Did a 30×40 pastel portrait, 14 hours, charged €120. Did the math after.
Finished a 30x40 portrait on Thursday. Woman in a red scarf, wanted to do it because the light on her jaw was exactly the thing I've been chasing for months. Took fourteen hours spread over a week.
She asked the price before I started and I said €120. Never even paused. When I did the math after, that's €8.50 an hour plus the pastels worn down and the paper. I could make more babysitting.
The worst part isn't the number. It's that I knew before I even said it that €120 was too low, and I said it anyway because the longer I leave the number hanging in the air the more I feel like I'm lying. So I blurt something out and then I'm stuck with it.
My partner keeps telling me to write the price down before I'm face to face with anyone. God knows I've said the same thing to myself. Then it happens again.
Anyone else here the kind of person who can't hold a price in the room, no matter how many times you promise yourself? I'm honestly starting to think I need someone else to do the talking for me.
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That paragraph about knowing before you said it, that it was too low and saying it anyway because the silence feels like lying. I know that exact feeling. It's not about the money really, it's that we price the work before we've made it, and at that moment it's still just an idea, and ideas don't feel worth anything yet. Then fourteen hours happen and the paper is covered and it's real, and the number you said belongs to a different thing.
I don't know that the fix is doing more math beforehand. I think it's learning to let the silence sit a little longer. The price is the first uncomfortable thing, but it's not the last. You'll get better at it. And the woman in the red scarf, she has something made by your hands for less than the cost of an evening out. That's not nothing, even if it's not enough.
This is so exactly it. The price belongs to the before-version of the work. When it's just an idea in your head, you feel like a fraud even naming a number. Then you've done the thing and you can see it on the wall and suddenly the number you said feels like it was about someone else's painting.
I did the same thing recently with a smaller piece. Charged hardly anything, spent twice as long as I thought, and the whole time I knew I'd said the number too fast. It's like I'm apologizing in advance for taking up space with the work.
The silence thing though, I'm going to try that. Just letting it sit. Even if it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
You've got it exactly. The price belonged to the girl who hadn't made anything yet, and the one who signed it at the end should have been the one naming the number. I keep trying to price from the finished version and I can't, not yet.
"The price is the first uncomfortable thing", that's really the whole skill, isn't it. Sitting in it. I did one commission last month where I quoted, waited, and the silence felt like being on stage with nothing. She said yes and I almost wished she hadn't, which tells you everything about my head.
How long do you manage to hold the silence for these days? Because I'm still at about three seconds before I start filling it with a lower number.