€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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This hits close to home. I did a small still life for a coworker's mom a while back, four hours of work, and I charged nothing because I felt weird about it. She gave me a bottle of wine and I told myself that was fair. It wasn't. The wine was nice but it didn't pay for the canvas or the paint or the fact that I'm not getting those hours back.
The training thing resonates too. I don't have atelier training, just workshops and a lot of YouTube, but I know exactly that feeling of thinking if I do it the slow careful way it justifies something. But slow is also just... how I work. I can't paint fast either and I've stopped pretending I'm going to suddenly become that person.
I don't have advice because I'm terrible at pricing too. Just wanted to say you're not alone in the embarrassment part. It's such a fixable problem that we all seem to share and none of us know how to fix.
the wine thing is brutal and so familiar. i sold a little vessel last month for twenty euros and threw in a second one "as a gift" and the person didn't even say thank you properly. i was embarrassed for them. and for me.
the slow thing though, i feel that hard. everyone says you'll get faster and it's like, no, i don't want to get faster, i want the piece to take the time it takes. but then you do the math and it's dog-walking wages and you wonder who the idiot is. it's not the slow work, it's that we don't know how to stand behind the hours yet.
"We don't know how to stand behind the hours yet", that's it exactly. I've been painting for twenty years and I'm still apologizing with my pricing, like the time is somehow an inconvenience I'm inflicting on people. But you're right: nobody apologizes for the price of a plumber's hour. The slow work isn't the problem. The problem is we keep acting like the hours are a favor, not the point.
You're right and I don't like it, ha. Ten euros an hour before materials. I could walk dogs for more.
The bottle of wine thing made me wince because I've been there too. There's this idea that if it's a gift, somehow the effort doesn't count. But the hours were already gone either way. A friend of mine who does carpentry says the same thing happened to him for years until he just stopped doing work for people who wouldn't take a real price.
And I hear you on the training part. I used to think the slow method was a badge, that it proved I was serious. Now I wonder if I hid behind it a little. The discipline is real, but it's also a good excuse to never finish anything quickly and never have to name a real price for it.