We must CONSUME the stuff you make—but we have contempt for you (creativity rant).

The BBQ Pit
21

I rarely do paid work anymore. Time was I used to do some drawings around school, usually pretty simple ones, usually for around $10 or so (back then, it was worth the cost). And I’d often give some pictures out to friends (one girl, whom I had the hots for, was given over fifty of these over a two-year period… how stupid of me).

Nowadays? I’ve lost at least three “friends” because I wouldn’t do work for them for free. One woman (a bit of a nut) wanted me to do illustrations for her trippy children’s story about horses… I told her I’d look at it and “see what I can do”. Well, six months later, I only had a couple ideas (I needed about 25 drawings), gave those to her, and told her I was out of ideas. She threw a bit of a fit, and held this passive-aggressive bitterness towards me ever since.

Another guy wanted me to edit his script about Joan of Arc. Again, I told him I’d look at it and “see what I can do”. The script was a mess… terrible dialogue, mish-mash story, pathetic character development (although the music to the play was good… the guy was a musician). I told him that it was too much work for me to handle… too big a project. I haven’t talked to him since. He’s probably still holding a grudge.

It’s incidents like these that’ve made drawing more and more difficult for me over the years. I used to pump out new drawings every day… now, it’s more like once per month. I just got so tired of people seeing my work and asking, “Ooh, make me one!” and then getting mad when I told them that it’s not that simple (well, sometimes, they’d be content with just a photocopy, but often, they’d want me to re-copy the picture, only bigger. “How hard can it be? Just copy it!”). Sigh.

So now I’m extremely possessive of my art book (which I carry everywhere), and only show it to people that I trust. And people have a hard time understanding why I rarely let people look through it… although sometimes my friends just insist and show it to their friends, and, well, I then have to sit through half an hour of “Oh, you’re so good! Draw me something! No, draw ME! RIGHT NOW!!!”

Double sigh.

22

I still do drawings for “friends” on request. I just include subtle/well camouflaged phalluses (phallusi?). I don’t have too many requests these days for some reason.

23

It isn’t all about greed; it’s about liability, too. If you meet a lawyer at a cocktail party and ask a question, which is answered without being researched, a lot of people will assume that it’s valid legal advice and rely on it. Even without money exchanging hands, it’s possible to enter into an attorney/client relationship. The idea is not to enter into such a relationship unintentionally to avoid malpractice.

24

A lady walked into a fashionable salon looking for a new hat. “Pierre,” she said to the owner, “I simply must have the most stylish hat you have. Give me something new and exotic.”

Without saying a word, Pierre cut off six feet of ribbon from a spool, and began to work. He deftly twisted, folded, and tied the ribbon into a fabulous hat. The lady put it on and was delighted. “How much?” she asked.

Pierre replied, “For the hat, $100.”

The lady was shocked. “A hundred dollars for six feet of ribbon? Unbelievable!”

Pierre shrugged, lifted the hat from the lady’s head, and unravelled it just as easily as he had made it. He handed her the length of ribbon and said, “The ribbon, madam, is yours for free.”

25

I like that story, Mr2001. :slight_smile:

Yep, many stories here, many similar experiences. PoorYorick’s tale especially hit home: the attitude that because you love what you do, you don’t “deserve” to get paid much.

Sadly, that’s a belief that is all too common. I’ve even seen it on these boards. “They’d do it anyway, so why do they gripe about getting paid?”

Depressing, I tell you, depressing!

26

The most depressing fucking thing is hand-made objects with the label ‘These plates are handmade. It is part of the charm that each is slightly different,’ because someone complained that they weren’t identical. THEN WHY DID THEY BUY SOMETHING HANDMADE IN THE FIRST PLACE??

27

I agree that this phenomenon is not specific to art – some people are cheap with respect to any kind of service.

Just yesterday, a guy called my office who’s being investigated for taking part in an embezzlement scheme. I told him that if I represented him, it would be at least $150/hr. He told me he had thought it would be free since he got be through the bar referral service. I said no, if he wanted free representation, call the legal aid society. He told me that he’d used legal aid lawyers in the past and wasn’t happy with the representation he’d received. :rolleyes:

What’s nice about being an attorney though, is that in most cases my fee is a percentage of the money I collect for my clients. If they don’t win their case, they don’t owe me anything. So it’s a lot easier for clients to believe that the service I provide has value.

