It's funny when the people asking you to draw their silly idea are thinking they're doing you a favour.

Yes... my mind is blank and I have no ideas of my own. I'm just waiting and hoping for someone to give me their own genius idea so that I can create a masterpiece especially for them. I love to draw anything no matter what it is so it's no problem at all to me to recreate your mental images on paper for you, in fact it would give me orgasmic pleasure and I should pay you for the privilege!

...I'm sure that's the thinking behind most requests. -_-

-------------------
lol!
Coming up with my own ideas is almost NEVER a problem, it's actually getting them out on paper that's the hard part. Doing other people's ideas doesn't make it any easier unless you feel something for the project.

I only draw for free if it's a gift. Otherwise I'll kindly point out that art supplies aren't cheap, that every drawing takes quite a bit of time and effort, and I'll have to charge them for both. I mean, hell, I'm not going through an arts degree just for shits and giggles.

Luckily my friends are also aspiring artists, so we never ask each other for pictures that we can draw ourselves.

My friend: Do you draw?
Myself: No.(he knows very well that I can)
My friend: Well, I've got a bunch of great ideas for this comic I want to do, but I just suck at drawing.
Myself: Practice.

mechanical_lullaby
My friend: Do you draw?
Myself: No.(he knows very well that I can)
My friend: Well, I've got a bunch of great ideas for this comic I want to do, but I just suck at drawing.
Myself: Practice.

^^ Good answer

Christ, I wish I had this problem. I might actually make some money.

When people have wrangled me into doing something for free, I usually tell them the deadline is open.

Which pretty much means never. Suckers!

But seriously, your mom needs to stop turning you out. Are you old enough that you can just not do it? If you are, I recommend a strike.

Rori
When people have wrangled me into doing something for free, I usually tell them the deadline is open.

Which pretty much means never. Suckers!

But seriously, your mom needs to stop turning you out. Are you old enough that you can just not do it? If you are, I recommend a strike.

I try to say no, but she ends up making me do it through guilt. And yes, I'm old enough to refuse, but she's just so darned good at manipulation!

I totally see where you're coming from. I've had loads of experiences with this & in the past I was naive enough to do work for free. As much as you may love to draw each pic takes considerable amount of time & effort & some people just think drawing is nothing more than just a hobby & a waste of time. If I like something I'll put my heart into it without charging a penny, but when you get tons of request to draw random stuff thats when you put your foot down.

You should feel lucky if you're expected to draw for others. My mom is very discouraging when it comes to art no matter how good it looks. She just says it's a total waste of my time and it's bad for my health if I spent too much time sitting down and drawing details.

If people continuously asked me for something, and my art was above average, I'd do it in a heart beat. That's money in my pocket, including recognition. :D

Although, I can definitely see how getting swamped to the point you can't stands no more would be difficult. At that point, I'd just put up a big image saying 'No' and leave it at that. I'd ignore the guilt trips and leave it at that, maybe, and make up for it later with something simple on the side. A person can only go so far with their talents. ^^

I'm usually quite flattered if people ask me for a request, but people always seem to ask when I'm swamped with other commitments lol. I usually don't take requests, I just look for people who want stuff drawn, and if I think what they want is interesting enough, I'll offer to draw it for them. I'm picky, I'll be honest lol.

it honestly doesnt piss me off that bad. no one ever disrespects me when they ask. it's always somethin like "oh i've seen your work from such and such! i would love for you to do picture of blah blah blah for me!" all sortsa people commin up and tellin ya their ideas and wanting you to help em out. kinda feels good. they almost always offer to pay too. only time it starts to get at me is when im already sorta overwhelmed with work, which aint their fault, but hell, its nice to be in demand.

Not really...I suppose it's because the other people I show my artwork to happen to also be artists, and wouldn't demand any art from me unless it were a collab (and those are fun anyways; most of my collab partners have good tastes) or art trade. I've only really had one person demand art from me, and the only reason I didn't do it was because she was being egotistical and demanding (and she flooded my PM box with annoying messages anyways).

Guess I'm lucky all I ever get asked for now are traditional works like still lifes and portraits. I haven't been approached about a comic as an artist since an established writer wanted me to break into independent comics in the 1980s.

But I have done some page layouts and editing of pre-existing art but that's quick and easy and for me totally unlike creating artwork.

What! Bravo can draw? Once upon a time I had promise and talent... but I grew out of it. :(

This post is at least a year old and people are suddenly replying to it again?

Goodness gracious!

Freegurt
This post is at least a year old and people are suddenly replying to it again?

Goodness gracious!

What's the difference between that and suddenly making a whole new topic about something that was done to death a year ago and only lies buried in the archives where you could copy and paste the whole thing just changing the date and no one would know the difference?

