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ok so this is the thing that's been eating me all week and I need to say it somewhere. My cousin asked if I'd do a watercolor for her save-the-dates. Not a print, an ORIGINAL, one painting, and then she'd scan it and print however many she wanted. I said 40 dollars. Because she's family, because I panic-quote family, because I've been doing that since I was 19 and did my uncle's anniversary piece for a bottle of wine. It took me nine hours. TWO full evenings of layering washes so the olive branches didn't go muddy, plus the gouache accents on the lettering, plus two rounds of "can you make the green less green." Nine hours. Forty dollars. That's a bit under four and a half an hour, which, cool, great. And THEN. She posted it on facebook and told everyone her cousin does commissions "super cheap." And now my aunt is asking for one, and a friend of hers is asking for one, and I can feel the whole thing calcifying into my actual reputation. Like I've made myself into the discount. I set a number and now the number is me. The worst part is I can't even be mad at her, she was being sweet about it. I'm mad at myself. I have a real rate now, 38 an hour for commissions with a deposit up front, and I completely ignored it the second someone in my family asked. My partner says I need a flat number I say out loud instead of "oh whatever's fair" and I know they're right and I hate it. Anyway I'm painting the same window again this week because it doesn't ask me for a discount. Has anyone actually fixed this or do you just outlive it.

my cousin asked me to make a piece for her new apartment. i quoted her $400, already discounted, my normal price for that size is $650. she said "oh i thought family would just help out" and i caved and did it for $150 in materials. took me about 14 hours total. she posted it on instagram and someone asked where she got it. she told them it was "a gift from a friend." haven't done a family discount since. i'd rather give someone the piece outright than do that weird in-between thing where they feel like they're doing you a favor by paying you below your rate.

Picked up a landscape at an estate sale last weekend for $12. Frame was ugly, paint was muddy, but something about the sky felt off, like it was doing more work than it should. Took a scraper to a corner tonight just to see and there's a whole family portrait under it. Three people, dog, someone's hands folded in their lap. I don't know why I'm so moved by it. Somebody painted over their own family. Or somebody else's. Either way they wanted it gone and it wouldn't stay gone. Gonna try to lift the top layer carefully. If I ruin both paintings so be it, but I want to see the faces.

I just realized I've charged my best friend's sister $150 for three separate portraits over the last two years and each one took me about 12 hours. That's like $4 an hour. I can't even say no because she's "family" now and she's so excited every time and tells everyone about my work and I just sit there doing the math in my head while she's hugging me. I know I'm the problem. I know I have to raise it. But I told her $200 for the next one and she said "ok!" and now I'm wondering if I could've said $300 and she would've said ok to that too. Anyone else just absolutely terrified of naming a real number to someone who knows you? How do you break the cycle without feeling like a jerk?

i did a commission for a friend's mom last year. charged her 40% less than my usual rate because, you know, family connection. felt good at the time. she loved the piece, told everyone. now i'm getting calls from three of those referrals, and i'm realizing i've set a precedent i can't break without seeming like a total jerk. how do you disentangle yourself from that kind of thing? i'm almost tempted to just eat the loss and charge them full price, but the thought makes my eye twitch.

Did a linocut for a mate's mother two years back. She wanted a heron for the sitting room, lovely woman, made us dinner while the ink dried. Charged her €80 because sure, she's family-adjacent, and it was only one colour, how long could it take. Twelve hours it took. Twelve. And between the lino, the paper, the good ink, the proofing runs where the bugger wouldn't sit flat... I made about €4.50 an hour and told myself it was the gesture that mattered. Now every second cousin and neighbour's dog is looking for the "€80 heron." Two women this month alone, and one of them was genuinely offended when I said €180 for a bigger one. "But you did Joan's for eighty." Joan knows the price of bread, so she does, and she's mortified, but the cat's out of the bag. Worst part is I can't even be mad at them. I set the damn rate. If you undervalue your own work once, that's the price that follows you around for the next five years. I've had to have the awkward chat three times now and I still hate it every go. Lesson's learned anyway. Friend rate is a bottle of whiskey and a proper thank you, not a discount that pads itself into every conversation after. Sure I'm still not sure how to undo it, but I'm not doing another one at eighty. That ship has sailed.

