A Note About Artists to Non-Artists

It's happened again.

I ticked someone off. Shocking, I know.

I got an email earlier in the week from an acquaintance asking me to do some artwork for them. They even wanted to pay me. Great! So how did I queer the deal? I asked about the timeframe. They needed the artwork right away. I couldn't give it to them right away. When I emailed them that information but offered to do it in about a month's time, they didn't bother to reply.

Uhm, hello. A helpful hint to those of you who ask for work from professionals: don't expect them to set aside their day jobs for your stuff. We may appear to do our work effortlessly, but it's still work, dammit. It may seem easy to just draw up some skeleton pirates with a couple of pin-up babes thrown in, but if were truly easy, you'd be able to do it yourself without asking the likes of me to do it for you. It took me years to learn what I have, and I'm still learning, as far as I'm concerned. So it makes me cranky when people assume that this is all easy and fun all the time. I wish it were, though.

I know that other professions get the same type of assumptions. I try to be aware of that, and so keep the asking of favors from such folk to a minimum. Now if they offer, well hey, I'm jumping on that bandwagon so fast I'd disturb the space/time continuum. I'm an opportunist, after all. I just don't want to be an assumptive opportunist!