I quoted ₹6,000 for a house portrait and spent 11 hours on it. That's ₹545 an hour before materials.
I did one of those old Bangalore bungalow portraits for a family that's selling the place. They wanted it as a keepsake before the demolition. I quoted ₹6,000, felt generous about it, honestly, because it was for someone who was losing their childhood home and I wanted to be nice.
Eleven hours. That's ₹545 an hour before the paper and the paints, which for good watercolour paper and decent pigment is maybe another ₹800-1000. So call it ₹480 an hour.
And I know the family was happy, and I know some of you will say stop undervaluing yourself, and I know all of that is true. But the thing is, I also know if I'd quoted ₹15,000 they'd have found someone else, or gone to one of those digital artists on Instagram who does it for ₹2,000. There's this whole tier of people who genuinely cannot tell my work from the cheap version, and that's the part I don't have a fix for.
Still, I did the math on a napkin after I delivered it and sat there for a full minute. I don't even know what the answer is. I just wanted it written down somewhere.
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The ₹480 an hour is a fiction though, isn't it. You don't have eleven hours of billable work every day. The painting is the easy part to count. The hours you spend hunting for clients, the ones that fall through, the framing and the photographing and the posting on Instagram so someone picks your work over a thousand others. Nobody pays you for those hours. Bof, I know this argument, I've had it with myself for twenty years.
But I do get what you're actually saying, which is that the number felt right for the thing. It's a keepsake for a family losing the house. There's a generosity in that and it isn't wrong. The danger is only if it becomes the habit. One sentimental piece done cheap, fine. When every piece quietly becomes sentimental, you starve.
The portrait itself, I hope you kept a photograph. Painted houses hold a different kind of weight than painted people, but they hold it.
Mmm, you're speaking some real truth there, baby. That invisible work eats up more hours than the sewing ever does, that's the Lord's honest truth. I spent years making quilts nobody saw until my granddaughter put them online, and I never counted all the hours just finding people who'd even look.
But here's the thing I've come to at my age. Some of that work you can't count because it ain't the point of the work. That portrait for a family losing their home, that goes somewhere deeper than what the clock says. There's money you earn and there's money you make for your spirit, and sometimes they ain't the same thing.
You keep charging what feels right for the piece, honey. The clients that matter will find you. Just don't let folks take advantage of that good heart too much neither. Both things can be true at once. 🙂
That "money for your spirit" bit got me, I won't lie. You're not wrong. There were parts of those 11 hours that I wouldn't trade for anything, the old lady telling me about the mango tree her father planted, sitting on the verandah step while the light did that thing it does here in the evenings. That isn't billable and it never will be.
But I think the part I'm struggling with is the balance. I'm not 20, I've got rent and a family that already thinks I've lost my mind leaving architecture. One portrait that feeds my soul doesn't pay for the paper. And I can't feed my soul every week and eat nothing.
Your granddaughter putting those quilts online changed things for you, that's lovely. Maybe that's the lesson somewhere. Sometimes it takes someone else seeing the work before you know what it's really worth.
You're not wrong, and I know the hourly rate is a fiction. It's the closest thing I have to a number that makes sense to me, but you're right that the real rate is much lower when you count everything around it. The six dead leads before this one, the two days photographing and posting, the framing I did myself because I couldn't justify paying someone. That's the part nobody sees when they hear a quote.
And you're also right about the other thing. Some of it was generosity, sure, but some of it was just not knowing how to ask for more without feeling like I was taking advantage of a family already grieving a house. That's on me, not on them.
Twenty years of this argument with yourself and you're still at it. I suspect that means you're on the right side of it. 🙂