But a few times a month I have to give someone the “Look ma’am, I do this to MAKE MONEY” speech.

28

I agree that artists, writhers and other creative sorts get shafted a lot by customers, but you gotta understand that at the low end, business people are scum and will screw anybody.

True story – back in the late 70s and early 80s, before desktop PCs came along but after Compugraphic typesetting machines dropped in price so individuals could buy them, a lot of former typesetters for printers took out loans, bought Compugraphics typesetting machines and started independent typesetting businesses from their homes.

At that time, my wife got a job as an art director for a local real estate publisher. It only lasted two, three months, because my wife discovered what the publisher was doing was changing typesetters each month and stiffing the typesetter on her bill.

Her trick was that her publication demanded that the typesetter set a lot of very tightly formatted type – lots of changes in font size, font type, layout, etc. for some ad pages that made up the bulk of her pub. But she never told the typesetter about this when she solicited the work, only how many pages it was and how big the pubilcation was and the average word count per page. So of course the typesetter’s bid was wildly inaccurate. Citing this inaccuracy, the publisher refused to pay. Anyone. Ever.

My wife, who had been ripped off on freelance graphics jobs by various publishers, quit the job, not wanting to become a “partner in crime” although the publisher had apparently gotten away with this shit for years. She was taking advantage of all the freelance typesetters who didn’t know they were being systematically screwed. She also called the typesetters she had dealt with and told them what was really going on.

Such publishers regard artists, writers and such as useful idiots, and their first instinct is to rip them off. But that doesn’t mean they’re not ripping off non-creative types, too. Lotta fraud and deceit out there, especially at the low end of the biz world, the one that doesn’t make the cover of Fortune, etc.

29

I guess I am a more generous artist than most (or possibly dumber). I do sell a lot of my artwork for not trivial sums of money, but I also am quite liberal with the doling out of cartoons and little sketches on envelopes and replies to snail mail I get. HOWEVER, I never do these kinds of things for people that ask for them. They are always meant as a surprise. Occasionally I will do a sketch or something that I decided I don’t want to post on my site, and end up giving it away to one of my friends, but I can’t say that I’ve had anyone demand anything of me or get resentful if I didn’t want to give them free work. My general rule is that if you aren’t sleeping with me, you don’t have free art priveledges, and if you aren’t my boyfriend I’m not sleeping with you. So I had no problems when the current bf excitedly drew me an idea for a painting and asked if I would use it (he didn’t want the art, just that I would make it.)

I also bought a little leather book that I paste most of the sketches from my LiveJournal in, because he asked for me to fill a book for him, but I’ll be lucky if the thing is filled up by Christmas. I don’t use sketchbooks much.

I have had a few people bitch about my prices, but I generally ignore them. You couldn’t nicely custom frame a $10.00 poster from Walmart for what I charge for some of my originals (already framed, mostly, to boot.)

This is why my commission rates are generally double what I average hourly on stuff I do on my own.

30

A once had a friend who, after I gave her a portrait of herself for christmas, must have decided that art was an inexpensive, effortless gift- every holiday that came around, she’d bug me for another piece of art. Of course art is inexpensive and effortless, if you get someone else to do it for you for free!

The first (and last) time I did a piece for her, I did this page-sized scene in colored pen & ink, an imaginative piece that had some sort of significance for her relative, I dunno. It took me a good amount of time. Since her specifications were so exact and numerous, I did some minor mistake, making the shirt a wrong color or something. Anyway, she looks at it, mentions the small inaccuracy, looks up at me, and SERIOUSLY asks me to RE-DO the whole thing! I would have torn the “flawed” version out of her hands and ripped it apart if I hadn’t spent so much time on the damn thing! I told her I didn’t have enough time to re-do it, and she gave it as the gift anyway.

What an ingrate! (This the same girl who asked me to do something in colored pencil, I told her I wasn’t used to working in colored pencil and I liked ink better… next holiday, she buys me a few colored pencils and then makes another request…! It was like she was putting quarters into an art machine!)

