@Charlie-Eve-Ryan Thank you for sharing Charlie. Will has been a friend and mentor to me. so I was happy to help.

Dear Will, I am so sorry to hear this terrible news. Wish you and your loved ones lots of comfort and love. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

@benjaminv said in Aprilbet Art Challenge (Coming Soon!):

@_benjaminvillarreal

What a lovely idea! I think I am in!

Congrats! thats so cool, and well deserved! Perhaps you can check out some art of books to see what 'rough' is. The sketches in Peter de Seve's book will help you aswel I think. Good luck, you can do it!

@smceccarelli Love them all, but #8 and #13 are my favorites!

@smceccarelli Ow, how nice! I think Ill be going to Bologna, lets keep in touch for meeting up for coffee!

@nyrrylcadiz What a lovely concept! The comp and storytelling are really nice! For me nr. 3 has the best lightening . Although nr 1 is fun , to me it looks as if is not working for this story ( Perhaps save this idea for a scary illu?) nr. 3 focusses nicely on the 'shame' . Have fun coloring! I cant wait to see the finished version!

@eli thank you Eli!

Working on a new childrens book in a new style. Now today is coming out day, I thought I'd step out of that with a gaypride version of one of the characters. Have a happy day!

Its not quite like that, its much more complicated, and of course I don't have all the answers. The main thing for me is unpaid use of copyright-protected work. Its not about personal pictures, drawings or paintings. Its not about advertising via social media. Its mainly about big companies who earn billions without having to pay anything for use (reselling) of copyright-protected works.

For example: use of illustration on a educational platform. Work for a publisher who publishes books and also educational material for use on the internet. Schools pay to get acces, use the material. But they only have to pay (collective) royalties for the use in books, not for use on screens. So if a publisher decides to only publish on the internet there is no royalty payed to the autor, creator.

Wouldn't it be great if these companies pay royalties, even if it was collective? You can claim your royalty for copyright-protected artwork.

For inning royalties I am helped by Pictoright is the author’s rights organisation for visual creators in the Netherlands: illustrators, artists, graphic designers, photographers and other professional image creators. If it wasn't for them, creators in The Netherlands would miss out thousands of euro's on income per year. They collect copyright fees. I think they do a great job fighting for the protection of copyrighted works, and I believe they have jurist who help us by making good agreements with publishers, colleges, broadcasting, companies. They pay collective royalties. This does not mean that work will be published less often; Collective Rights Management Organisations have agreements with a lot of publishers. These publishers are already accustomed to paying a fee for using work.

(Of course I don't know how inning collective rights is arranged in other EU countries, perhaps you can find out if you can claim the copyrights of published works in your country. For example in the UK I think it is https://www.dacs.org.uk/) Now just as the music industry relies on royalties, in the future we as illustrators will rely more and more on these royalties as well (less books, more published on the internet).

Hope it helps! , but perhaps its a good topic for a podcast by Jake, Lee and Will?