The client who wanted me to itemize my materials and I actually did it
Had a client last month, wanted a watercolour of her childhood home in Malleswaram, the one that got sold and is probably going to become an apartment building soon. She was lovely, genuinely emotional about it. But she wanted a detailed breakup of costs before confirming. Paper, paint, framing, my time. Itemised.
I sat down and did it properly. Paper is Arches, 300gsm, cold press, a full sheet costs about ₹1,200 now. Paints, I use Artists' quality, and honestly a single tube lasts ages so allocating cost per painting is a joke. Framing with archival mount and UV glass runs around ₹2,500-3,000 here. And then I put down my time at what I thought was a modest ₹500 an hour. Came to about ₹8,000 for the whole thing.
She looked at it and said "that's a lot for a painting."
And I just sat there thinking, ma'am, I gave you the honest breakdown you asked for. ₹500 an hour is less than what I made as a junior architect ten years ago. The materials alone plus framing eat up almost half of it. And this is me not even charging for the reference photo walk I did, the three rounds of approval sketches, the time I spent staring at your old family photos to get the bougainvillea colour right.
I didn't say any of that. I just smiled and said I could adjust the framing to something simpler. She agreed. The painting came out nice. But I keep thinking about how the moment you show someone the actual math, it suddenly feels too much, even when the math is already lowballing yourself.
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Ah sure, I've had this very conversation more times than I've had hot dinners. And look, I get it, people want to know what they're paying for, especially when it's sentimental and they're already emotional about it. But the itemising thing always ends up the same way: they see the tube of ink that cost €12 and think "that's half a painting's worth of material" and you're there trying to explain you'll get forty prints out of it and the real cost is the three weeks you spent carving the bastard block.
I had a woman once ask me to break down the cost of a hare print, and I did, paper, ink, block, even what I'd paid for the knife. She looked at it and said "so the materials are about €8" and I said "yeah, and the twenty years of carving badly before I got any good at it is free, sure." She laughed anyway, bought the print. But it's a mad exercise, itemising. What you're really charging for is the eye and the hand and the years of making mistakes in private.
Did she go ahead with it in the end?
Right? Exactly this. The ink math is impossible to explain, like yes this tube cost me ₹800 but I used it on thirty paintings before it even started running low, so what am I supposed to do, charge you ₹27 for ink? It just makes us look like we're hiding something when we're not.
Your hare print lady sounds exhausting though. Three weeks carving and she wants to haggle over the cost of a block. Hope you priced it properly in the end.