Did the math on a portrait I finished last week and I made €6.70 an hour
Finished a portrait last week, charcoal on paper, roughly 40 hours across two weeks because I kept hating it and redoing the eyes. Charged €500. After paper, charcoal, fixative, the framing, and the courier there was about €270 left. That's €6.70 an hour. A barista makes more than that here and they don't go to bed smelling like fixative.
And here's the thing that's really chewing on me. The woman who commissioned it loved it. Cried when she saw it, said it was the first thing that ever actually captured her mother. She would've paid double. I know she would've because when I was scared to say a number I lowballed out of pure nerves and she didn't even blink.
I keep telling myself I'm still building my name and the exposure counts. But €6.70 an hour for work that genuinely wrecked me to make isn't building anything except resentment. I need to charge what it actually costs me to live and breathe into a piece or I'm going to burn out before anyone's ever heard of me.
How do you get over the fear of naming a number out loud and just letting it hang there while they decide if you're worth it? Because I physically feel sick every single time.
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The €6.70/hour math is real and it never gets better, by the way. I've done this for thirty years and I can tell you the hourly rate is a trap we set for ourselves. Nobody pays for the hour. They pay for the forty hours of hating the eyes and redoing them, plus the other thirty portraits you did that you never showed anyone, plus the twenty years it took you to get to where a stranger cries when she sees your work.
But I'll tell you the uncomfortable part too, because you seem like you can take it. The fact that she would've paid double is not the point. The moment you start pricing by what you think they'd bear, you're not an artist anymore, you're a negotiator. Charge what you need to live and stop doing the arithmetic after the fact. The arithmetic will always win and you'll always lose.
You made the first thing that ever captured her mother. That's the part that compounds. Find a way to charge for that instead of the charcoal.
Ah now, that second part you were heading toward, I'd have liked to hear the rest of it. Because you're right about the hourly math being a trap, and I know the version of me that would've priced it at €6.70 too, twenty years back, just grateful someone wanted the work at all. Sure I've got prints I've carved that work out at less than minimum wage if you count the hours, and I sold them grinning.
But the thing about the woman crying, I reckon that's worth more than the other way of counting. The frame, the courier, the paper, that all goes away. The crying doesn't. You can't bank it, but it stays with you different.
Anyway. There's a middle way between charging by the hour and charging by your own fear. Took me a long time to find it, and I still get it wrong the odd week. You're closer to it than you think you are, is my guess. Keep at it.
Thirty years, that lands. And you're dead right about the crying being the part that doesn't go away. I keep circling back to it though because I think part of me is scared of what happens if I lean into that being the whole payment. Like if I start pricing by the feeling instead of the hours, am I just giving myself permission to keep undercharging forever? Because I WILL, you know. That's the version of me that does it, the one who's still just grateful someone wanted it at all.
But you've been at this thirty years and you're still selling prints you carved at less than minimum wage, grinning. So maybe that gratitude never quite goes away and that's not the enemy it feels like.
The second part I was heading to was that she asked me to dinner after. To thank me. And I said yes before I remembered I don't really do that. I think I said yes because she saw her mother and I wanted to be close to someone who could feel something that hard about my work. Anyway. That's where it was going. I keep telling it to people so I have to actually sit with it.
Thirty years. That's a long time to carry it. And yeah, you clocked me, I can take the uncomfortable part, that's kind of what I do. The version of me who'd have priced by the hour is the same one who redid the eyes five times instead of trusting the first pass. I'm still that person, I just charge differently now.
But I'll push back on one thing. You're right that it's not about what she would've paid. But it's not nothing either. She cried. That's not the hour, that's not the forty hours, that's the twenty years. I know that. Doesn't make the electricity bill feel less real on Tuesday though, you know? The trap isn't that I'm wrong about the numbers. The trap is pretending the numbers and the tears exist in the same world at all.
Anyway. I hear you. Thirty years of this and you still came to tell a stranger her math was right. That means something to me. What'd you end up charging in the end, all those years in?