Illustrators

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How do you justify getting paid for what you do?
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I think this question is possible to bring a lot of lawyers and socialists involved. It’s interesting. Maybe we can ask why anyone of the working people gets paid. In the very early days workers got paid by food and cloth. A very simply reason, so they could fulfill their basic human needs and live. Nowadays we are paid by a substitute item called “money”. No matter we make millions a year or only hundreds a year, the very basic purpose of owning money is to survive. Apart from all other “needs” we are having these days. People work and get paid. It’s conmen logic.

Now, why illustrators get paid?
I work part-time as a barista in a café. Customers buy our coffee; they consume our beans, milk, water, machine, electricity and human labor. After they getting a cup of coffee they give us what has cost us and plus some profit. Making coffee is a recognized service, so people are paying this service.

People have hundreds of reason to buy a piece of art. Maybe just want to decorate their house, maybe it’s for a CD cover to help them to sell albums. Artists spend paints, paper, pencils, and hours in front of computers, their creativity, passion and skills to produce artwork. The purpose is to serve the person who buys the work. And that a person pays the artists for what has cost them plus some profit. Will you go to a café saying to them “You guys make the best coffee in town and I really appreciate it. But I don’t think there’s any reason I should pay you for your work.”

Let me quote a verse from the bible “Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.” Romans 4:4

It’s the creative service we provide. We produce products, not just fancy illusions in the air. That’s why I’m very proud to say I’m getting paid by illustrating. Unless someone still thinks artists are not working.

Dennis Juan Ma (more answers by this person)
Freelance Illustrator
Dennis Juan Ma
http://www.whoisjuan.com