thegoombs:

owlygem:

cautioncat:

owlygem:

feeling very disheartened today. 

There have been job adverts for local concept artist positions to which I apply and get an eager response saying they love my work and want to talk more. 

only to be told that it’s not paid work.

it keeps happening and I’m just regretting ever choosing this career path when an artist’s time is not valued at all. 

Why in the fuck do people think art should be free? You go to school for it, you can get a degree with it. 

So fucking stupid.

I saw something either in a book or online recently that said something a long the lines of:

“Never take free work as exposure is worth a lot less than the time you put into the work you are doing for free. and you can bet that everyone else involved in the project (The writers, director, film crew and even the caterers) are getting paid, you deserve the same and never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

We all get that pang of guilt of “OH MAN that could've led to something big” and hey, if its like a try out to see if you can do the job and requires one small design, sometimes it is worth sticking your neck out and taking a risk, (I had a really good contract job last year from that), but you can never be expected to do an entire project for free. as you say, we spend years honing our skill and just because its something we enjoy, doesn’t mean we can afford to do it for free. enjoyment isn’t paying the bills and mortgage :’(

We live in a society that takes creativity for granted. Few people outside of creative fields understand the time and experience it takes to create something worthwhile. And I am getting fed up with it.
Artists, writers, musicians and creators of all talents deserve to be paid for their work. Businesses need to stop taking advantage of the creators who make people even bother to look at their business in the first place. And to that end we need to stop supporting people who under-pay artists.

This idea that the starving artist is the default standard for our industry is such a backwards notion. It makes many artists, myself included, fall into the mindset that we deserve sub-par treatment for some reason. That we deserve to be broke and mistreated by businesses because we followed our passions. But no. None of us just happened to pick up a pencil and be a master draftsman from the start. We all had to learn and hone our skills. We had to learn how to create what we wanted to see/hear/experience, and businesses should not take advantage of us for having a skill that they need and don’t have.

I know I’m just repeating points now, but from one artist to another we need to stomp this idea that professional businesses can get art for free. There is art that is a gift, and there is art that is a product, and if someone expects a product to sell to other people, then they better expect to pay for a product.