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spent six weeks on a commission for this architect guy, redoing the same corner of the same building five times because he couldn't articulate what he wanted, just "more energy" and "less of whatever that is." paid me €400 after all that. one miserable afternoon i made a sticker sheet of these little gremlin faces i'd been doodling while on hold with my bank, threw it up for €8, and it's outsold the commission three times over in a month. not sure what the lesson is. maybe the lesson is that most people would rather spend €8 on something that makes them laugh than €400 on something they have to defend to their wife. anyway i keep the gremlin faces and i keep the architect's check, they've both got a place. but i'm not sure i'd call either one "the work" and that's starting to bug me.

Okay so I finally did the thing I'd been avoiding for months and went through every commission I took last year. Added up all the hours, all the money, all the materials. Average came out to like €11 an hour and that's just... not a living wage where I live. And I already knew it was bad, but seeing it in a little spreadsheet made me feel genuinely sick for a day. So I raised my prices. Not wildly, like 25% on the mid-range stuff and more on the bigger pieces. And immediately two people who'd been "definitely going to commission me soon" for months just went quiet. Poof. Never heard from them again. One of them had even sent me a moodboard and asked me to hold a date for them. And I keep going back and forth, like did I price myself out of the people who actually wanted my work? Or were they never going to pay me fairly anyway? I think I know the answer. But it's hard when the quiet is so loud, you know? The worst part is the people who DID book in at the new prices have been my favorite clients ever. Which feels like it should be the lesson. But I still spent an hour last night being mad at myself for losing the other two. Anyway. If you've done the spreadsheet math and kept your prices the same after, I'd genuinely love to know what stops you from raising them, because I get it more than I want to. 🙂

A woman from a Facebook group asked me for a pastel portrait of her grandfather from an old photo. I quoted €60 because I was terrified of losing the commission and I still don't think of myself as someone who can charge real money. Fourteen hours on A3 Canson Mi-Teintes. That's €4.28 an hour before the pastels I wore down and the paper. She framed it and sent me a photo of it on her wall and I was honestly happy for a minute. Then I did the math the next morning lying in bed and felt sick. The worst part is I know exactly why I did it. I priced the piece like my fear of being rejected was a material cost. I'm trying to be honest that the problem isn't that she haggled, she didn't even try. The problem is I offered myself cheap before anyone could. I've accepted two more commissions since then and I charged the same €60 for both because raising it felt like a betrayal of the first woman. Does anyone else have this thing where your own past quotes become a ceiling you can't lift?

Got the go-ahead on a commission for a large landscape piece. It's a local scene, a rolling hill farm at sunset. I'm so excited but also a little nervous, it's bigger than anything I've done before. I've stretched a 30x40 canvas and now just have to actually put brush to it. Wish me luck! I'll need all the focus I can get with the kids home for the summer too. Maybe I'll hide out in the garage studio after bedtime.

Guy messaged me yesterday, real polite, "could I commission something small?" and I was like sure! love that. Then he sent me a paragraph. A full paragraph. He wants a 60x80cm painting (small?? that's huge), of his dog, in a specific palette he described down to the hex codes, framed, delivered, in time for his wife's birthday which is in three weeks. And the kicker, after all that, "obviously I was thinking a few hundred, that's fair right." I did the math on the hours alone and I almost laughed out loud. That's about minimum wage before materials. And he's framed it as this flattering opportunity, like I should be grateful he's picked ME. I told him my rate for that size and timeline and he went quiet. Haven't heard back. Cool. Cool cool cool. I think the thing that gets me is people genuinely don't see the labor. They see watercolor, they think it's quick, it's just water, right? They don't know the paper prep and the masking and the waiting for layers to dry and the redoing the whole wash when it blooms wrong at the last second. My partner watched me spend four hours on an 8 inch square today and was like "babe are you okay" and I was like no but the light on the jug is FINALLY doing what I want. Anyway. If one more person asks me to do it "as a favour" I'm going to paint them a single potato and charge them for the privilege.

I took a commission last month for a clients' wedding invitation suite, pressed flowers, hand-painted, twenty-five pieces. They wanted original watercolor originals, not prints. I quoted $1,800 for the set, which I thought was fair given the detail work and the materials. I sat down yesterday and actually tracked the hours. Sixty-three hours from initial sketches to final washes, not counting the sourcing of the flowers or the trips to the paper store. That comes to roughly $28.50 an hour. Less than I made as a graduate teaching assistant in 2003. The work is beautiful. The client is thrilled. And I cannot figure out where I went wrong in my estimate except that I have never been good at accounting for the invisible labor, the thinking time, the false starts, the week I spent testing paper to get the right sizing for wet-on-wet on a heavily textured surface. I charged for the painting. I forgot to charge for everything that makes the painting possible. I raised my studio rate by 15 percent this morning. It still feels like I'm guessing.

my first big-ish gallery charged me a commission on a painting that hadn't even sold yet. found out months later and they had the nerve to call it "holding space". i was too scared to say anything, just paid it and never went back lol. what's the sketchiest thing a gallery ever tried to pull on you that you only realized way after it happened?