I painted a portrait of my sister-in-law's mother two years ago. Almost free, obviously, family price, I think I said €150 and we both knew it was a lie. Oil, 60×80, took me close to a week of evenings. Last month she put it in a small exhibition of her own work. Not mine, hers, but the portrait was the thing people stood in front of. A gallerist asked me what I'd charge for something like that. I said a number out loud, doubled it on the spot out of embarrassment, and I could see him filing it away as cheap. The piece that got me the most genuine interest of my career is the one I practically gave away. I'm not sure I know what to do with that. It's not regret, exactly. It's the feeling that nobody will ever believe my real prices now because the best proof of what I can do is marked at a tenth of it.

Back when I was still doing a lot of fabrication work for other artists, a friend asked me to weld a gate for his backyard. Nice guy, helped me move a block of granite once. I quoted him basically materials plus a couple hundred for my time. He was happy, I felt good about it. Five years later he wanted a matching gate for the front. Expected the same price. Then his brother heard about it. Then a neighbor. Then I'm the guy who does cheap custom ironwork for an entire neighborhood and every one of them thinks I'm gouging when I finally say no. That was the last time I did a friends-and-family price on anything. Cost me more in aggravation than I ever saved in goodwill.

So the brother-in-law asked for a hare print for his new kitchen. Sure it's family, I said 60, that'll cover the paper and the frame and we're all happy. That was last March. It's now a hare, a heron behind it, a bit of bog cotton in the corner, and I've recut the block twice because the first one went too fussy. He keeps texting me photos of the wall it's going on. The wall is lovely. I want to burn it. The 60 quid was gone on the frame on day one, and I've maybe 30 hours into the block at this stage. That's 2 euro an hour, which is a rate you'd be embarrassed to pay a child. And here's the thing that actually eats at me, more than the money. He's a good man and he'd have paid 300 without blinking, because he thinks that's what a proper print costs. I'm the one who said 60. I set the number and then spent a year resenting a number I invented. I've stopped doing the family rate. Now I say the real figure, deadpan, and if it's family they get it for the real figure and a pint, and if they don't want it that's grand too. Nobody has flinched yet. Not one. Turns out the flinching was always mine.

Went home for Diwali last week. Everything fine till my mother's eldest brother sits down next to me and says "Ananya, it's been nearly two years now, no? The painting thing was a nice break but when are you going back to proper work?" I tried to explain that I wake up at 5:30 every morning, that I've sold 40 paintings this year, that I teach two weekend workshops that are always full. He just nodded and said "accha, but architecture is a stable profession na." And the worst part is I still felt defensive. Two years in and I still feel like I have to justify myself to people who've never once had to justify their 9-to-7. My husband says I should just say "I'll think about it" and change the subject. But I can't. I get into the argument every single time. And then I lie awake at night wondering if they're right and I'm being foolish. Anyway. Back to painting tomorrow morning at 5:30. Because what else am I supposed to do.

For me it was no gallery, nothing like that. It was a visitor from Delhi who came to our village for a wedding. He saw me painting a fish on the wall for the ceremony and he stood there and watched for a long time. Then he asked my father if he could buy it. We had never sold a painting in our lives, we only made them for the house and the festivals. That one small exchange changed everything, because for the first time I understood someone outside our home valued this work. I still remember his name. I think we all have one person like that, the first one who made us believe it was not just decoration but something people wanted. Who was it for you? A teacher, a stranger, a gallery? And did it change what you made after that, or how you thought of your work?

