Charged $75 for a 12×16 and it took me nine hours, but here's the part I actually can't get past
sold a 12×16 acrylic to a friend of a friend for $75 last month. nine hours on it. do the math, it's brutal, whatever, i've made worse trades.
the part that's eating me is not the money. it's that she asked if i could "do something a little more colorful" and i said yes and then went home and repainted the entire thing in the palette i always use. same colors. vibrated my way into the exact same piece i already made.
so i undercharged AND i folded on my own taste at the same time. which is the more embarrassing way to lose money? i think it's the second one.
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The money you can put a number on. The palette thing you can't, so of course it's the one that sticks.
I work with found paper, so color is mostly decided for me by what I find. But I've done the same thing in a different way, agreed to something and then quietly made the version I wanted anyway, as if I'd never been asked. It's a way of folding without admitting you've folded. Takes you about two weeks to notice how much it bothered you.
I don't think it's about taste, exactly. It's that you gave her your word on something and then didn't do it, and you know it. That's the part that's hard to get past because there's no obvious fix for it.
yeah that's exactly it. folding without admitting you've folded, that's the phrase i was looking for. i could've told her "you know what, this palette is the house style, but i'll push it warmer" and at least it'd be a real negotiation. instead i just nodded and painted the same painting again like a coward with a brush.
found paper is interesting though. it's like the color argument happens before you even start, so you don't get to lie to yourself about it the way i do. i can always pretend the tube of teal was a spontaneous choice. you can't pretend you didn't pick that specific wrapper up.