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ugh, just submitted the final files for a logo project. it was one of those rare ones where the client actually had taste and didn't try to micromanage me into oblivion. felt almost like a real art commission, lol. paid the bills and didn't make me want to quit painting forever. a win is a win i guess.

was doing a small commission for a friend of a friend. like, 3 days of work for me. i quoted them $500, thinking it was generous. they jumped on it so fast. turns out they’re a lawyer and their billable rate is $800/hr. i spent the next week feeling like a total idiot. i should have charged them $3000, minimum. now i’m stuck doing this piece for way less than it’s worth, and i feel like a sucker. gonna have to be way more aggressive with my numbers going forward. this whole thing is a minefield.

omg you guys i actually did it i sent the invoice for that big commission i finished last week. i was so nervous about it honestly, like what if they think it's too much or they ghost me or something?? but my partner was like 'just send it Dani you did the work!' and they were so right haha. it feels SO good to have it out of my hands and just like, trust that it'll get paid. fingers crossed it all goes smoothly! this is such a huge step for me going full-time, it feels so real and terrifying and amazing all at once. anyway, just wanted to share a small win!! 🙏

so i did the thing everyone says to do. sat down, added up the real hours on my last three freelance design jobs instead of the hours i like to tell myself, and it came out grim. one packaging job for a small hot sauce brand, i quoted 1200 flat, took me roughly 31 hours with revisions. that's under 40/hr before i even think about software or the fact that i don't have health insurance. so i set my new rate at 55 and sent it to the one client i actually like working with, the hot sauce guy, for a label refresh. he went quiet for two days and then said it was more than his budget. which is fair. it's not a dig at him. but now i'm sitting here with a rate i believe in and one fewer check, and the freelance money is exactly what covers the difference between rent and what painting pays me, which is to say, everything. the annoying part is i know 55 is still low. i've seen designers with worse work than mine charging 90 and getting it. i just can't make my mouth say the number out loud yet. anyway the hot sauce label is up for grabs i guess. hmu if you know a brand.

client wanted a "fun tropical" illustration for a juice label, so i'm staring at an actual banana on my desk trying to mix that yellow. and it doesn't exist. it's like seven yellows at once depending on the light and half of them are somehow green and a little bit purple in the shadow. mixed something i was happy with, walked to the kitchen, came back, it was mustard. sat down again and it looked right. so either my lighting is cursed or i'm the problem. anyway i painted the whole thing too orange because i got annoyed, and honestly it's better than what they asked for. not telling them that. freelance is going great, can you tell

numbers check for anyone who still thinks follower count is the thing: instagram: ~14.2k, been there 6 years, average reach on a painting post is like 900 accounts. sold 2 originals off it this year. newsletter: 61 people, started it in march because a friend bullied me into it, zero growth hacks, just me rambling about whatever's on the easel. sold 4 pieces off it. same paintings. same prices. the difference is that 61 people chose to get an email and i'm not renting their attention from a company that keeps changing the rent. the annoying part is i can't tell you how to grow the newsletter because i don't know. half the list is people i already knew. the other half found it through a link i stuck in my bio that maybe 30 people have ever clicked. it's not a strategy, it's just a smaller room. anyway i'm not deleting the account, i still need it for the freelance stuff and i like the shitposting. but i've stopped treating it like a storefront and started treating it like a billboard that happens to be free. the store is 61 people in an inbox.

took a freelance logo job i was dreading because rent was due and my studio's a glorified walk-in closet. and it was... fine? client actually let me pick the palette, paid half up front, didn't ask for 47 revisions. i know that sounds like a five-star yelp review for basic decency but in this economy that's basically a miracle. the real win is i finished it in three days and still had energy to paint something for me after. first time in months i didn't feel like a vending machine that dispenses the same beige logo for "exposure points." i even sort of liked the logo by the end. not enough to say it out loud to anyone who'd make fun of me, which is why i'm telling strangers here instead lol rent's paid, i've got a canvas prepped, and the cat finally stopped sitting on my palette. good week.

took a logo gig last month because rent was due, told the guy €300 flat. it took me 30 hours. i brought that number up myself. i did the math on my own and then agreed to it. €10 an hour for a thing that's going to be on their truck for a decade. worst part is i knew better. i've done this exact dance like six times. there's a version of me that charges €800 and the client probably still says yes because they already had a budget in mind, and i keep volunteering to be the cheap option because i'm scared of the silence after i say a real number. i keep a running list of freelance rules for myself on my phone. rule #1 is "don't quote before you've slept on it." i texted him back within 40 minutes. i don't even know why i'm surprised anymore

doing a freelance thing for a small bakery, logo refresh, and the owner sent me a "brand guidelines pdf" that is three pages long and page two is just comic sans with a note that says "this is our font, it's fun." i have spent an hour now trying to make comic sans work. i have tried it big, i have tried it spaced out, i have tried it in a nice warm cream on brown. it still looks like a permission slip from 2004. i am losing to it. the worst part is she's right that it's "fun." it is fun. it's fun in the way that a whoopee cushion is fun, which is to say it works exactly once and then everyone in the room wants to leave. i can't say that to her, obviously. i sent back a version where i quietly swapped it for something friendlier and she replied "oh no, that's not our font." considering just painting a sign for my own wall instead of finishing this. my wall doesn't have opinions

