I'd recommend your friend take a look over at Deviant Art for a sampling of differant styles and pricing. You can even follow the "Stuff" link in my sig to get there.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
The English language is an intricate high-speed precision tool.Stop using it to bang open coconuts. ~Tokamak
Dark_Respite's Video page
Go to the City of Artists page on deviantArt. There are links to a lot of the artists who do commissions there, and most of them have pricing lists in their journals.
Doing art for a living is, I'm sorry to say, very very VERY hard. My best friend and roommate Graver has a BFA and solely does art as a job, but it's TOUGH since income is variable and based on output. (He's lucky he's been my best friend for over a decade 
). Dark Jedi also does art as his primary mode of earning a living, but while he does commissions, he also does magic cards and other forms of illustration. I don't know that much about his finances though 
There's also a good book out there called the "Artists Market" that helps beginning artists learn the ins and outs of selling their product.
It's not something you'll get rich doing, by any means.
Yeah, for me I try to make a bit of coin to support my habit (buying art supplies and such). Any money I make from art goes first into that area.
Per hour, I make about 25% of what I make in RL. My wife always says "why don't you just work more instead of drawing, you'd make more money" - I reply that money isn't everything.
That being said, you can check out my link below for how I handle things.
So You Wanna Be A Comic Book Artist
Breaking into Comics
How to get into the Comics Industry - Philippine Comic Industry, but you'll find that they are just as competitive... (in fact Deviant Art is littered with so many filipinos, as well as the industry giants like Lenlil Yu, Ed Benes, the list goes on...
Extensive Site on Self Publishing and Comics
Good Luck!
LJ
I just do art for pocket change.
If you want to be an artist, I'd HIGHLY recommend that you learn another skill that will make you money and have the art be a sideline. Two main reasons;
1 - It's very, very hard to make a comfortable living doing art. There's always someone else willing to draw it better for less.
2 - Should you be lucky enough to get your art to pay for your living, it becomes a 'must do' process and isn't that fun anymore. I gave up freelance because I was forced to draw what paid the bills and not what fed my soul. Now, when I leave my day job, I can come home and comfortably draw whatever I want.
[ QUOTE ]
If you want to be an artist, I'd HIGHLY recommend that you learn another skill that will make you money and have the art be a sideline. Two main reasons;
1 - It's very, very hard to make a comfortable living doing art. There's always someone else willing to draw it better for less.
2 - Should you be lucky enough to get your art to pay for your living, it becomes a 'must do' process and isn't that fun anymore. I gave up freelance because I was forced to draw what paid the bills and not what fed my soul. Now, when I leave my day job, I can come home and comfortably draw whatever I want.
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*throws money at Douglas*
Listen to the man! HE IS A GOD.
[ QUOTE ]
If you want to be an artist, I'd HIGHLY recommend that you learn another skill that will make you money and have the art be a sideline. Two main reasons;
1 - It's very, very hard to make a comfortable living doing art. There's always someone else willing to draw it better for less.
2 - Should you be lucky enough to get your art to pay for your living, it becomes a 'must do' process and isn't that fun anymore. I gave up freelance because I was forced to draw what paid the bills and not what fed my soul. Now, when I leave my day job, I can come home and comfortably draw whatever I want.
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Total agreement.
Making it so that any "art money" is just a bonus and not a necessity, goes a long way to keeping any passion you might have.
Wow guys! Thanks for the great responses!
I'm totally gonna pass this on to my friend to take a look at! Also, keep an eye out cause I'll be posting her work here eventually, and she'll likely want critiquing/feedback on that to!
Thanks again!
-Pathstalker and his Eccentric Artistic Friend
[ QUOTE ]
If you want to be an artist, I'd HIGHLY recommend that you learn another skill that will make you money and have the art be a sideline. Two main reasons;
1 - It's very, very hard to make a comfortable living doing art. There's always someone else willing to draw it better for less.
2 - Should you be lucky enough to get your art to pay for your living, it becomes a 'must do' process and isn't that fun anymore. I gave up freelance because I was forced to draw what paid the bills and not what fed my soul. Now, when I leave my day job, I can come home and comfortably draw whatever I want.
[/ QUOTE ]
Echoing Doug on this...
Learning art is tough.... working full time? Whew. A company asked me to jump onboard for a project a few months ago. They wanted 180 pages of artwork in three months. Now, the asking price was right, but you have to understand... 180 pages in three months... sixty pages a month... Sixty...finished...pages.
Say goodbye to your social life 
Now, the various industries of art have different standards, and once you're in, you can USUALLY find your way back in should you leave for awhile.
Art is like an extension of your body, you must keep exercising it, or your skills will diminish over time.
It's a lifelong commitment that only the passionate and crazy stick with A good chunk of the time, clients don't pay, leaving you frustrated and bills unpaid, a lot of times you'll put in that extra effort and get no appreciation for it... But I wouldn't trade it for the world.
So, I asked a friend of mine to do some art for me a few months ago and recently she's been showing me some of the work she's gotten done. So far I've been completely blown away with her talent and we've gotten to discussing the various ways that artists can practise their, well, art on the internet. More importantly, we were wondering as to the possibilty of selling online art...
Basically, what that means is that I've come to forum of uber-art here on the Co* boards to ask all you artists how you do your thing! How do you set up your comissions and request art? Are there any sites that hire artsists and pay them a good fee? What would a talented artist need to know to get serious with making art for a living/income?
Anyways, any and all advice is absolutely appreciated as we were both stumped on how the world of online art works
-Pathstalker