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This is all absolutely right. I had one person ask if I took requests, but when I informed him/her that I didn't, he/she apologized and moved on - which is totally fine.

There was one person who said, paraphrasing, "tell you what, I'll pay x amount (just a little bit below my actual price) and if I like it, I'll pay x amount (a bit MORE than my asking price". I was like, "I can't really draw for less than my prices. They're already low as it is." This conversation went on for a while and finally he backed off and I got some peace.

Art takes time. I can take hours and hours on a single full-body, fully coloured piece, especially if there's armour and weaponry involved.

I know that this journal was posted in Dec 2013 but it's relevant today, too. There's one recent person offering less than $100 - $200 for 12 characters, photo-realistic, full body. He calls this a 'simple request' even though he's got examples of what kind of art he expects to get with his money (and it is like... hiiigh quality, photo-realism, fully coloured, etc. Top notch stuff). He claims to make way more in a 'few hours' than we artists do in 'a whole day' and yet he 'has a separate budget for art'. If you make so much, why are you offering so little? Even at the top end of his budget, that's less than $20 per character. I don't even charge less than $50 per full body character and I have a realistic ANIME style, not photorealistic style, so it was just outrageous.

Even so, there were artists who were applying to do the job and their art was fantastic and realistic, just like he wanted. It's because of these desperate artists that cheapskates like the Client get away with driving down prices. These artists don't know their own worth, and then cheapskates take advantage of them.