€90 commission, 9 hours, and I kept telling myself it was "for the love of it"
I did a small interior study for a friend of a friend last month. Small, 40×50, done from a photograph they sent. Nine hours of work including the drawing stage. I charged €90 and I was embarrassed to ask for even that.
Here's the part I don't like admitting. I kept my atelier training in materials and glazing, the whole slow method, because I told myself that's what made it a real painting and not just a painted thing. And it did. But it also means my working speed hasn't changed since I was a student. I cannot paint fast and I've never wanted to. So every time I undercharge I'm not just losing money, I'm subsidizing someone's nice wall with hours I'll never get back.
The friend-of-a-friend was delighted. Said it looked like a photograph, which nearly made me choke. But that's the thing, right. The people who would value what I actually do are not the people I keep giving the discount to.
I raised my teaching rate last year and nobody blinked. I still haven't dared raise my painting prices the same way. €9 an hour before materials. I'd have done better stacking shelves in a supermarket and it would have been more honest about what the work is worth to me.
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Nine hours and ninety euros works out to ten euros an hour, and that's before materials. You'd have made more cleaning brushes.
The training matters, though, and I want to push back gently on the idea that the slow method is the problem. It isn't. The problem is that you priced it like a hobbyist when you worked like a professional. Those nine hours are what your hand is worth, and if you keep telling yourself the only way to justify the price is to apologize for it, you'll keep losing money.
I still undercharge sometimes. It happens. But I stopped being embarrassed about it, and that changed more than the number did. Next time, name the hours you actually worked and give a figure that reflects them. If the friend of a friend baulks, that tells you something useful about their respect for the work, not about your worth as a painter.