Friendly reminder to sum everything up: before you tell an artist they're overcharging, consider the fact that, in all likeliness, they're undercharging. A lot.

Sketches for €20? Underpriced. Full color pieces at €50? Underpriced. 100x100 pixels at €120? Still underpriced.

Art is usually done as freelance work. So whatever salary you have in mind to be able to live comfortably: you need to earn twice that, before taxes.

So, let's say you need €1500 to live comfortably. That means you'll need to earn at least €3000, before taxes.

And you have around four weeks to earn that, with 40h each week (if we don't count overtime, which we all know artists still regularly do).

160h to make €3000.

That means that, in order for JUST my working hours to be compensated, I'd need to charge at least €20/h.

Not even counting art materials, marketing, time spent answering emails. Just purely working, nothing else!

And yes, this is absolutely a hill I will die on.

Quite a few people don't seem to want to pay the damn artist, or value their work.

But they're more than happy to consume art in the form of books, music, movies, series, theatre productions, festivals, museums or social feeds.

Guess what happens when you systematically underpay artists & then tell them to get "a real job"? They stop creating art. Congrats.

Because I sure as hell didn't have time or energy to create pieces while working "real job". There are far and few between who still manage that.

And if art is so not worth the price, then I implore you:

- cancel your Netflix sub
- don't go to concerts / movies
- burn your books
- don't listen to music

Lock yourself in a room with white walls. Congrats. You now have a life without art, which you find useless anyway.

And now I'm going to grab myself a nice cup of coffee & create some new art.