Charged $260 for an 11x14 commission and I'm only now doing the math on the little ones
ok so I need to say this somewhere because my partner is tired of hearing it and honestly they're right.
I did a little gouache commission last month, 11x14, a house portrait for a coworker of my mom's (mom's coworker, not even mine, which is its own whole thing). Quoted $260. Felt generous at the time, felt like a real artist number.
It took me four sessions. Four. Because the roof had all this dappled light on it and I kept redoing the same three shingles like a maniac. Plus materials, plus the scan and a print of it as a thank you, plus driving it over to her house because "oh don't worry about shipping." By the end it was like $40-something an hour if I don't count the prep drawing I threw away. If I DO count it, it's less. And then she tipped me $20 and I almost cried, which, in fairness, might have been the sleep.
The thing that's actually bugging me isn't the $260. It's that I quoted it off the top of my head in a two-second text. Didn't look at anything. Didn't think about size or complexity or the part where a house has like nine hundred windows. Just said a number because saying a bigger number felt rude.
Meanwhile I've got a 5x7 in the same style I've been charging $85 for since art school, and those take me maybe two and a half hours now, so per hour they're actually not awful. It's the mid-size ones that are quietly eating me alive. Which I only figured out because I wrote every job down in a notebook this month like a responsible adult, and the notebook is mean.
Anyway I think my 11x14 needs to be $400 and I've been sitting on that number for a week like it's a live grenade. Saying it out loud here so it stops being just mine. Nobody warned me that the hard part of full time isn't the painting.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The dappled light on the roof, that is the whole thing, isn't it. You cannot keep your hand off it once you see it. And that is exactly the part that never shows up in the quote, because on the paper it's "a house" and in the making it's four afternoons of chasing the same three shingles.
I do cyanotype, camera-less, so my hours are strange and I have stopped pretending they fit into a rate. But I do keep the small commissions on a separate little list now, the ones I feel generous about, and I write the real hours beside them. Not to charge more. Just so I can see what I am actually choosing. Sometimes I choose it anyway. The problem is only when I don't know I'm doing it.
The scan and the print and the drive over, all of that was you being kind. That is not the same as being paid, though it gets filed there in our heads. Hard habit to unlearn.
Keeping the real hours beside the ones you feel generous about, that's the useful part. Not the number, the pattern. Ten of those and you'll see where the time actually goes and it's never the part you quoted.
Stone's different, hours are obvious, nobody argues that a block takes what it takes. Painters get it in the neck because the thing looks small when it's done. Small has nothing to do with it. Three shingles under dappled light is the whole commission, the rest is just house.
"the rest is just house." ok that's going on my wall. that's exactly it, the thing that ate the four sessions wasn't the house at all, it was three shingles and I would have done those three shingles for free and resented the house.
and the stone thing, yes, I have a friend who carves and she says the same, nobody looks at a block and thinks "that should've been quicker." but paint a tiny perfect window and suddenly everyone's doing mental math about how long a "little" one takes. small is a lie.
the pattern over the number, I've been writing the hours down since I read your first comment and it's already ugly in a useful way. ten of them and I'll either fix my pricing or finally admit I like the dappled light more than the money, tbd which
ok the "not to charge more, just so I can see what I am actually choosing" thing stopped me cold. because that IS the whole problem isn't it, I never actually know what I'm choosing, I just know I'm tired and the money's already spent on more cadmium yellow.
cyanotype is so beautiful though, and honestly the hours being strange is part of it, right? my aunt does sun prints in her garden and she says the same thing, that you can't clock a medium that's waiting on the weather. do you ever get people assuming it's "fast" because it's basically light and paper? because I fight that with watercolor constantly, everyone thinks it's a quick little sketch medium and meanwhile I've done the same wash eleven times.
also the separate little list is such a good idea I'm stealing it. mine's going to be a spreadsheet with an hours column that I'm going to hate looking at 🙂