One of the things that really seems to be infinite is Internet pornography. And then why would anyone need to give money to order even more pornography?

Although inflation has skyrocketed and you’d say people don’t have the money to spend on custom artwork, the erotic art industry is thriving. It’s hard to estimate exactly how much people are spending on this thing, because a lot of transactions happen privately, but if you look at the public transactions on Reddit and DeviantArt, it looks like the value of these orders is over thousands of dollars a day.

Anyone who’s ever had to delete their browser history in a hurry understands that an obscure fetish can make you a laughing stock. And the persecution can take a nasty turn in some situations – a BDSM fan lost his job as a parole officer after learning about his passion.

But low-income artists looking for work are saved by people’s kinky orders. This type of work gives them a valve through which they can explore their personal artistic interests while being well paid for it.

Val, a forty-year-old Brazilian artist who was born in a poor neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and New York, was passionate about art from an early age . Like the other illustrators we spoke to, he asked us to remain anonymous due to the controversial nature of his job.

Although he knew from an early age that he had talent, his parents could not afford to send him to art school. At 38, he suddenly quit his IT job to follow his dream and become an artist.

“One day, I went to my office and looked at an old, sad colleague working next to me and realized that I didn’t want to become like him. I asked myself what I wanted to do in the depths of my soul and I decided to try to live from art for at least a year.”

Initially, he found work difficult in his native Brazil. And when he found it, he was underpaid or promised exposure if he worked for free. Then a friend introduced him to the world of fetish art, where his career blossomed. He now has clients in the UK, the US and Canada who are happy to pay him half the required amount up front.

Now, Val specializes in hyper-realistic violence and group sex, sometimes with characters like the Hulk or the Joker. His strengths are faces and anatomy, and he draws inspiration from comic artists such as Dave Stevens, the illustrator who drew the famous 80s comic strip Rocketeer . This is what differentiates him from the rest of the erotic artists who draw, mostly, in manga style.

One of the most shocking commissions Val was asked to do was a picture of ten lockers filled with the decapitated heads of cheerleaders. Val isn’t dying to draw severed heads or Mario kicking ass next to Jason Momoa, but he said that violence sells, and Tarantino’s movies are living proof.

“For me it’s just imagination, it’s not real. They are not real people, although clients ask me to draw as realistically as possible.”

The artist has no financial problems. For a simple erotic image, which he makes in one day, he takes ninety dollars, but for a complex one, with several characters, which he makes in four days, he also asks for $480. To put that in context, the monthly salary of an accountant in Brazil is $1,685.

It wasn’t just Val who went through this with art school. In the UK, an art school graduate is left with up to £45,000 in debt – and that doesn’t include the daily expenses required for the three years they study. And illustrators’ salaries are somewhere between 18,000 and 23,000 pounds a year.

American illustrator Lorelei has been drawing since childhood, but after college, she worked in another field. But during the pandemic she returned to her passion. Lorelei doesn’t have an art degree and didn’t have a rich portfolio when she started, but her clients didn’t mind that.

The first money she made from art was from erotic illustrations , and now she specializes in a category called “big and tiny” – where big characters have sex with much smaller ones. He draws scenes with fairies, naked giant women destroying cities.

Maybe not a lot of people search PornHub for movies with giant women , but Lorelei says that “there are a lot of people who have this size fetish, they like scenes with a very big character and a very small character.”

But Lorelei doesn’t draw on this theme just for the money. From a young age, she was fond of books such as The Borrowers , James and the Giant Peach , Gulliver’s Travels or films such as The Secret World of Arrietty , in which very large characters interact with much smaller characters.

“I think I like it because of the dynamics. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this thing, a lot of ways to explore humanity and compassion and cruelty,” she said.

“Both characters are human, but there is a big difference in power between them due to size.”

Lorelei charges ninety dollars for an erotic illustration with two characters, fifty dollars for erotic images with one character, and much less for non-erotic orders. He earns better from this than from working as a social worker for disabled children.

“Money motivates me a lot,” she said.

Lorelei is still dedicated to her other career, but working in the erotic art industry is a way to explore her passion for art and supplement her income.

Why do artists say the industry is booming? Although there is a lot of pornography on the Internet, Val said that many of his clients want very specific images. Some ask for the perfect angle or a specific character to do a certain thing in a certain way. Lorelei agrees.

“Some people have very specific tastes. They want something niche and someone who will fully meet their requirements. And they’d rather pay me for it than search endlessly on the internet.”

Val sometimes feels that the rigid demands of clients limit his artistic expression, but he is professional and respects their needs, especially since he makes a lot of money from it.

Morgan Black , a graduate of the University of Dundee, has explored sexuality for several decades and is currently studying gender aesthetics – which is not kink , she stressed.

Black believes that many customers order from her because they don’t want anyone to discover their search history. Makes sense, when you consider that some people want images of severed heads of cheerleaders. But how far can you go as an artist if you still want to stay moral? In many cases, these artists are forced to make difficult decisions and balance money and morality.

Despite the violent nature of his drawings, Val has some strict boundaries that he has promised himself he will never cross. “I can draw how your wife’s aliens fucked, as long as children are not involved.” Lorelei said she refuses orders that involve sex with animals or children and violence, but noted that it’s hard to find customers who don’t want those things. He said he turns down 75 percent of the orders for this reason, because they are too tasteless and immoral.

With some loyal customers she has developed a relationship – but she must always be careful that they do not overstep her boundaries. For example, a client with a sock fetish , who usually asked her to draw beautiful women in socks or straitjackets, at one point asked her to draw herself in a straitjacket with her favorite socks on her feet. He offered him 120 dollars for it.

He thought about it a bit, because he was having money problems at the time, but in the end he refused. “It felt too personal and just the thought made me uncomfortable.”

Mainstream porn is notorious for not respecting copyright. “A lot of people shamelessly steal your art,” said Lorelei, who has seen her work on DeviantArt and Pinterest or on Discord servers. “Some call themselves artists and sell my work to others,” she said.

Many artists cannot support themselves from their passion, but erotic art commissions give many an opportunity to follow their dream and make money from it. Val and Lorelei are thankful that they love their jobs and that they didn’t get stuck in careers that didn’t make them happy. Lorelei believes that in her job she uses her creativity to help people.

“Even if I’m creating images for them to masturbate, I think I’m helping them, because they need it,” she said.