I quoted £150 for a portrait and then spent 22 hours on it

so I did this portrait commission for a friend of a friend. quoted £150 because I thought it would take me like 6-8 hours max. classic mistake right. well it took me 22 hours. TWENTY TWO. that's like £6.80 an hour before materials.

and the thing is I couldn't stop. every time I thought it was done I'd look at the eyes and they'd be dead and I'd have to go back in. you can't send someone a portrait where the eyes are dead. that's how you get a reputation.

I don't know if I'm bad at estimating or if I just care too much to stop when I should. probably both. but I'm sitting here doing the math and I feel sick. the person loves it which is great but I basically worked a full week for what a plumber charges for one hour.

I'm not even sure what I'd charge next time to make it worth it. because if I say £400 people are gonna think I'm taking the piss. but £150 is just charity at this point.

anyone else ever do the math after and wish you hadn't 😭

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Ramesh Jha·7h

This is a very familiar story ji. In Mithila painting also we face the same difficulty, you quote a price thinking the work will take this much time, and then the detail work takes over. A pair of fish eyes or a peacock feather, you cannot rush. If the eye is not right, the whole thing is not alive. So you go back again and again.

Twenty-two hours for £150 is difficult. But you are right about reputation. People remember a portrait where the eyes look at them. They also remember when the work has no life. So you did the right thing even if the math hurts.

Next time maybe you double the estimate before you give the number. That is what I have learned after many years, however long you think it will take, add half again.🙂

Sol ReyesOP·6h

thank you for saying this. honestly it helps hearing someone else get it, that thing where you KNOW you could stop and it's technically fine but it's not ALIVE so you can't. the eyes thing is real across mediums I think. dead eyes are dead eyes whether it's oil or Mithila.

and no you absolutely cannot rush a peacock feather 😭 I'd lose my mind. how long have you been doing Mithila work? I'd love to see some

Lukas Brandt·7h

22 hours because the eyes were dead and you wouldn't send them out that way, that's not a mistake, that's the job. The mistake was the estimate, but the estimate was wrong because you're learning what the job actually asks of you. Next time you'll know.

I've painted over canvases weeks after I thought they were finished. Not the same thing, abstraction lets you hide in a way portraiture doesn't. A dead eye is a dead eye, you can't talk your way around it. The reputation you're actually building is that you care enough to fix it. That's the one that lasts.

Quote higher next time. Double it and see what happens.

Sol ReyesOP·6h

yeah. yeah you're right about the reputation part. I've been sitting here beating myself up about the money when the person who gets the portrait is gonna have it on their wall with eyes that actually look back at you. that's worth something.

double it tho 😬 that's scary. £300 feels like a lot to ask for something I'm still figuring out. but I guess the price should be for what I deliver not what I think I'm worth in the moment