The fine cartoonist Stan Sakai offers us what we've all wanted for some time now: A photo of Sergio Aragonés on a Segway.
Also on his weblog — here, in fact — Stan complains rightly about something that more and more artists are rightly complaining about. They do a free autograph drawing for an alleged fan at a convention…and it's for sale on eBay before the week is out. In this case, Stan did a lovely sketch for someone who, I suppose, swore it would be a treasured keepsake…and Stan personalized it to the guy, which you'd think would make it easier to keep, harder to sell. What the guy did was to add some clumsy lines to the art, in effect changing the drawing, in order to cover over the personalization so he could sell it. See that black scribble above Stan's name in the drawing? I guess it's supposed to simulate grass…but Stan didn't put it there. Someone else did to cover over the personalization.
Above is a sketch that Sergio did at the same convention. It was offered on eBay by the same seller. What he did in this case was to crop the top of the drawing. Sergio put in a thought balloon with the name of the person who requested the piece and the seller cut it off.
This is crummy. Sergio, Stan and other professionals do not go to conventions to give people things they can turn around and sell. Another artist in a similar situation wrote me the following in a recent e-mail…
I don't know what to do about this. I like doing little sketches for my fans. The guys selling the sketches on eBay are not fans, or at least not the kind of fans I want to do sketches for. I can only do a limited number at a convention and when I'm doing a drawing for the eBay whore, I'm not doing one for someone who will treasure it and frame it and appreciate it.
I think people also don't realize that I draw for a living and that I often pay my own way to a convention. I don't always expect to make a lot of money selling sketches and art at a con but I'd like to make back what it cost me to get there. I lost money going to the last few cons and some of that was because of my generosity and doing free sketches. Even if I make money, I'd like it to go to something like The Hero Initiative or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund instead of some eBay seller who fibbed to me to get me to do him a freebee. My wife would like the money to go to paying down our Visa bill.
So I don't know what to do. I'm torn between wanting to be nice to my fans and feeling used by the eBay whores. It's not a good feeling.
No, I'll bet it isn't…and I don't have a real answer to it except to charge everyone at least a few bucks for sketches…and if you feel mercenary about pocketing the cash, give it to The Hero Initiative or the C.B.L.D.F. or some other worthy cause. Even that only goes so far and some artists who've tried it have decided that still doesn't filter out the undeserving. Sergio and Stan are among the many who are opting to simply not do free sketches any longer…or at least to do them more sparingly. It's still kind of a lose/lose situation, especially for the fans who, but for the pirates, would go home with a lovely momento of the convention and a little piece of a favorite cartoonist.