This is serious, kids. But no one has ever told me that.
I came across this wonderfully written article by
kirawra,
"The Truth about Selling Fanart."
Absolutely read it yourself if you never have.
I cringed, I sighed, I came up with justifications, but I just can't do it. Unfortunately I will not be selling my Rapunzel drawings online or in person, now or in the future.
"But Irina," you say, "don't let that stop you! Tons of artists sell fan art everyday! Some even get famous for it!"
Yeah, I know that. I've even bought fan art over the years (without being aware of the above), of course. And there are absolutely artists here and elsewhere who get a lot of business from their fan art.
No one told me to "stop." Not the Society6 staff, who possibly saw me uploading my fan art for sale-- and they haven't told others, considering other fan art works are up for sale there right now. DeviantArt itself didn't flag me down when I put up links to the society6 store. None of my friends told me to stop, and none of the people who viewed my art and saw the link to my shop told me to stop. Instead, I'm going to tell myself to "stop."
It doesn't mean it doesn't suck. Having spent time and effort making a work that happens to be fan art, one would like to get compensation for their work (except, you'd be doing it at the expense of someone else's compensation...sooo....) And it definitely shuts down one avenue of sharing your fan art with the larger fan base. And again, there are artists out there who will continue to not give a rat's butt about it, or are still oblivious to the laws, who are going to gain from business that I could technically still participate in.
But I just can't sell (or buy) fan art, knowing it isn't right.
So I won't. All of that puts a pretty big damper on even creating fan art, though. For now. But once I get over my butt-hurtedness, I will probably keep making it -just not selling it- because when I'm a fan of something I AM A FAN OF SOMETHING and you can't stop me from drawing it. But it'll be alongside a main focus on creating original works- which I can and will sell.
Which *is* one last thing I want to touch on: the above article ends with telling us nothing is as "beautiful/wonderful, etc" as original art. I do not like creating a hierarchy of original = high art/fan art = low art. Slapping the ruler of "worthlessness" on the hand of fan art is not the way to dissuade people from selling it. Just because fan art has certain legal limitations, doesn't make it less beautiful. Fan art brings a lot of joy, specific joy, to its audiences. Original art does so in a different way. I wouldn't view someone's art as less talented or worth my time if it is fan art- even if that is all they make. Mustering up the confidence to make art and show it to other people is tough enough in the first place- so let's not go around putting emotional-value price tags.
And, let's celebrate the ways we CAN appreciate fan art! As long as no money is involved, there are many ways to collect and view it- on tumblr, in groups on DA and elsewhere, perhaps in an artist-made book or in person, if you're lucky!
P.S. There is one thing I WILL do- as the article above says, you can try to get copyright permissions to sell. There's no reason for me NOT to try doing that, and so I will probably try. Who knows, maybe someone will be able to -legally- have a Rapunzel tote bag from me one day.
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