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Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. I came out to about 16 hours and I charged 400 zł. That's roughly 25 zł an hour, which is about what a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it by what I thought my work was "worth" as an unknown, self-taught nobody, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her. So now I'm happy and embarrassed at the same time, which is a weird way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. My materials cost more than I think people realize, good pastels aren't cheap and a sheet of good toned paper is not nothing. And time is time, nobody gets it back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's good? That's the trap. I walk into it every time. Has anyone here found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're afraid people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it on my own.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜tool_calls> <｜｜DSML｜｜invoke name="emit_structured_response"> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="body" string="true">Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, copied from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. 16 hours in total and I charged 400 zł. That's about 25 zł an hour, less than a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it at what I thought my work was worth as a self-taught unknown, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her mother. So now I'm happy and uncomfortable at the same time, which is a strange way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. Good pastels aren't cheap and a single sheet of good toned paper is not nothing, most people have no idea what the materials cost. And the time doesn't come back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's any good? That's the trap and I walk into it every single time. Has anyone actually found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're scared people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it alone.

so I did this portrait commission for a friend of a friend. quoted £150 because I thought it would take me like 6-8 hours max. classic mistake right. well it took me 22 hours. TWENTY TWO. that's like £6.80 an hour before materials. and the thing is I couldn't stop. every time I thought it was done I'd look at the eyes and they'd be dead and I'd have to go back in. you can't send someone a portrait where the eyes are dead. that's how you get a reputation. I don't know if I'm bad at estimating or if I just care too much to stop when I should. probably both. but I'm sitting here doing the math and I feel sick. the person loves it which is great but I basically worked a full week for what a plumber charges for one hour. I'm not even sure what I'd charge next time to make it worth it. because if I say £400 people are gonna think I'm taking the piss. but £150 is just charity at this point. anyone else ever do the math after and wish you hadn't 😭

So my mom's friend asked me to paint her late dog from a photo. I said yes because of course I did, and I quoted $180 which I thought was reasonable for a friends-and-family thing. It took me 14 hours. That's like $12.85 an hour before materials, and I used good paper and maybe $30 of paint so really I paid for the privilege. Worst part is she keeps telling people I was "so sweet" to do it for her. Sweet. Like I did them a favor instead of doing my actual job. And now two of her friends have asked about portraits of their dogs and I have no idea what to charge because I set the bar at "sweet girl who paints dogs cheap." I know people here do the full "everyone deserves art" thing and I genuinely believe art should be accessible, but I'm one month into full time and I did the math on my real hourly rate across all my work this month and it's depressing. I don't know how to tell this woman I love that the next dog portrait is $350 minimum without sounding like I got greedy. Anyone else stuck in the friends-and-family trap? How did you get out without burning the relationship?

so I took a portrait commission which is already rare for me because I hate doing them, and the reference photo she sends is clearly a facetune situation. like the skin is blurred to hell, cheekbones sharpened, eyes unnaturally bright. I paint it as close to the photo as I can because that's what she gave me. she picks it up yesterday and goes "this doesn't look like me at all." no shit. you sent me a cartoon version of yourself and I painted the cartoon. I wanted to say "ma'am that's your face, you're the one who smoothed it into an instagram filter" but I just smiled and said I could adjust some things. I hate portrait work. I always remember why I hate it and then someone offers money and I forget. never again until next time.

I finished a pastel portrait of my partner's aunt last night, the one I'd been fighting with for a week. Her eyes finally came out right, that grey-green that shifts, and I felt good about it for maybe four hours. This morning I walked past it and the jaw is wrong, the whole left side of the face is too heavy, and I can't see the thing I saw yesterday at all. It's not even a bad portrait. I know that. But I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye and going no, that's not her, that's not anyone. Is this just what it is with pastel, where the fix is never done because you can always add one more layer on top of the one before it? Or do other people also go through the same cycle of loving a piece at night and distrusting it in daylight? I genuinely can't tell if it's the light changing or my brain deciding to lie to me on a schedule.

I did a custom portrait commission for a friend of a friend back in February. Watercolor, 9x12, pretty detailed reference photo of her dog who had just passed away. I quoted her $80 because I was still in my "I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm terrified to ask for money" phase and also she was nice and sad about her dog. 14 hours. I literally tracked it because at some point I was like wait this is getting absurd. $5.70 an hour. I had to buy a new tube of burnt sienna halfway through because I ran out, which was $12, so make that even less. She framed it and sent me a photo and I was happy she loved it. But I also wanted to cry a little bit. I think about that commission a lot now that I'm trying to take this seriously. Like what would I charge today? Probably $300 minimum. And even that feels like I'm making it up. I don't know when that stops feeling fake honestly.

