Supporting Human Artists

There’s the soft ‘ding’ of a notification on Facebook Messenger.

I get a lot of those, it’s one of the hazards of trying to make a living as an artist, but the name makes me smile when I see it.

Unlike the multitudes asking me to work for free, or for The Exposure, Natasja is my favourite kind of client. Pays promptly, asks to pay in instalments if she needs to, and always has interesting ideas for me to sketch.

I charge a considerable amount per drawing, but she appreciates the value of good art, and the fact that she’s purchasing not just the picture, but full rights to the image. Illustrations, book-covers, fan merchendice... I charge so much because I can't profit off the image in the future.

It's nice to encounter someone who doesn't complain about that.

I know that her income from her books isn't high, even if it's more than what many Independant authors make. I know she's good for it, though, so I'm ok waiting for her to deposit the profit from a bookstall before she pays, if she needs to.

The image she sends me this time is a girl on a pile of books, reading. Rough and unpracticed, but that's what she has me for. It's quickly followed by a block of text, detailed instructions for what she'd like the image to actually look like.

This is going to be fun to draw, I can tell. That's another good thing about Natasja's requests: there's always a detailed description of what she wants, but enough flexibility for me to be creative. Ideas are already tugging at the back of my mind, demanding to be let loose.

She's got another bookstall coming up, so she requests installments for this cover. I send the quote, and a few seconds later it's paid. Another ding, and I have a date for when she'll have the spare cash to pay the rest.

Making a living as an independant artist isn't easy, even living somewhere where a single completed picture, once you convert from US dollars, pays my rent for a week. There's still all the people who accuse me of using AI in my work (it's the hands, they're my least favourite thing to draw, even if I really should practice them more), all the ones who tell me that it's time to give up and get a 'real' job, all the people who want a discount because they could "get the same thing from Midjourney for free"... it's nice to know that there are still people out there willing to support human artists trying to ekk out a living without having their work scraped and mutilated by a computer.

AI had its place, but that place was in editing and spell-checking, or when I had to write emails in a second or third language, which happened a lot more often that people in Monolingual countries might think. English grammar was a pain in the backside, and nothing would convince me otherwise. What did America have against the letter U, anyway, compared to the Commonwealth English-Speaking countries?

I put down my phone and went to check the charge on my Digital Art pad. Time to get started.

Quality work meant a growing audience, and a growing audience meant potentially more people willing to pay me for art.

Supporting human artists was a small kindness, but even the little things made a bigger impact than many others realised.

If you want to commission Keni, her Facebook page is here.

Fortuitous Timing on this one, now that NaNoWriMo just created another scandal for itself over it's stance on Generative AI, calling the pushback against such programs classist and ableist.

Speaking as someone with a background in Disability... NaNoWriMo is full of crap, and I'll be writing another article on the topic in the next few days..