A lady from Montgomery commissioned a queen-sized quilt, wanted it in her mother's old dresses and a Sunday shirt her daddy used to wear. I charged her $450 and felt a little bad about it at the time, like I was asking a lot. Well I counted it up honest. Sorting those dresses, taking them apart at the seams so the cloth laid right, the piecing, the quilting, binding. Sixty-one hours across three weeks. That come out to about $7.38 an hour and I supplied the batting and thread out of my own pocket. And I still felt bad asking for the $450. I told my granddaughter and she just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. She said grandma, you spent a whole week and a half of your life down there at that machine. And she wasn't wrong. But it's a funny thing, this work, you grow up where the women never charged for a quilt, you gave one for a wedding or a baby or to somebody whose house burned. Money on it still feels a little bit like shame to me sometimes. I know better in my head. Getting there in my chest is another matter. That $450 quilt is on her bed right now with her mama's plaid and her daddy's Sunday shirt all in it. And I'd do it again for the same money, if I'm honest. That's the part that really ought to bother me. 🙂

I took a commission back in February for a 16x20 landscape, a friend of a friend wanted a specific view from their vacation photos. I quoted $200 which is usually fair for that size and my level. What I didn't account for was the two weeks I spent staring at those reference photos, trying to figure out how to handle the lighting, sketching thumbnails in my head while I was folding laundry, completely rethinking the composition twice before I even touched a brush. By the time I actually started painting I had probably put in 6-8 hours of just... mental labor. And I didn't charge for any of it. Finished it in about 10 hours of actual painting time so the math works out to like $12/hour before supplies. I know you can't really bill for "thinking about it" but also, that was work, you know? It was work. I'm trying to figure out how to price differently next time without feeling like I'm nickel-and-diming someone. Maybe just raise the flat rate enough to cover it and stop overthinking.

i've been doing this monthly newsletter for like three years now and honestly most months it feels like shouting into a hole. open rate hovers around 30%, click rate is laughable, and i spend way too long writing it for what i get back. last month i almost skipped it. was in a weird headspace, had nothing to say, thought about just letting it die quietly. but i'd already written the draft so i sent it anyway. it was basically just a photo of a half-finished piece on my studio floor with a caption about how i didn't know what i was doing with it yet. got an email back from someone i'd never met. they said the honesty of it made them reach out. they commissioned me to make something for their new building's lobby. $4,200. so now i have to figure out what i'm doing with it. which is ironic because that's exactly what i said in the newsletter i almost didn't send. i don't know what the takeaway is. maybe just that the stuff we almost don't post is the stuff that actually lands. or that consistency matters even when it feels pointless. or that i still hate writing newsletters.

Had a collector ask me last month for a portrait of her two dogs, "but maybe a little less" than my usual figure rate, since dogs aren't people. I said no, politely, and she came back two days later at full price. She just wanted to know I wouldn't fold. It made me think about every commission I've taken in my life where I was vague about cost at the start because I was afraid of scaring someone off. Every one of those ended badly. The ones where I stated the number clearly, even when it made me wince, they respected it. You don't get clients by being cheaper, you get them by being clear. I paint. I'm not a negotiator. But after twenty years I've learned the only protection I have is a number said out loud early. The moment I start hedging, the client smells it, and then everything becomes a negotiation.

Got a commission a few months ago to repair and restore this old family photo that was basically falling apart. Water damage, creases, the edges gone gray. I almost said no because I don't do restoration work, I make things. But the woman who brought it in had this look. Her grandmother in the photo. Only copy. So I did it. Carefully, slow, like the whole thing was made of ash. And somewhere in the middle of it I realized the line between repairing and making is fake. You're still just deciding what stays and what goes and what gets to be seen. She picked it up yesterday and cried in my studio. Hugged me. I'm not a hugger but I let it happen. Anyway I've been thinking about that all week. The whole time I've been collecting broken things to make art from, and the one piece I actually fixed mattered more than any of it.

My daughter set up an Instagram for me about three years back. Told me I had to, everyone's doing it. I've put up maybe a hundred pieces since. Photos are average, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Total real paying commissions from it: one. A guy in Ohio who saw a welded piece and wanted something smaller in the same style. Paid in two installments, cash, no gallery cut. I've still got the message saved. Everything else came from word of mouth, a local show, and a collector who's known my name for fifteen years. I keep posting because she keeps telling me to and it doesn't hurt. But if the account died tomorrow I'd lose one client and about three hours a week. Not saying nobody sells that way. Just saying the numbers don't lie, and mine are what they are.

