(Okay, so reading through this afterwards, I realize it's kinda rambly. I seem to be a bit more heated about the subject than I thought, so I apologize.)
There seems to be a lot of people who don't value their time and skills in the art industry.
I mean, when I price something I base it off of estimated time it'll take and minimum wage (rounded to about $10 an hour, cause I'm still a student. Perhaps when I get a bit better, or when people are actually willing to pay more, I'll raise it a bit). Minimum wage is sorta there for a reason, a minimum standard to base the worth of your work off of. My parents work in a call center, and they get about $13 an hour. Anyone can do that with 2 - 3 weeks of training. Artists on the other hand require an intense knowledge of how things work, observations skills, hand eye coordination, imagination, supplies, and a whole lot of other things I'm probably forgetting that not everyone can do, requiring years and years of practicing and training to get to a decent level. And they offer their work like they're slave laborers.
Working off minimum wage, I do things ranging from maybe $2.50 for a headshot sketch, to around $60 for fullbody, colors, shadows, effects, everything.
Sometimes if it's just a personal little thing that they'd like to see but isn't going to really be used for anything, then I don't really care much. I've done some requests or commissions for pennies just out of boredom, but made it clear what it was really worth when I was done. (Course that was before I decided to tackle a comic and storygame writing at the same time.)
I try not to do that too often though, cause the more people do that the less people value art in general and the less people will be willing to pay for something they consider pricey.
I dunno. It's one thing if an artist is bored and just wanting something to do, another thing if they really think their time and years of experience are really worth that little.
