I price by the sheet of paper, not by the hours, and I know that's not quite honest

Someone asked me at the Feira da Vandoma last month what a cyanotype costs, and I heard myself say "it depends on the paper," which is true and also a way of not answering.

Here is the real thing. A 30x40 print on Arches, seawater-developed, sun for however long it takes that day, I ask 120. It could be three hours of work or it could be four days of waiting for the right light and starting over. I don't count. If I counted I would have to charge something nobody in that market is going to pay, and I am not sure I would want to charge it either.

So the price is a kind of average of the good days and the ruined ones. It works out. It is also the reason I have never said a number out loud here, and why I felt a small shame writing 120 just now.

What I keep circling is this. The friends who ask me to make them something, "just a small one for the hallway," I say yes and then it is not small and it is not free and I have spent a fortnight on it, and I cannot find the door out of that conversation.

Not asking anyone to solve it. I think I just wanted to write the number down somewhere.

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Karen Wessel·2w

I don't think you're being dishonest at all. You're doing what most of us do outside a gallery, pricing so the work can actually leave the studio with someone who wants it. I paint acrylics and I've never once counted hours, partly because I'd be embarrassed by the number on the good days and depressed by it on the bad ones.

The part that stuck with me is the waiting. People pay for the paper and the image but the days of wrong light are invisible. Do you find you lose money on the ones that fought you, or does it average out with the quick ones in a way you don't mind?

Margaret Hsu·2w

The waiting is the part I've made peace with, but not by averaging it. I don't sell a print that took six attempts at the same price as one that behaved on the first pass, and I don't price in the failures either. The quick one is not cheaper because it was quick. Otherwise the market quietly teaches you to only make the easy things.

What I would say to the acrylic painter, though, is that the honest number and the affordable number are two different numbers, and pretending they're the same is where the trouble starts. Charge what lets the work leave the studio, fine. Just don't tell yourself it's a calculation. It's a choice, and it's yours to make.

Inês CostaOP·2w

You put your finger on the thing I was circling, the two numbers. I had been treating them as one and then feeling like a liar when they didn't match. Better to just look at both honestly and say which one you're using, and why.

The part about the quick one I'll take with me, though. I do the opposite without meaning to. When a print comes out clean on the first pass I almost trust it less, like it owes me nothing, and I find myself giving it away. That is the same disease from the other side. The easy things get punished either way.

So I'll try your way. The sixth attempt and the first one go on the same wall at the same price, and the market can learn that too.

Inês CostaOP·2w

Lose money, yes, on the ones that fight me. I have a piece from last winter, six attempts, and the sixth one is the only one I kept. That is thirty euros of paper and I don't want to think about the rest. But the quick ones are not really quick either, they are just days where I already knew what the sea was going to do.

So it evens out in a way I have made peace with, but not because the maths works. More because I stopped treating the failed sheets as a cost. They taught me how the paper drinks. I would have paid for that lesson.

You are right about the invisibility. Nobody photographs the wrong light.

Ananya Iyer·2w

This lands for me. I paint watercolour and ink, mostly on location around old Bangalore, and the counting thing is exactly where I get stuck. A building I sketch might take me forty minutes, but there were years of drawing and a morning of walking around to find that corner of light. Which part do you bill?

I don't think pricing by the sheet is dishonest at all. It's just honest about a different thing. You're pricing the object someone takes home, and the waiting is yours to absorb. If you counted every cloudy day and every failed sheet, you'd have to charge for your frustration, and nobody wants to buy that.

One thing I'd say though, and I say it to myself more than to you. When the price floats on the paper, it's easy to quietly undercharge on the good sheets too, since there's no number on the wall forcing you to look at it. Do you ever raise it, or has it settled somewhere you're okay with?

Inês CostaOP·2w

The corner of light. That's the part nobody bills, and the part that took the longest. Years of drawing to know where to stand, and then forty minutes to make it look easy.

I think you've named it better than I did. I'm pricing the object that leaves with someone, not the morning I spent finding it. The walking around is mine. The cloudy days are mine too.

And yes, charging for the frustration. I have never found a way to put that on a label without it sounding like an apology.