spent an hour trying to rematch a green i mixed six weeks ago for the left half of a canvas and it's just not happening. same tube, same brand, same ratio, and it's off by a hair that i can't unsee. i've got the old swatch taped to the easel like a missing person poster. i know the answer is "paint the whole thing at once" but i built this thing in two sittings around a freelance deadline and now i'm paying the tax. genuinely considering just calling the seam a compositional choice and moving on. it's not a compositional choice. what do you do when you can't get back to a color, do you chase it or do you repaint the section

deadline's friday. freelance gig for a wellness brand, which already tells you everything. they sent the brief as a 14 page pdf and a separate mood board that's just nine screenshots of the same beige instagram feed. today's note: "love it! can we make the logo bigger? like 40% bigger." the logo is a wordmark. the whole card is the wordmark. making it bigger means deleting the phone number, which, sure, honestly, fine. the thing that gets me is i did this exact conversation in 2019. and 2021. i know all the moves. i say "sure, i'll try a version" and then i send the version where it's 12% bigger and they say perfect. i'm not even mad at them. i'm mad that i'm this good at it. spent two years in art school to get fluent in the language of making a thing slightly worse on request. anyway i'm gonna go paint something flat and ugly and loud after i hit send, for me, where nobody gets to say bigger.

biggest freelance check of the year so far and the brief was basically "paint whatever, we trust you." meanwhile the last three clients who wanted revisions every 48 hours paid me in exposure and vibes. there's something spiritually wrong with this industry and i'm not sure i want to fix it

freelance client asked for something "editorial, sophisticated, gallery-level" for a brand refresh. i sent them a study i did of a tulip that i genuinely think is some of my best work, the one where i let the flat shapes fight each other and barely cleaned up the paint edge. they said it was perfect. which is great for rent money but it's messing with my head a little because the piece itself is the least "design" thing i do. no grids, no thinking about hierarchy, just me and the color. and the people paying the most for it are the ones who can least see what's actually happening in it. tried to lean into "loud flat color" in the pitch and they nodded at all the wrong parts. whatever, invoice got paid in full today and that's the real editorial. kinda want to paint a whole series of tulips now and see if i can trick the market into funding my actual work. feels gross. probably gonna do it.

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.

ok so I've been full time since January and I've sent plenty of invoices by now, no big deal right? But yesterday I invoiced a real client, like, a gallery. For a commission. And I sat there staring at the "send" button for a solid three minutes which is ridiculous because I am a 26 year old woman not a baby deer. I kept thinking what if they see the number and go ??? who does she think she is. Even though we literally agreed on the price beforehand?? My brain is broken. Anyway I sent it and then immediately painted a very bad very aggressive watercolor of a teapot to calm down haha. And my partner came home and I made them read the invoice back to me like I couldn't trust my own eyes. They were very patient about it. I know this is small potatoes compared to what some of y'all are out here doing but it felt huge. Like oh I'm actually doing this. Freelance artist. That's my job now. Terrifying and good.

was just debugging a client's landing page and it's like... the ugliest thing i've ever seen. basic html, like, zero styling, just text and a button. and it's converting like crazy. meanwhile the beautifully designed ones with fancy animations and great typography are just... crickets. lol. i guess people just want the info and a clear path to buy, not a design award winner. took me years of design school and freelance hell to learn that lol.

priced a commission at what i actually need to make per hour for the first time instead of whatever i thought they'd stomach. did the math in front of them too. "materials plus 28 hours at x." fully expected the haggle. they just said cool and sent the deposit. now i'm annoyed because it means i've been lowballing myself for like three years for no reason and the ceiling was never real, it was in my head. classic. idk if this is marketing advice or a confession. i think it's both. if you're freelance stop pricing like you're apologizing for existing. the worst they can do is say no and then you're no worse off than when you didn't ask.

i've got a 40x40 canvas in the corner of my studio that's been "nearly done" since march. quoted a guy 1200 for a commissioned piece in the same size last year and nearly threw up sending it, so you can guess how the pricing on this one's gone. anyway. today i put a number on it. $3400. typed it, saved the draft, and it's just been sitting there in the drafts folder like a grenade. the thing is i know the math. i know the hours. i know that a designer would bill four grand for a logo they crank out in a weekend and nobody blinks. but the second it's paint on a panel and it's mine, my brain decides the real number is "whatever makes me not feel like a fraud," which historically has been about 40% under market. freelance brain rot. didn't spend two years in art school and drop out to price my own work like a charity. sending it tonight. or tomorrow. somewhere in there.

there's a freelance logo job that's been sitting in my inbox since mid july. client wanted "warm but corporate." i opened the file like nine times and closed it every time. tonight i actually did it. eleven minutes. sent the invoice at 1:40am. the relief is unreal and also kind of insulting, because the thing i was avoiding was never the work, it was the email where i have to be a normal person who says "let me know if you'd like any revisions" and means it. the work was nothing. it's always nothing. anyway rent is now theoretically handled. going to go paint something that doesn't have to be warm OR corporate.

the freelance logo job I took to pay rent is due tomorrow and instead I've spent the last three hours sorting my paint tubes by "vibes" which is just code for color families I made up. there's a pile for "weird browns" and a pile for "aggressive greens" and neither of them is helping me finish this logo. the logo is fine. the logo has been fine since Tuesday. I just refuse to close it. anyway the green section of my wall is looking incredible if anyone needs inspiration, absolutely free of charge, unlike my rates which I keep accidentally undercharging.