Painted a portrait of my sister all week. Her face, the whole thing, really got somewhere with it around 2am. Woke up this morning and I couldn't look at it. The eyes were right but the mouth was wrong and I hated it so much I covered the whole canvas with gesso before I'd even had coffee. Now it's just a white rectangle on the easel and I already miss her. Wild how that works. I'd rather have an ugly painting I could've fixed than a clean slate. Every single time and I never learn. My therapist says this is a pattern. Yeah. It's called making art I guess. 😭

Quoted someone €350 for a 50×70 pastel portrait the other day. She paused and said "oh, I thought it would be less." And the thing is, I actually agreed with her in my head for a second. That's the problem. I sat down after and did the real math. The good pastels alone, the good paper, the fixative, the hours on a face that size, the do-overs I know are coming because I always redraw the eyes at least three times. €350 is honestly on the low side of fair. But it still feels like I'm asking for too much. I can't tell if that's the market or just the voice in my head from growing up being told not to be greedy. She hasn't written back. Part of me hopes she doesn't because then I don't have to sit with the discomfort of actually being paid what the thing is worth. I'm trying to hold the line this time. We'll see.

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.

A friend from the parents at my daughter's school. She knows I paint. She asked me to do a portrait of her daughter, a nice photo reference she had, the girl in a garden, good light actually. I said yes, I'd be happy to, and told her my price for a bust-length oil on linen, 40 x 50 cm, which is 1 200 €. She paused and said: "But you'll enjoy doing it." Not in a nasty way. She genuinely thought that because I would like the work, it shouldn't cost as much. As if pleasure and payment are opposites. As if a baker shouldn't charge for bread because he likes to bake. I explained that enjoying my work doesn't mean my time and materials are free, and that the years I spent learning to paint a child's face well enough that she'd want to hang it are part of what she's paying for. She said she'd think about it. She hasn't replied. I don't blame her exactly. Nobody taught her what this costs. But I'm tired of explaining that my enjoyment of the work doesn't subtract from the price, it's the whole reason the work is any good in the first place.

Finally worked up the nerve to raise my portrait rate. From 850 to 930 zł, which is nothing, like the cost of a nice dinner in Kraków. First person to ask after the change heard the new number and said oh, that's more than I thought, and just never wrote back. And the stupid part is I knew exactly what I was doing. I priced it at 930 specifically so it would still feel like a bargain compared to the studios that charge double. And I still felt like I'd done something rude. I did the math on the old price last month because I wanted to justify the raise to myself. 850 zł, roughly 14 hours of work when you count the prep and the fixing spray and the retakes I always do on the eyes. That's about 60 zł an hour. Less than I made answering emails at my old office job. Less than the plumber charged me to unstick a radiator for forty minutes. So logically I know I was right. But I spent the whole evening second-guessing myself, wondering if I should write to her and offer the old price like some sort of apology. Didn't. Woke up annoyed at myself either way. I keep seeing people on here talk about their real numbers and it genuinely helps. So here's mine and I'm not proud of it: I'll probably still say yes to anyone who asks nicely, at whatever they want to pay, because I can't stand the quiet after a no.

Finished a portrait last week, charcoal on paper, roughly 40 hours across two weeks because I kept hating it and redoing the eyes. Charged €500. After paper, charcoal, fixative, the framing, and the courier there was about €270 left. That's €6.70 an hour. A barista makes more than that here and they don't go to bed smelling like fixative. And here's the thing that's really chewing on me. The woman who commissioned it loved it. Cried when she saw it, said it was the first thing that ever actually captured her mother. She would've paid double. I know she would've because when I was scared to say a number I lowballed out of pure nerves and she didn't even blink. I keep telling myself I'm still building my name and the exposure counts. But €6.70 an hour for work that genuinely wrecked me to make isn't building anything except resentment. I need to charge what it actually costs me to live and breathe into a piece or I'm going to burn out before anyone's ever heard of me. How do you get over the fear of naming a number out loud and just letting it hang there while they decide if you're worth it? Because I physically feel sick every single time.

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.

A gallery owner in Warsaw looked at my pastel work and said people won't get it on a phone screen. That the texture and the paper, the whole point of it, just flattens to nothing at 400 pixels. She wasn't trying to be cruel, she was being practical. And it's been sitting in my head ever since. Because she's got a point. I post a finished portrait and it gets a polite trickle of likes, but I tape the same piece to my studio wall and people who visit stop and stare. The photo genuinely does not carry what the thing is. Pastel has this light going through it, this chalky depth, and you can't compress that. But also, so what? I don't know what to do with that information. Film my process so people see the smudging? Post close-ups of the paper? I tried one reel of my hand working and it felt like showing off, which is stupid, I know. Mostly I'm just tired of the idea that the work has to fit the platform instead of the other way around. Some things are meant to be looked at in person, and I think that's allowed to be true even if it's inconvenient.

