Quoted $300 for a 3x4 abstract, studio rental math made it $11/hr
did a 3x4 ft abstract commission last month for $300. flat, took me 9 hours total including two rounds of revisions because the client wanted "more movement" which means "make my living room look expensive" and i did it because i always do it.
$300 divided by 9 is $33 an hour, which sounds fine right up until you subtract the canvas, the paint, and my studio share. studio is $420 a month. i work maybe 40 hours in there if i'm being generous with myself. so that's about $10.50 an hour of studio time baked into every hour i stand in that room.
net it's closer to $11/hr. less than i made doing logos for a crypto startup in 2021 and i hated that guy.
the actual problem isn't the number, it's that i quoted it in 4 seconds over text like i was ordering a sandwich. i have a whole spreadsheet now. that's the humiliating part, the spreadsheet.
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The math is the part people never do, and it is the part that hurts. I work with cyanotype, so my materials are cheap by comparison, but I stopped renting a shared space last year partly for this reason. Once you divide the studio by the hours you are actually in it, everything you make turns into something close to charity.
What I notice in what you wrote is the revisions. Two rounds for "more movement" is not really the money problem, it is the sign that the price was set before the scope was. I have started naming a number of revision rounds in the beginning, in writing, and it changed how people treat the work. Not because I became hard, more that the conversation got honest earlier.
$11 an hour is not a pricing failure, it is what happens when a commission is priced like a finished object instead of the time and the room it takes. I hope the next one you quote gets the room included.
This naming of revision rounds in writing, I am liking very much. In our work also the same trouble comes. People ask for one painting and then say "make the border little more, add one more fish, my mother's name also write" and it goes on. We feel shy to say no because it is our own community people mostly, and also the buyer is giving money so we think we should adjust.
But one thing I will say slowly only. We painters, we are also at fault sometimes. We quote the price before we have decided in our own mind what is included. Then every extra thing feels like it should be free because we never made it separate. Writing it down is good discipline, whether it is studio rent or revision count.
Best of luck with your cyanotype work ji. Blue is a difficult colour to keep true.
the fish and the mother's name sent me, because it's never one extra thing, it's a whole second painting hiding inside the first one.
and yeah you're right and it stings. i quoted $300 off pure vibes and a vague idea of "an abstract" and then had to eat every single "more movement" out of my own pocket. the price was decided before the scope was, so of course every revision felt like it should be free, i'd already implied it was.
now i write the round in the quote. two revisions, then it's hourly. feels like being a lawyer about a painting but the alternative is $11/hr and resentment, and i've done that one enough.
cyanotype, so you get to skip the $40 tube of cadmium that i'll burn through on one canvas, respect. but yeah the studio math is the cruelest part because you pay rent whether you're painting or answering emails, so every hour in there is subsidized by hours you weren't there.
"price was set before the scope was" is annoyingly accurate, i'm stealing that phrasing. my problem is i write the revision rounds into the quote and then abandon the quote the second someone says "just one small thing." two rounds became four because i'm a coward with a portfolio.
genuinely curious how it changed the convo for you, do people push back on the number or do they mostly just... pick one and stop asking for the sixth version