Nobody prices in the hours I spend just looking. I redraw a leaf four times before I touch water.

I quoted a client £480 for a study of their garden's camellia. When I broke down the actual time afterward I came out at under £9 an hour, because I only counted the brush hours. The days of sitting with the specimen, turning it in the light, the pencil studies I do before pigment ever touches paper, those never made it into the calculation.

Botanical work is slow in a way that doesn't photograph well. A client sees one finished plate. They don't see the morning I spent watching how the petals fold at noon versus at six, or the three studies of a single leaf I discarded because the venation was wrong.

I could raise my prices and pretend that accounts for it. I did raise them, modestly, and lost two regulars. The irony is the same people who balk at £480 for a week of my life would happily have paid a plumber that for an afternoon. I haven't decided what that says about me or about the trade I chose. It's on my mind because I just finished the ledger for the quarter and the number is not comfortable.

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Sol Reyes·1h

god this hit me. i do the same thing and i hate myself for it every time. i'll quote someone for a portrait and count maybe the hours i'm actually at the easel, but the whole week before where i'm just sitting with a face in my head, or the drawing i do and rip up because the hand's not right, that's invisible. so i end up making like £6 an hour and telling myself it's fine because i love it, which is exactly the kind of lie that keeps artists broke.

the thing is we almost can't win. if you price in the looking, people think you're taking the piss. but the looking is where the work actually happens. the brush hours are just the photocopying.

i've started adding a flat "study time" line to invoices and not explaining it. just there. no apology. still doesn't feel right but it's better than pretending i don't exist before i pick up a pencil. the camellia client got a steal and they don't even know it. ❤️

Margaret HsuOP·34m

You've put your finger on the real knot, which is that the looking doesn't just precede the work, it is the work. The brush hours are the least skilled part of it, if I'm honest. Any competent colourist can lay a wash. The years of knowing how a leaf folds, that is what a client is actually paying for, and we somehow hand that part away for free.

The lie we tell ourselves is that loving it makes it not-labour. It is labour. It is skilled labour. I sat with a camellia for the better part of two days before I drew anything, and I would not apologise for that to anyone, yet I priced myself as though it had not happened. We are the only tradespeople I know who charge for the visible and discount the invisible.

I have started pricing a day rate for study time, separate from the finished plate. It feels almost audacious to write it down. But so does charging £9 an hour, and one of those has to stop.

Dimitra Vasilakis·28m

The lying to yourself part is the bit that really keeps you broke, yeah. I did restoration for years where the invoice was just labour and materials, and I got so used to my time being worth nothing that when I went back to my own work I kept quoting the same way. It took me a while to realise I wasn't pricing the piece, I was pricing my own guilt about enjoying the slow part.

The looking is the whole thing. I sit on the floor with a sack of Byzantine glass and I can spend an afternoon just turning pieces in the light before I set a single one. Nobody sees that, but it's why the finished thing isn't a jumble. You can't invoice a client for the week you spent with their face in your head, but you can stop pretending that week didn't happen when you pick the number.

I price it now by the piece, not the hours. I decide what the finished work is worth and I say that, and if they balk I walk away. Broke but not resentful beats broke and full of self-loathing. Though the £9 an hour thing, ouch. We've all been there. 🙂

Tomáš Havel·1h

This is the oldest problem in the room. I build installations out of junk, and the finding is 80 percent of the work. Six months of wandering scrapyards and train sidings, then someone asks how long the build took and I'm embarrassed to answer honestly. The looking never prices.

Thing is, your client isn't paying for hours. They're paying for the eye that knows a camellia well enough to decide it needs four studies. Nobody sells the apprenticeship either. You just learn to stop apologising for it or you starve on nine pounds an hour.

The leaf studies aren't waste, by the way. Discarded studies are the actual wage. The plate is just what's left over when the looking is finally done.

Margaret HsuOP·24m

The finding being 80 percent of the work is exactly right, and I suspect we're both quoting the wrong numbers for the same reason. A scrap yard and a camellia branch have more in common than either of us would care to admit: you can't rush the looking. The eye has to be fed before the hand can do anything.

You're right that the client is paying for the judgment, not the hours. I know that intellectually. It's the habit of a former scientist that undoes me, this compulsion to account for everything and come out honest. I'd rather charge less and sleep well than inflate a number and wonder. But £9 an hour is not honesty, it's cowardice dressed up as integrity.

And I take your point about the discarded studies. I keep every one. They're a record of the wrong answers, which turns out to be worth more than the right one in the end.