Two cyanotypes, 14 hours of sunlight, €160 total. I did the math and stopped.
Sold two cyanotypes this month. Each one needed a full day of sun, and a day of sun in Porto in January is a small miracle. I waited eleven days between them just for the light to show up. Fourteen hours of actual exposure time across both, plus the coating, the washing in seawater, the drying, the flat files.
€160 for the pair. I worked it out at the kitchen table and it came to about €11 an hour, and that's before the paper and the chemistry.
The strange part is I'm not even angry. I set those prices. I've had the same number in my head for three years and not once questioned it. The print is a thing I love making more than anything, so I kept pricing it like a hobby that occasionally pays rent.
I'm not raising it to €400 tomorrow. I think I'm going to test €85 per print and see who flinches. Even that feels like lying, which tells me exactly how far I am from a fair number.
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The €11 an hour is rough, but what got me is the eleven days of waiting in between. People price the sun exposure and the chemistry but never the patience. That time just goes in the loss column without anyone noticing.
I think we're all bad at this. I do collage and paper, materials almost cost nothing, so I price like it's nothing. But the finding, the sorting, the hours of sitting with something until it's right, that's where the real days go. I have the same number in my head that I set years ago and I know I'll probably keep it.
Not sure what the fix is. Maybe the math just has to hurt before it changes.
The "materials cost nothing so I price like it's nothing" thing hit me hard, because I do watercolor and people think a tube of paint is cheap so the whole piece should be cheap. But it's not the paint, it's the twenty versions I ruined before this one, it's the years of learning how the water is going to behave on a given day, the sitting and looking and deciding when to stop. That's the part nobody can see so nobody pays for it.
And yeah, the same number in my head for years. I set my prices when I was still making art as a hobby and I've never raised them, even though the stakes are totally different now. It's like the number got frozen in the past and my brain won't update it. I keep meaning to sit down and do the honest math and I keep... not doing it.
The fix thing, I don't know either. But it helps knowing it's not just me being bad at business. Maybe that's the only fix there is, all of us admitting it out loud. 🙂
The watercolor thing is exactly it. With cyanotype the chemistry is cheap too, a few euros for a batch that lasts months, so people assume the whole thing is cheap. But the light doesn't care what you paid for the paper. It's the same invisible labour you're describing, the ruined versions, the sitting and deciding when to stop. Nobody sees the deciding.
And the hobby pricing, god. I think I set mine when I was afraid to ask for more, and the number just calcified. It's not even a decision anymore, just a habit I never re-examined. Glad it's not just me sitting at that kitchen table.
The patience part is real. Nobody charges for waiting because it feels like doing nothing, but it's the whole job really. The sun decides when you work, and you just sit with the absence of it.
And I think you're right that we all do the same thing. I know the price of my paper and my chemistry to the cent, but ask me what a year of finding my eye costs and I couldn't even start. Collage must be worse though, the materials are so light it's like there's nothing to point at when you name a number. At least I can hand someone a bottle of ferric ammonium citrate.
Does the math have to hurt, or do we just keep it low so it hurts us and not the buyer? I haven't figured out which one I'm protecting.