Quick pen sketch Originally uploaded by O. Douglas Jennings
While sitting at my desk in my office where I work as a graphic artist, I was waiting for a software update to install itself on my computer. To fight boredom, I took up the challenge to make a sketch while the little progress bar on my screen filled up with shimmery color from left to right. On some yellow card-stock paper that I keep handy on my desk, I practiced drawing a couple of faces with one of my favorite pens. A one-off doodle, I Instagramed it and shared it on my Tumblr and Flickr accounts as well. According to Instagram’s terms of use, they now have unlimited rights to that image for all time to use wherever and whenever they desire. I technically still own the copyright but have unconditionally given free rights for others to use it on social media.
Illustrator and Designer, Joseph P. Schmelzer, at a recent meeting of the Chicago Area chapter of the Graphic Arts Guild said, "The worst thing an artist does is undervalue their work….Don't give away your stuff".
Why is it so easy for artists to give their work away? Even before the advent of social media, artists like me could hardly resist giving away the fruits of their creativity. Looking back on my early days as an aspiring artist I was just so excited that I could make art! All concern for the actual artwork was secondary…or even tertiary! ! Once I finished a drawing after a rapturous experience of watching my hands, as if by magic, create images and stories and characters on a page, I didn't care what happened to the art. I wanted to go to the next inspiration --the next blank page and the opportunity to lose myself in the creative process again. And as is common in most young artists’ stages of social development, the attention, praise and admiration is often, it seems, payment enough.
I found that my art skills were like a super power. My young peers (and even some authority figures) treated me as if I was a type of wizard. Teachers loved how I'd incorporate art in my assignments. I gravitated to the school newspaper and yearbook staff. My skills seemed to open doors. As just one example, my P.E. Coach allowed me to skip class to drive his Mustang to his nearby house and create a Mural for an Amway party he was hosting. I worked in his garage and his wife brought out lemonade and cookies for me while I worked. I was so naive and exploitable. It’s like being in a dysfunctional relationship that is so eloquently expressed in Janis Joplin’s refrain in one of her signature songs: “Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!”
My sophomore year in high school, during the time at the end of the year when all the students signed each others' year books (I don't think that is done in school much anymore), I would fill several pages of friends' yearbooks with full-color detailed art of super-heroes. One student, Jeff, a senior who actually was not in my immediate circle of friends, gave me his yearbook to sign. I did an entire detailed comic page that depicted him coming into the high school and being given a surprise graduation party by the Avengers super-heroes. I was always giving away posters, comics, sculptures and other items that featured my art.
But, hopefully, we all must grow up eventually and make a living. And that means not working (drawing, creating something of value) and giving it away for free --at least not most of the time. Thanks in large part to the Graphic Artists Guild, I’m slowly become more aware and educated in the proper use of the power of art as intellectual property and the important strategies one needs to employ to safeguard my control of my work. I don’t have it all sorted out yet. And I expect I will still make mistakes. But being able to avail myself, as a member, of the educational resources on the Guild website and in the Graphic Artists Guild’s Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines regarding copyright law and other professional matters is terrifically empowering --not so unlike the great feeling I got when I began creating art years ago.
2019 Update -- Excellent Twitter Feed on Artists' Worthiness to be paid for their art:
✨Deserving artists ✨ pic.twitter.com/0S99mNZtD5— Kéké 🥖 (@Kekeflipnote) May 24, 2019
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