I pulled the blanket off the press this morning and noticed the maker's plate on the side. Glaser, West Berlin, 1962. My father died when I was twenty, so he was alive when this press was bolted together in a city that no longer exists. And now it sits in my studio in Berlin, which is basically the same street, a few kilometers from where it was built. My father was not a printmaker. He was a surgeon. I don't know why I keep doing this arithmetic with the dates. But I've been pulling proofs all week and I keep stopping to touch that plate like it's a relic. There is something about objects that outlive the people who made them. That's probably the whole reason I fell into this medium in the first place. The plate, the proof, the edition. You make a thing and it just keeps going, indifferent to whether you're still around to say anything about it. Anyway. I pulled a good proof of the new aquatint today. The first one that actually feels like something. So the press and I are on good terms right now.

I did a portrait for a close friend's father last year. Old man, beautiful face, the kind of light you want to paint. I quoted her my normal rate minus a bit, 900 plus materials, because she is a friend and I wanted to help. It took six months. Not six months of full days, but six months of my life, because she kept coming back with the frame, the lighting in the room where it hangs, could I soften the background, her mother didn't like the mouth. Every revision I ate the hours because the price was already fixed. When it was finally done I did the math out of spite. Somewhere around 4 euros an hour. My student rate in 2003 was better. The friendship is fine. But I learned something stupidly late: a discount should be a gift, not a price you set once and then can't touch. What I should have done is quote the honest price and quietly knock off a third at the end as a gift. Instead I gave away a year. Never again.

A friend from years ago asked me to paint her daughter's portrait for her 18th. I said yes at €600, already half what I'd charge a stranger for a 50x60cm oil on linen. She's a friend, fine. Then the emails started. "Could you do it from these five photos instead?" "Actually she's wearing a different dress now, can you change the colour?" "Her hair is shorter than that photo shows." "My mother thinks the background should be lighter." I repainted the face from new reference, adjusted the dress twice, scraped and repainted the background. All told I probably spent close to 25 hours on a painting that should have taken maybe 12. At my usual hourly rate for commissioned work that comes out to about €24 an hour. My assistant, who stretches canvases, makes €16. So I earned roughly the same as the person who stretches my canvases, for a job that required twenty years of training. The friend was happy. The daughter cried when she saw it. Beautiful moment. I don't regret it exactly. But I sat down afterwards and did the math and realised I'd basically given her a €1,200 painting plus a free workshop in how to manage an artist. Never again without a contract that says: one reference, one revision, anything beyond that is a new fee. Curious if anyone else has a number attached to the "learning experience" of a commission that ran away from you.

One of the girls who comes to my house on Sundays to learn, Sunita, she is maybe seventeen. She has been coming since two years, very quiet, never asking anything, only watching my hand when I draw the line for the fish scales. Her lines were shaky for long, I will not lie. Last month there was a small exhibition at the block office in Madhubani, arranged by the cooperative. She sent two paintings without telling me. I came to know only when the secretary phoned me. Both were sold. One to a teacher from Darbhanga, one to a man who works in the bank there. She came on Sunday and put the money in her mother's hand, and her mother did not say anything for some time. I have seen many paintings go from my own house to the walls of people who will never know whose hands made them. But this is different. It is her own money from her own line work. I told her, now you must be regular in practice, this is only starting. But inside I was thinking of my mother, who taught me in the same way, sitting on the floor with the bamboo stick for the brush. Nothing has changed in that room since long. Only the names are new. She is asking me now whether she can learn to do the kohbar on cloth, not only paper. I said yes but cloth is costly and one mistake cannot be removed. Any of you have experience teaching a young student on cloth? I do not want to discourage her by being too careful also.

Painted a 120x150 for an old friend's anniversary two years back. She told me, tearfully, she couldn't afford my gallery price and I said of course, don't worry, we'll find something. Named €600, which was about a third of what that size goes for. She spread the word, quietly, and for a year after that I got three more people "from her circle" who all wanted the same deal. Each one I had to find a way to say no to without making her look bad. The painting itself was good, actually maybe the best of that stretch, and part of me still resents it. Not her. Me. I set the number and I treated my own time like it was worth nothing when a friend was on the other end of it. I've started telling younger painters in the academy a simple rule I wish someone had given me: the discount should come out of your profit, not your hourly rate. Figure out your real number first, then decide how much of it you can afford to give away. If you can't afford to give it all away, you can't afford to give it at all. I know it sounds ungenerous. It's actually the only way I stayed generous at all.

