article says (paraphrasing) ""It started out as a joke on facebook - offering to draw your pet for $400. He got two thousand or more requests, and then told people to donate to his local homeless shelter instead.""-
$400. times 2,000 equals $800,000. eight-hundred-thousand dollars!! So either there is some exaggeration going on or he is a very "special" kinda guy.. The charity says it has raised $17,000 from his drawings. If he had taken the $400 per, he could have donated $300,000 of that to the charity and still made half a million dollars for himself. If it were in Denmark something would smell fishy.
My take is the venture was a bit more crafty (manipulative) from the beginning than is being told. Artists historically do what they have to do to get their work noticed. If my take is correct - Hats off to him. Ingenuity gets my admiration over dumb luck any day. As they say in movie credits. "No harm was done to Animals" and his career is launched.