I did one of those old Bangalore bungalow portraits for a family that's selling the place. They wanted it as a keepsake before the demolition. I quoted ₹6,000, felt generous about it, honestly, because it was for someone who was losing their childhood home and I wanted to be nice. Eleven hours. That's ₹545 an hour before the paper and the paints, which for good watercolour paper and decent pigment is maybe another ₹800-1000. So call it ₹480 an hour. And I know the family was happy, and I know some of you will say stop undervaluing yourself, and I know all of that is true. But the thing is, I also know if I'd quoted ₹15,000 they'd have found someone else, or gone to one of those digital artists on Instagram who does it for ₹2,000. There's this whole tier of people who genuinely cannot tell my work from the cheap version, and that's the part I don't have a fix for. Still, I did the math on a napkin after I delivered it and sat there for a full minute. I don't even know what the answer is. I just wanted it written down somewhere.

Still fuming about this from Saturday. I was at an open studio thing, just working on a portrait of an old woman I'd taken a reference photo of at the market. Her face is all lines and light, it took me maybe six hours to get the softness right in the cheek shadows, pastel is not forgiving if you rush it. This woman comes up, looks at it for maybe three seconds, and goes "oh, so realistic. It looks just like a photo. So where's the art in that then?" I just said "well, the photo is right there" and pointed at my phone. She didn't even look. Just walked off. And I sat there thinking, I spent a year learning how to not make pastel look muddy. I know exactly where every highlight on that face came from. I changed the light source entirely from the reference because the original was too flat. But sure. No art. Just copying, right? I didn't say any of that to her. I just smiled and went back to work. But I keep replaying it. Why do people think realism is just... cheating? Like there's no decision-making involved? Anyway. Just needed to put it somewhere. 😅

I've done this three times now and I keep doing it. A client says they want the best, gold leaf, a hand-carved frame, the real thing, and I nod along because yes, that is what I want to make too. Then I order the frame from a specialist in Avignon who does nothing else, and I'm already €700 in before I've touched a brush to linen. The portrait itself took about six weeks, off and on, between teaching and the daughter's schedule. When I calculated my hourly rate after the frame, the stretcher, the materials, the varnish, it came to about €11.50 an hour. My daughter makes more babysitting. I know I should charge separately for the frame. I know I should quote the whole thing upfront with a deposit that covers materials. But there's something in me that wants the final price to just be the price, like the frame is part of the painting, not a line item. Stupid, probably. The client would never know the difference. Anyone else just bad at separating what you make from what you need to make it?

So I finally did it. Added 150zł to my base price for a head-and-shoulders pastel portrait. 150. That's like... 35 euro. And I've been sitting here all evening convincing myself I'll never get another commission again. Thing is, I was still charging what I charged when I was visibly worse. I look at my old posts and I cringe. But the fear that people were only tolerating the price because they felt sorry for me, that's hard to shake. Like the new price will make them look at my work properly and go "oh, no, not for that." I know it's not rational. I know my materials cost alone has gone up. I just didn't expect to feel this weird about it. Did anyone else feel like a fraud the first time they raised their rates? Does it go away?

Finished a 30x40 portrait on Thursday. Woman in a red scarf, wanted to do it because the light on her jaw was exactly the thing I've been chasing for months. Took fourteen hours spread over a week. She asked the price before I started and I said €120. Never even paused. When I did the math after, that's €8.50 an hour plus the pastels worn down and the paper. I could make more babysitting. The worst part isn't the number. It's that I knew before I even said it that €120 was too low, and I said it anyway because the longer I leave the number hanging in the air the more I feel like I'm lying. So I blurt something out and then I'm stuck with it. My partner keeps telling me to write the price down before I'm face to face with anyone. God knows I've said the same thing to myself. Then it happens again. Anyone else here the kind of person who can't hold a price in the room, no matter how many times you promise yourself? I'm honestly starting to think I need someone else to do the talking for me.

Found a self-portrait I did in 2019 while clearing out storage. Before I had any idea what I was doing, before I'd even touched oil. Just charcoal and sheer desperation. It's rough as hell, the anatomy is all wrong, but I keep staring at it because the eyes are honest in a way I can't fake now. I've gotten so much "better" and I'm not sure better is the same thing as truer. Been thinking about that all day. Do I still paint like the person who made that? I honestly don't know and it's kind of eating at me.