Charged €120 for a 6-hour commission and after materials and the 3-hour "quick" sketch I redid, I made less than minimum wage
So I did this commission last month, a little wedding gift thing, couple's pet portrait in watercolor, their dog who passed away. They had a reference photo and I got so attached to the story I underpriced it on purpose, like €120 for what I told myself was "a quick 6 hours."
It was not quick. I did a full sketch, hated it, redrew the dog's face three times because watercolor doesn't let you fix a bad eye, you just start over. Real time ended up around 14 hours, plus paper, plus I ruined two sheets. When I did the math afterward I made like €6 an hour. My old café job paid better and I didn't have to cry over a dog's nose shape at 1am.
The worst part is they were so happy and the painting came out genuinely good, one of my favorites I've ever done. So now I'm sitting here like, do I charge the next person with a sad story €400 and feel like a monster, or do I keep doing this and slowly fund my own studio out of my own pocket?? I know the answer obviously but I keep needing strangers on the internet to tell me I'm allowed to charge for the hours that actually happened, not the hours I hoped would happen.
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the redrawing the dog's face three times thing hit me hard. watercolor is unforgiving like that, one wrong eye and the whole piece is lying to you and you can't lie about someone's dead dog. i'd have done the same thing honestly. i think most of us who do people or animals know that feeling where the references becomes a person, not a job, and suddenly you're doing it for them not for money.
but here's the thing nobody tells you, the story will always hook you if you let it. i've done it a hundred times. the ones with the sad backstory get the cheap price and then they're the ones that take the longest because you care too much to hand over something half done. it's backwards and i keep doing it anyway.
€6 an hour though. that's the part that should make you furious enough to never do it again. not at the client, at the math. the sentiment is lovely but it doesn't pay your rent and it doesn't buy paper for the next one. charge what the 14 hours were worth next time, not what the 6 hours were supposed to be. the good clients will still pay it. the ones who won't weren't going to respect the work anyway.
The part about the dead dog being a person, not a job, is the piece nobody prices for. The backstory always costs you more than you think it will, because it changes how carefully you work. A portrait of a landscape you can let a wobbly branch go. A portrait of someone's grief you cannot, and you shouldn't, honestly.
I've told students for years that the emotional commissions are the ones to charge more for, not less, precisely because you'll do the work of someone being paid twice what you asked. But it's the hardest advice to follow, because the reason it's underpriced is the same reason you want the job at all.
Fourteen hours and two ruined sheets for six euros an hour is not a failure of skill. It's a failure to admit what the work actually costs before you start. And nothing teaches you that like the dog's eye going wrong at hour nine.
"you can't lie about someone's dead dog" YES that is literally it, that's the thing I couldn't articulate. The sketch was technically fine, the proportions were right, the shading was decent, but it wasn't HIM. There's a difference between painting a dog and painting someone's dog, and the second one you can feel every time you get it slightly wrong. Like the eye was crooked by two millimeters and I knew the family would look at it and go "that's not quite..." even if they never said it out loud.
And honestly I think that's also why it's so hard to charge properly for it. You can't price the fear of being the person who fumbles someone's goodbye. You just eat it and hope the piece is good enough that they don't notice the math. Did you end up redoing yours or did you push through the first one?
"you can't lie about someone's dead dog" is exactly it, that's the whole thing. like the sketch was technically fine but it wasn't HIM, you know? the dog. and I couldn't look at the family's face and hand them something where the eye was just slightly off. I'd have felt like I was stealing their grieving moment or something god that sounds dramatic but it's true.
and yeah you're so right about the story hooking you. I keep telling myself next time I'll quote the real price upfront and THEN be generous if I want to be, instead of pre-discounting myself into poverty. but then someone comes at me with a dead dog and I'm done for again haha. have you actually managed to break the cycle or are we all just out here paying rent with grief-based discounts??