That last post was entirely the result of my reaction to a job listing on guru.com in which a potential "employer" wanted someone to do 15 illustrations for a childrens book, and was going to pay no more than 100$ - which breaks down to roughly 6.67$ per finished piece, and if you think of it in hourly wages.... Normally an illustration takes longer than an hour, and that's not even taking into account initial sketches and revisions.
Even speeding through it - say 2 hours on initial sketches, and if they got approved, maybe 2 hours per finished illustration (once again, we're rushing this), and perhaps another 4 hours spent on revisions, because there are always revisions. If you call the whole project 36 hours of work, it breaks down to about 2.75$/hour.
This guru post wasn't anything new, or unusual - they pop up daily: "I need a book illustrator, but I don't have much/any money. But it will be a great opportunity for your work to be shown!"
And it gets a little tiresome to see...
Art isn't magic. It doesn't spring fully formed from an artists head and magically appear on paper - perfectly how the client imagined it in every way. We aren't psychic - there's a lot of guessing and research that goes into artwork of all kinds. It's worth considering.
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