31

As an engineer, I don’t get anybody asking me to do anything for them. Most people have no real concept of what I do other than some vague sense that it “involves building things”, and say “I’m sure that’s nice” when I tell them what I am. Then they proceed to tell me about how their high-school drop-out son is an “engineer” too, because he successfully body-puttied a big rust hole on his '64 Dodge Polara…

And males who are into DIY projects or working on their cars or potentially putting together a deck with a Safety Factor of 0.1 never ask me anything, because they “already know everything” and don’t need my input. I almost feel like they’re ready to pat me on the head and send me off to play. :rolleyes:

My favourites are the more “liberal” people I know IRL who tell me things like “I’m sure you’re proud of…well, whatever it is that you do, but my daughter is an artist, and she does things that help people and make our world a better place…maybe someday you could be an artist too, and make a difference.” Yup - now there’s an enlightened attitude for you, but unfortunately all too common. I guess that’s because everyone knows what a “painting” or “cat dung sculpture” is, but few understand how their car or refrigerator or VCR works (which is ALWAYS FLASHING 12:00) any more than the ancient Yak Herders of Asscratchistan would.

32

A friend of mine recently introduced me to her then-boyfriend: “You’ll like him. He’s into They Might Be Giants and he’s a programmer too.” So we went to visit him at his job… at the Arby’s drive-through. I guess roast beef sandwiches are programmable now.

33

To heck with band names; I wanna see these guys win the gold in bobsledding at the next Olympics.

34

yosimitebabe,

Excellent topic. People don’t seem to be able to take into account the years of education, the cost of equipment, and just the years of practice that it takes to become good at something.

When people ask me to do something for free, I generally counter with " No problem, you are mechanic right? Would you mind doing my brakes this weekend for free?" That seems to get the message across.

35

That’s not true. Remember when you helped me with my Honors Chem essay? Good times, good times.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I don’t have tihs problem, as I don’t have any marketable skills that people want for free. However, I will always keep the sentiments expressed in this thread in mind. I don’t know if I’ve ever been guilty of that type of assholery, but I do know that I never want to be guilty of that type of assholery.

36

If you’d finished it and sold it to those few others, when the first guy got word how great your program was and came crawling back to you, you could’ve said:

“For you, only $300!”

:smiley:

37

Good replies, everyone! Yeesh! People have a lot of nerve, don’t they?

Oh my goodness, I’ve never heard such a thing. I do get some respect and compliments (“Oh, you’re so talented!”–bless their hearts) but, as I outlined in the OP, I also get no respect. A lot of that.

I remember telling a coworker once about how I was selling some of my pottery in a local shop. I had priced it quite reasonably, I thought (it was a kind of pottery that didn’t take me very long to do, thankfully). I said to this lady, “Why, my prices are pretty low. They’re not much higher than the prices for the mugs at K-Mart!” This co-worker wrinkled her nose, and looked at me with doubt. “No, surely your pottery isn’t as good as the pottery at K-Mart!” she said. She simply could not grasp the concept that handmade was generally considered to have more “value”, and that many people held a preference for handmade pottery (and they’d pay more for it). She just couldn’t get it.

38

Huh, try being some kind of finance professional. You get it all. And, because to most people “finance” is “finance”, you get it about every kind of finance there is, regardless of your own area of expertise.

You get the questions. What should I do with my pension? What insurance should I buy? What investment product should I buy? There are some people I dread visiting. I just know that the accounts and legal correspondance are going to emerge at some stage. At least you presumably enjoy drawing on some level or other.

You get the dismissals. Insurance companies just do this. Traders just do that. It’s all a bunch of baloney. You guys know nothing.

And most of all, you get the self-proclaimed expert espousing his genius from the top of the nearest available soapbox. The interest rates are going up. The interest rates are going down. Insurance is a con. Pensions are pointless. This or that share is going to be a winner. Surrender values on their life policy are a rip-off. Equitable Life collapsed because of this reason. Highway collapsed because of that reason. You can beat the mortgage companies because of this. I should not have my chosen mortgage product because of that.

What can you do? Only start with a disclaimer that nothing I say should be taken as advice and that they should see an independent financial adviser before making any decisions, explain carefully any areas of expertise (and, more importantly, lack thereof) and carefully insert a calculator sideways up their rectum.

One of those big desk-calculators too. Fnarr.

pan