Drawing On Faith
Saturday, July 19th, 2008
I had a bit of a soul-searching* question asked of me today. An acquaintance of mine emailed me asking how much I’d charge for a drawing that to me seemed clearly religious. I won’t go into details about what the drawing was to be but there were scriptures and swords and other Christian themes. Now it’s pretty clear that I have a long history of drawing priests and knights and demons and swords and armor and, yes, angels (mostly fallen), and in truth I have nothing against any of this subject matter in the context that I have heretofore been hired to draw them, which is chiefly for fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons. I have never been asked to draw something with legitimate religious meaning to/for someone. I could be making assumptions as I didn’t really ask what the context for the artwork was except that it was a gift for a third party. I think it was the scriptures that made it cross the line for me. I turned down the job as politely as I could, but I did state my reasons (the other one I haven’t mentioned here yet is that the deadline was a bit too close for comfort).
Artists have of course traditionally been patronized by the church–that’s nothing new–but as a sometimes outspoken anti-theist (more properly anti-religionist if that’s a word), I knew that I really could not in good conscience even give a price quote on this job.
So that was unexpected and kind of interesting. I learned a little bit about myself today.
*Pun not intended, but hilarious!
