Stolen Art Work Debacle Continues

Stolen Art Work Debacle Continues

Hey everyone so I am not writing this to be negative but rather to share info that could help other artists in the future. Recently I was made aware that a drawing I had done in April of 2013 was taken from a blog post and used without my permission for a logo.

MY DRAWING from April 2013

The way she took it for the logo and banner.

I contacted the person who runs this charity, he took it down, then told me the graphic design company did it, but kept saying he wanted to use it without paying for it. I offered for him to buy it at a super discounted rate, but he didn't want to pay me a dime-kept playing the "charity" cards.

 I have asked the graphic design company for payment and they have not complied at this time. Against the advice of a lawyer, I offered to do another DRAWING of a Westie for the person who is running this charity.

FOR FREE. yes for FREE. I offered to help him out since he was in a bad situation.

Well then a couple weeks went by and he told me this past weekend that another Westie illustrator had contacted him and wanted to do his FB banner and new logo drawing for FREE and if I didn't do it right away then he would use her. Turns out that was a lie. Not only did he contact her, he was going to PAY HER!! 

So really? Then why not just pay me for use of the image that was taken? I told him if he did that then I would drop the whole thing and let him have right of use for that FB banner, but he didn't want to pay-well not me.

That said I felt bad for him, so I spent an entire day away from my work and work for others to do a brand new logo/banner for him, based on his specifications. 

He told me to use the photo, but I couldn't do it the exact same way the graphic designer had done it because even though she stole my work I was not going to steal hers so I changed it slightly.

Well he hated it. His friends hated it. He made sure that I knew that he felt that it wasn't professional like the other one-yup the one that had my stolen artwork. He was beyond rude, about a FREE drawing. I would have happy changed tiny things about it, but he was so awful about it. I still offered-why? Because I am too nice-I know I am working on that. 

So I told the other artist that she could go ahead and do his logo because he didn't like mine and he told me she had offered to do his for free---well that's when I found out that he LIED about that just to get me to do FREE work. He offered to pay her several times. So.. I told him that I wanted to be paid for use of my work and then he sent me several nasty emails and is now lying about me to others. 

So the moral of the story is don't ever work for FREE because people will never treat you with respect. It's really sad because I wanted to help him out. I have no problem if he wanted some tweaks to the design, but sending nasty emails saying him and all his friends think it wasn't professional all while courting another artist that he was going to pay really is douchey-there is no other way to say it. I still love this new design. I liked the old one too-just she didn't have permission to use my image. Had they just paid me for it, this would all not be a problem. I mean he supposedly LOVED my original work, but not enough to pay for it.

Lesson learned I suppose.