My own mother's brother. At lunch yesterday. Looking at a painting I'd just finished of a house on Wheeler Road that's about to be demolished, I was actually pretty happy with how the light came through the portico. And he goes, "All this is nice, but when are you going back to proper architecture? Enough timepass na?" Timepass. I spent seven years in practice before I switched. I know what a structural load calculation looks like. I know what it is to sit through a client meeting where they want to change everything at the 11th month. I haven't forgotten any of it. I just chose something else. And the thing is, he's not even being mean. He genuinely thinks he's looking out for me. That's the part that gets me. The concern. The well-meaning. The absolute certainty that art is what you do until you find something serious. I didn't say much. Just smiled and said maybe next year. But I've been thinking about it all evening and I'm still irritated.

I need to say this somewhere. Two years back, a friend's sister asked me to do a sketch of their old house in Basavanagudi, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden pillars, before the builder came in. I said 6,000. Family-adjacent rate, I told myself. She was thrilled, paid half upfront without a word. It took nine days. Ink on cold press, 12x16, and I redrew the facade three times because the perspective on those pillars kept going soft on me. Fine. That's my problem, not hers. But then came the framing. I wanted it to look good for them, so I got it mounted and framed properly. 2,800. And the drive to and fro, two trips with samples, another 600 in autos. So 6,000 minus 2,800 minus 600. Plus paint, paper, my own time. I did the arithmetic that night and just sat there. The thing is, I have not raised my rate since. Same 6,000 for a similar size, and I know two other people who were quoted it too. It has become THE number. I'm scared to touch it because they all know each other. The house is gone now, by the way. Demolished last March. So the drawing is the only record of it, which makes it worse somehow, like I should have charged more for that. If you've broken out of a friends-and-family number without it turning into a whole thing, tell me how. I genuinely want to know. 🙏

Sold a 16x20 charcoal portrait this week for $180 and I finally did the math I've been avoiding for years. 22 hours on it. That's $8.18 an hour and I'm honestly embarrassed I typed that out. The worst part is I knew better. She was my aunt's friend so I did the "family discount" thing before she even asked. Aunt's friend, not even family. I gave away money nobody asked me to give away. I keep doing this. I price from fear. Fear that if I say $400 she'll say no and I'll have wasted the charcoal. But I already spent the hours. The hours are spent either way. I'm not mad at her. I'm mad that I can't seem to stop being the one who underprices myself before anyone else gets the chance to do it. Every single time. Like I'm pre-emptively apologizing for being worth something. Gonna sit with $8.18 for a while and try to actually feel it instead of just doing the math again next time and doing the same thing.

Someone asked me to paint their grandmother's house in Malleswaram, the one being sold, about to be knocked down for yet another apartment block. They wanted it as a gift for the whole family. I was so touched by the reason I just said ₹3,000 without thinking. Then I actually did it. Reference photo was terrible, old phone pic, bad lighting, half the house hidden behind a tree. I had to go there twice to sketch it properly, spent a full Sunday morning sitting on the kerb drawing, then another two days painting at home. The house had this lovely old chettah-style window detail and I ended up redoing the whole thing because the first wash went muddy. So that's roughly 20 hours of work for ₹3,000. ₹150 an hour. Less than what I pay my domestic help. The family loved it, cried actually, and that's worth something. But I sat there thinking, why do we do this to ourselves? Because the story was good? Because saying a real number felt awkward? I wouldn't ask my plumber to work for ₹150 an hour. Still haven't figured out what I should have charged. ₹8,000? ₹12,000? I honestly don't know what a fair rate is for this kind of thing in Bangalore. What do you all charge for a detailed architectural watercolour, a full house, not just a loose sketch?