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So I did the fall craft fair at our church hall last Saturday. Table was $35 for the day, which is why I keep doing it. I had a stack of small 9x12 acrylics, mostly the field and barn scenes I do when I don't have the brain for anything bigger. Priced them at $65 each. Sold four. Felt great until I got home and actually added it up. Eleven hours behind the table plus the framing plus the mats plus the booth fee, and I came out at maybe $9 an hour for work I did over about three months of Sunday afternoons. The thing that gets me is the woman who bought two and said "these are so reasonable." She meant it as a compliment. And I just smiled and said thank you because what am I going to do, argue with her in a church hall? I keep telling myself $65 is what the market here will bear for a small piece. But I've never actually tested that. I've never once put $110 on a painting and seen what happens. I just skip straight to the number that feels safe so nobody walks away from my table. My husband asked why I don't just try it at the spring fair and I didn't have a good answer.

So I did this commission last month, a little wedding gift thing, couple's pet portrait in watercolor, their dog who passed away. They had a reference photo and I got so attached to the story I underpriced it on purpose, like €120 for what I told myself was "a quick 6 hours." It was not quick. I did a full sketch, hated it, redrew the dog's face three times because watercolor doesn't let you fix a bad eye, you just start over. Real time ended up around 14 hours, plus paper, plus I ruined two sheets. When I did the math afterward I made like €6 an hour. My old café job paid better and I didn't have to cry over a dog's nose shape at 1am. The worst part is they were so happy and the painting came out genuinely good, one of my favorites I've ever done. So now I'm sitting here like, do I charge the next person with a sad story €400 and feel like a monster, or do I keep doing this and slowly fund my own studio out of my own pocket?? I know the answer obviously but I keep needing strangers on the internet to tell me I'm allowed to charge for the hours that actually happened, not the hours I hoped would happen.

For two years I sold small collages at 400 kronor. Maybe 12 a year, mostly to people who found me through the studio's open house. Fine. Then in November a woman bought one, paid, and emailed me a week later to say I had underpriced it and she felt slightly embarrassed owning it. Not a compliment exactly. More like a correction. I raised everything to 900 in January. I assumed I'd sell nothing. I've sold nine since. Same work, same photos, same quiet account I post to about once a month. I don't fully trust my own explanation for this. Part of it might just be that the people who follow quiet paper work are not price sensitive, they're attention sensitive, and 400 signals "hobby, don't bother remembering the name." Part of it might be that I got three pieces into a group show in February and that did more than any price change. But I keep thinking about how much time I spent making the work look accessible, low stakes, easy to own. I was lowering the price and lowering the stakes at the same time. Nobody told me to. I did it because I was nervous. Still nervous. Higher number though.

The zine is 24 pages, two colours, riso, edition of 150. I said 45 euro to the curator because it felt like a nice round number and I wanted the show to happen. Then I did the maths on the actual printing: masters, the paper, the fact that I reprinted nine pages because the registration drifted, the hours folding and stapling. Somewhere between 7 and 8 euro an hour. Here is what I keep circling back to. In printmaking the price of the object and the price of the work have almost nothing to do with each other, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to be charging for. 45 euro is roughly what a print costs. It is nowhere near what a print costs. The edition is the whole point, the multiple, the fact that the same image exists 150 times, and the market reads that as "so it should be cheap." I made the thing more available and it made me worth less. There's a logic there and I hate it. I'm not asking what to charge. I know I underpriced it, that's not the interesting part. I'm asking whether anyone has actually solved this for multiples, or whether we all just quietly subsidise the idea.

I did the math on a commission last week. Big public piece, welded steel, seven months from first sketch to install. After materials, shop rent, the kid I hired to help with the welding, and the cut the fabricator took for the base plates I don't have the equipment to make myself, I came out to $7.50 an hour. I remember when I started out I'd have been thrilled with that. Thrilled. Now I look at it and think what the hell am I doing. The worst part is the client was happy. Paid on time, no complaints. So the price felt fair to them. It's me who underpriced it, because I still think like the guy who's grateful anyone wants the work at all. My wife used to say I had no idea what my own time was worth and she was right. Three years since she passed and I still hear her saying it. Anyone else do the math on a finished job and feel like a damn fool?

Quoted 6 800 for a carved limestone bench last spring. Two and a half tons of Indiana limestone, delivered. I had it in my head as three weeks of work. It was nine. Not because I got slow. Because the first block had a seam running through it that only showed up after I'd already cut the seat profile, so I ate that stone and started over on a second block at my own cost. New block was 1 400. Trucking on the replacement was another 300. Add the diamond blades I burned through and the fact that I underpriced the install because I'd guessed two guys for a day and it was three guys for two. Came out around 4 100 under. I never went back to the client and I still don't know if I should have. He was happy with it. That's the part that eats at me, actually. He'd have paid it. I just didn't ask. The real problem is I priced the bench I could see in my head, not the bench that was in the ground.

i had a small gallery take a piece of mine for a group show a few years back. the director was genuinely into it, talked about it in a way that made me think she actually saw what i was doing. then the sale happened and it was chaos. she underpriced it, forgot to tell me the buyer's timeline, and i found out the piece sold when the buyer emailed ME asking when they could pick it up. i got paid eventually, and i was honestly just glad someone wanted the thing. but it made me wonder how common that is. like does a good gallery relationship ever come without some kind of fumble on their end? what's your worst (or best) story of a gallery loving your work but dropping the ball on the actual selling part?

That one stung. Not because I'm entitled to their profit, but because it made me realize how badly I'm underpricing my own work. I did the math on my hours after I found out and I made about $14 an hour on that piece. Fourteen dollars. For thirty years of knowing how to make something that holds its weight and doesn't fall apart. I don't blame them. They saw the value. The problem is I didn't. Still haven't raised my prices to where they should be. Working on it. But that gap between what I charge and what something's worth keeps me up some nights.