After some debate, I’ve uploaded some of my watercolor angel images to iStock! You will soon be able to find my Christmas images available on iStock as well. You can view my iStock portfolio here:
I thought about whether or not to sell my illustrations as stock for a long while, but was hesitant at first. I’ve seen a lot of ire from other artists about how allowing people to buy ready made art devalues the Illustration industry as a whole. If companies can go download art, why would they hire an artist at all?
I decided to go ahead for multiple reasons, the biggest being that I believe a company will know best when it’s worth the money to pay an artist to make custom images for their products. It shows time and care for that product when they hire an artist to create a unique visual representation that cannot be found elsewhere. There is a demand for this kind of custom work and product representation. It may be less than it was before the advent of stock illustration, but as they say, evolve or die! Stock illustration is firmly entrenched in the industry now and there’s not much that can be done about it.
Also, offering stock is a nice way for small businesses who don’t have huge budgets to still function when they can’t afford to hire an artist, an artist who probably wouldn’t want to work for a pittance anyways. Which then feeds back into how artists like myself can make an extra income stream by diversifying the sales of our art.
I have also decided that the generic seasonal nature of these images made them perfect for sale as stock. While I very much enjoyed making them, there isn’t a personal narration that is attached to these pieces. You will never see the pieces which feature my original characters or other specific narratives uploaded as stock.
Finally, I won’t deny that making a little bit of money from each download is an incentive for me. Being able to make extra money from work that would otherwise sit in a folder is a precious thing when your income is the sporadic one of the freelance artist.
Happily, I still own the copyrights to my own images and can still use them for my own purposes, which means I do not believe the public consumption of these images will affect my own sales (not that print sales even make up that significant of an income for me, because they don’t).
I trust you guys to know where to find the good stuff direct from the artist and you know where to find me if you want custom work! I will happily create unique art, if you don’t find what you need from my stock illustration selection. Just drop me a line!