - oh, that doesn't look ba- oh wait... "19 pages full colour plus cover." ....20 illustrations for $70, making it an average of $3.50 per illustration. awesome.

here's some more links: 
"A Note to you Should you be thinking of asking me to write for you for free"
"no spec work!"


I know I wrote a little much, but if you have time, please read :).

I feel like this is important because this whole attitude is the same that lets people steal other people's art and print it on phone cases, posters, tshirts and more. They don't view us as hard-working people but more like machines that just churn out art. Not to mention it kind of screws the whole industry value up....(like, why would they pay for you to draw anything if someone else can do it for free?). This means the whole market value of art goes way down. It also let's people feel like they have the right to cuss me out when I refuse.....

This was originally done because I saw ridiculous people comment on tumblr and drawing ridiculous comic response is a way I cope, but then I realized that there are more of these people on dA; in fact, I often get notes about doing projects for free because of possible "exposure" i would get (not to mention those contests that hardly pays the winner anything to design a t-shirt or whatnot), and I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

Some people don’t feel artists deserve compensation seeing as it’s not as “essential” as, say, doctors or plumbers….Of course, then there are those who think that artists don’t even deserve recognition, let alone payment, so they take away artist sources and comments, thinking that artists live off of the euphoria of drawing alone (and of course if we complain about it, we’re being selfish bitches or spoiled brats). 

Yes, recognition is amazing, but we also don’t want to work for free (unless it’s something you just REALLY want to do of course and isn’t looking to buy food with recognition coupons). There are plenty of great companies and people who hire artists, and these hired paid artists get plenty of recognition.

Also, Stephen Silver’s video on this is pretty great so take a look if you haven’t yet.


:bulletred: Please note: I don’t mean to say you shouldn't ever draw for anyone for free evar ever, but you deserve to be paid. Your art has value, and more importantly, your artistic skills have value and people should not expect it for free

This also is pretty good/funny: Should I work for free? a flow cart 

ps. Psst, here's a secret....the payout "recognition" and "exposure" is a lie 99.5% of the time. :)

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ken1171's avatar

So true, and this is not unique to the art community. As a programmer, I have seen people offering to do it for free, which depreciates the profession and creates situations like this.