Why Do People Expect Free Artwork?

People who expect free artwork from you has to be one of the most annoying things that artists have to deal with. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. Someone finds out you’re an artist and they ask, “Oh! Can you draw (insert subject matter here)?”

People are actually shocked to find out that artwork isn’t free. (Photo Credit: 123RF.com Image ID: 91361048 Copyright: Denis Pepin)

What gets me first and foremost is that they find it incredible that you’re a full-time artist (if you’re fortunate enough to do that). As in, how can you survive creating artwork for a living? But then they want you to create free artwork for them! Well, that’s why they find it so hard to believe that full-time artists are a thing. How can anyone survive doing stuff for free full time? And why wouldn’t it occur to them that you’d actually charge?

What gets me next is that they’re actually put off when you tell them you can do the work for a price. I can’t tell you how many people are genuinely shocked when I tell them what my prices are. And trust me, my prices are very competitive. As in the low end of competitive.

Are you rolling your eyes as hard as I am right now?

But apparently drawing and painting isn’t real work and therefore should be created for free?? I have a hard time understanding the logic behind the way these people think. It’s gotten to the point where I have no emotional response when I get asked to draw something. Without batting an eye, I give them my website and tell them they can find my price list there. They hear price list and nine times out of ten, I won’t hear back from them.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s definitely a time and a place for free artwork.

If you’re just getting started and are trying to get your work out there, you might want to do a few for free in exchange for testimonials, for example. That’s totally fine. But you have to draw a definite, hard line when the freebies stop or you’ll be doing them forever.

It still gets my feathers ruffled from time to time when people see the quality of my work and still expect me to work for free. They rant and rave about how amazingly photographic my work is. It’s obviously not my first rodeo. But they still want me to work for free. I go along with the conversation. Yes, I can work from a photograph. Yes, I can do any standard frame size. To that end, I made up some pretty business postcards with the link to my website. I hand one over and tell them they’ll find all the details there.

I let the price list do the talking for me.

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