01/29/2025
Reposting because ’tis the season of people asking professional face painters to paint for free at their events…just because. Don’t get me wrong, we tend to donate our time to causes that are near to our heart as often as we can but PLEASE keep in mind that this is our actual job and how we support ourselves and families. I know people don’t mean anything by it most of the time, but There’s always someone who is Almost offended that a professional face painter would not want to take them up on their generous offer to add live art entertainment to their events and not pay them, discount their rates, or even just plain not be able to accept payments or even tips. Here are just a few things to keep in mind before asking a professional to work for free. All said with love and light and I hope it reads that way.
1) This job…is a job. Especially in this economy, people deserve to be paid for their services🙂
2) Time is precious. In this line of work especially, weekends are really the only time we have to make any income. There’s not a lot going on during the week for face painters. So while asking for us to work for free for 3 hours on a Saturday seems like nothing to you, that’s a huge chunk of prime time for us to take on paying jobs.
3) ESPECIALLY if YOU are reaching out to a face painter and especially x2 if you have had multiple people recommend said painter, please do not hit them with the old “working this event for free will be great exposure for your business” people still say this to me even though I have worked so hard and built a pretty decent following. I don’t need exposure, I need to go grocery shopping lol!
4) We deserve to be valued for our work. Period! Again, I know that people don’t mean it this way but why out of every booth at a whole event would only the face painter be expected to work for free? We work our booties off!
5) When you take it seriously and do things correctly, this line of work is EXPENSIVE. There is a reason we charge. The insurance, the taxes, the quaity supplies, every bit of overhead that comes with being self employed.
Please do not undervalue or even devalue face painters, artists, or self employed people in general. We are trying to make it too and it would frankly be impossible if we were expected to take on every request like this we get. And again, we donate time when we can to worthy causes but please don’t expect an automatic yes and be sassy when your request is declined❤️