I finished a portrait commission this week that took me 40 hours across three months, including the sitting sessions, the gridding, the underpainting, the two rounds of corrections. The client paid €380. That's €9.50 an hour. I did the arithmetic in the studio last night and just sat there looking at the wall. The worst part is I can't even say it was a bad client. She paid quickly, she trusted me, she never nitpicked the nose. It's me. I quoted €380 because I was afraid to say 500 and lose the whole thing, and then I worked more hours than I expected because a portrait is never done when you think it is. I see the younger painters billing per hour like freelancers and I respect it, I do, but I can't work that way. I price the painting, not the time. Except the time is the painting, and one day the maths is going to catch up with me properly. How do the rest of you decide where the number goes, honestly? I'm tired of guessing.

I had a commission finally paid off this week. Deposit months ago, then silence, then the rest landed in my account at 11pm on a Tuesday like it was nothing. No note, no explanation for the delay. Just the number. And here's the thing. I already spent the deposit months ago. So the second half just sat there and I keep looking at it and I hate that it feels like found money instead of money I earned. That's not how it's supposed to feel. I priced it at $850. Three months of on-and-off work, some of it redone because they changed the brief halfway. If I actually clocked the hours it would be like $9 an hour, not counting the materials or the drive to deliver it. I know I'm supposed to feel grateful. I'm not grateful. I'm just tired and a little bit annoyed that this is the thing I have to do to keep making the things I actually care about. Anyway. Anyone else been paid for something and spent the whole time doing the hourly math and wished they hadn't?

i've been working on this portrait commission for two weeks. today she sends me the "final reference", it's one of those apps that smooths everything into plastic. no pores, no shadows under the eyes, the nose is literally a different shape. she looks like a sim character. i don't know how to tell her that i can't paint what isn't there. that the thing i'm actually good at is catching the light on somebody's actual face, the uneven bits, the way one eye is slightly smaller. that's the whole point of spending hours on pastel portraits instead of just running her photo through the same filter she already used. i said i'd send her some progress sketches this week and i'm dreading it. probably going to do a version that's technically accurate and a version that looks like her filtered face and let her pick. which feels wrong but i don't have the words to explain why.

my sister-in-law's friend asked me months ago if I could paint her parents' lake cabin for their anniversary. I kept putting it off because the pressure of doing something for someone else, someone paying me, felt so much heavier than painting for myself. finally got it done this week and mailed it out this morning. I'm not sure how it landed honestly. I kept second guessing the colors, the angle I chose, whether it even looked like the place. but it's gone now so it's out of my hands. she paid me $200 which felt like both a lot and not nearly enough at the same time. told myself I'd use it to buy better brushes but I'll probably just spend it on the kids 😅 anyone else get weirdly nervous about commissions or is it just me

finally did it. bumped my base commission price from $200 to $275 after like three years of telling myself i'd get around to it. two people had inquiries sitting in my DMs. both went "ok thanks!" and vanished into the ether the second i gave the new number. not even a counter or a "let me think about it" just gone lol. i know $275 is not insane. i know i'm worth it. i know the people who actually want the work will pay it. but man that immediate ghost hit different. feels like i just priced myself out of my own market and i'm the one who set the price. anyone else raise a number and immediately regret it before you even gave it a chance to breathe? or is it just me staring at my empty inbox

I've been doing this thing the last year or so where instead of trying to flog prints to strangers who've never heard of me, I just trade with other artists and makers. Potter gets a hare linocut, I get a mug. Woodworker gets a heron, I get a stool. That sort of carry-on. And what I didn't expect, half the commissions I've had this year came because that potter showed the print to someone who walked into her studio, or that woodworker hung it in his workshop and a customer asked where it came from. It's the slowest funnel in the world but it keeps working. I'm not even trying to sell at that point, I'm just swapping because I want the thing they make. The other thing is it got me out of my own head about pricing for a bit. Nothing resets your sense of value like holding something someone else spent ten hours making and thinking Jesus that's worth more than twenty quid. Makes you price your own work better too. Anyone else doing this or am I just building a very eclectic house one swap at a time?

so i did the thing everyone says you have to do. i made reels for six months straight. process videos, speedpaints, me talking to the camera like a normal person. gave it the real college try. one commission. from a girl i already knew irl. not saying it's dead or whatever, but i spent like 40 hours making those things and i would've been better off just emailing 20 people i wanted to work with. the math is not mathing for me anymore but i keep seeing people insist the algorithm is just about to reward you if you stay consistent. feels like a cope at this point. anyone else quietly dropping platforms or am i just bitter my face doesn't do numbers lol