People have such short memories and the internet has added greatly to my constant feeling of Deja Vu.

Yeah I never understood the problem either, nor do I get why some users and mods have hissy fits about necroposting.

Genejoke
Yeah I never understood the problem either

I think it's an issue when the thread is about an issue specific to a particular time like - "I have an issue with the page I'm gonna post on Tuesday, any advice?" or some sort of conversation that's specific to the people posting in the thread that was dead and dusted years ago that someone is unaccountably reviving....

But with general topic like this those concerns are irrelevant. ^_^
"necroposting" is a matter of context and situation. This isn't necroposting. :)

Fellow artists, thankfully, rarely ask for me to draw for them. They either prefer their own style or they're better.
Non-artists, however, tend to pester me a good bit if I know them in person. I usually try to entertain them a bit and hope they'll come across a better artist in the future so they'll know what a pro is really supposed to look like.

Wow, nobody ever asks me to draw anything for them. I'm under the impression that they all think that I suck.

I guess there's a downside to having people hound you for your art too. Still, I would think that it beats crippling indifference.

I always hate getting these types of requests. Usually I just throw a number out about how much something will cost and it's over. But unfortunately it's pretty well known at my workplace that I draw and design. My new boss is totally awesome and doesn't believe in making me design for free if the County refuses to pay me for my designs then he doesn't make me do it. However my old boss used to make me design everything for free for weeks on end, run free programs on how to design for people and never once tried to compensate me. I couldn't disagree either because my job considers that insubordination.
Currently i'm frustrated at the the boss under my boss because she complains about how slow I'm drawing an image for her. I told her I have other art commitments and when I did finish her image she didn't like the central part so now i have to redraw.
There's my two cent rant.

Do not work for free.

When I was in college a prof told me he got requests from businesses all the time for artists willing to work to "Get their name out there". Of course, once a student graduates, should he/she try to develop a client base they'll have difficulty because they are now competing with students working to "get their name out".

I've a friend who has been a working professional for 30 years. He's often competing with beginners working "to get their name out there" and "competitions" (read, not having to pay a pro for preliminary sketches etc. just review a bunch of entries and pay less than the market rate). He's worked for a sign company that used unpaid interns rather than salaried artists.

When we work for free we cut our own throats.

Unka John
When we work for free we cut our own throats.

And each others! I once had a discussion on this forum about companies who expect artists to produce work 'on spec' before being offered a job. Most people seemed to think it was acceptible practise - I was even accused of being a whiner for questioning it!

Artists are their own worst enemies.

I don't mostly because I'm aiming to be a professional artist, so I'd like to get paid for what I do. Besides, if I didn't charge for what I did, I wouldn't get the money I needed to advertise my work and get more people interested in paying me to draw stuff.

I was once asked to work on a storyboard for an animated adaptation of a play.

Here's how the whole thing went down: I worked on a storyboard on spec for a very short animated film already. I only did this because I planned on doing voice work, I helped make some changes to the script (I liked the script, but there were some elements added later on), and I knew the guy beforehand.

After showing the previous storyboards off, another person who was at the event this was shown at told me about how someone else he knew wanted him to make an animated version of a local play (the name escapes me at the moment) and he was going to animate it, but needed a good storyboard artist. He said that they couldn't pay right away, but maybe later down the road or something like that. I didn't take it for these reasons: there was no guarantee of payment for these services, I didn't really know the guy all that well, and the storyboarding was going to be for an adaptation of a three-act play, which was a much bigger workload than what I previously worked on (and that previous storyboard was almost 30 pages, give or take). It just wasn't worth my time.

Ironscarf

Unka John
When we work for free we cut our own throats.

And each others!

So true!

elektro
I was once asked to work on a storyboard for an animated adaptation of a play.

This sort of thing is a toss-up.

-On one had it can be very rewarding and lead to really cool things, especially if you're helping out in an artistic project!
-On the other hand, if it's more of a commercial project it's usually pretty bad. You don't know if you're ever going to get paid and unlike an artistic project you get nothing or very little out of it- at least with something artistic there's the feeling of collaboration, mixing of ideas and a bit of inspiration etc.

The other massive disadvantage of free work or spec work on commercially focused stuff is that because yoru work is free it's basically worthless: The person who's asking you to do the work will care a lot less about it because they didn't have to pay for it and if something they like better comes along they'll drop it completely and all your hard work will go for less than nothing. :)


ONLY do free work if the project appeals to you. If not, tell them you charge $300 an hour, with any changes charged at $100 after the first sign off.
That's a decent going rate for this sort of thing.