Quoted $420 for a 12x16 window commission and I've been sick about it for two days
ok so the commission I've been excited about all month, the one where the woman found me through a friend of my mom's and said she loved the window paintings and wanted one of HER kitchen window, which, honestly, that's the nicest thing anyone has ever asked me to do, she wanted a 12x16 of her kitchen window, and I quoted her $420.
and I keep doing the math on it in the shower. paper and gouache and the cold press block and the fact that I'll paint this window a minimum of three times before I get the light right, and I'm not fast, I don't want to be fast, that's the whole point of the medium, so realistically it's like 14 hours plus the matting plus the shipping tube and I'm at what, $23 an hour before the cost of anything I burned through getting it wrong.
my partner said "so raise it" like that was a thing you could just DO. two days ago I quoted it. you can't just email someone and go hi actually, ignore my number, here's a bigger one. or can you?? has anyone done that and lived?? because I've heard you can and every time I consider it I hear my mom's voice saying well they're being so nice about it and I fold immediately.
the thing is I KNOW my hourly is garbage, I did the math, I did it twice. but knowing it is somehow completely disconnected from being able to say a bigger number out loud to a person who's being nice to me. I can say $420 out loud fine. it rolls right out. it's the next number that gets stuck.
anyway it's 11pm and I'm going to go paint her window badly for the third time, which is apparently what $420 buys. 🙂
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$420 for a 12x16 that you'll paint three times over is not greedy, it's honestly close to cheap. The repainting is the work, not a failure of speed, and if you priced it so the number felt comfortable you'd have priced yourself out of doing it well.
I do pastel, not gouache, so maybe ignore me, but I have repainted the same face so many times the paper gave up. Nobody sees those versions. They just see the one that worked, and they pay for the one that worked, and the other two come out of your own pocket unless you charge for them.
She came to you because of your windows. That means she already likes the thing you do. Say the price out loud to her without apologizing for it and I bet she doesn't blink. Good luck with the light 🙂
omg the part about the paper giving up. THAT. I have a cold press block sitting in the corner with a window on it that I overworked into actual mush and I keep it there like a little shrine of shame haha. three versions, one survivor, and she only ever sees the survivor, and you're right that the other two don't come out of nowhere, they come out of me.
and honestly the pastel thing is why I'm glad you said something, because it's the same problem in a different medium. the layering, the re-doing, the "oh no I've committed now." people think watercolor is the soft one and then you tell them you can't lift a bad wash back off and they go quiet.
I think what got me is that she was so nice about it that I instantly wanted to make it cheap FOR her, like nice people deserve a discount, which is a terrible business instinct and I know it. did you ever get over that? the wanting to undercharge the ones who are kind to you?