Finance

 I found the lecture very eye opening, not only to the amount that I spend but also to the amount of money commissions should realistically be priced at.

I haven't had a real income, only a summer job. In this job, my friend was the one contracted, she was given all of the statues and the equipment and the payments - I just took some statues off of her to paint for her client and she gave me the pay check from the ones that we took. We both know it's servery under paid - at £5 -£15 for a statue that usually took me 7 hours each (4 one day, 3 two days later to recoat when dried.) As much as I knew we were underpaid, it shocked me how far away our income was from other classmates who were also under minimum wage, and also shocked me when Lily earning £150 x 3 a week would be minimum wage. 

My commissions never made it past a concept, mostly because at the time, I didn't think I'd developed a style. And now that I have, I think my newer set back was my follower numbers (I have 260 ish on Instagram but the people who constantly like my posts are in the 40s and they're all my friends - who I don't think would buy). Another set back is that I feel like I haven't done any of my own characters, and if I do draw from my head, I seem to get half of the likes I usually get. 

When I did write myself a price list, I think the lack of confidence that people would buy made my pricing way below even the lower prices in the class. £4 for a bust sketch, £6 for a bust, £5 for a full body sketch and £7 for a full body. Now I'm aware that possibly £20 an hour is more realistic. 

One of the main issues I had with hourly pricing was that I felt I would measure it wrong. Most of the time, a drawing can take me quite a lot of hours because I tend to zone out and get distracted, or design quite a few concepts because I can't think of anything perfect. But I agree it's the most fair for both parties, and i think even though £30 overall seems too much for me, and too little according to the lecture, I think it would still be a good starting price all things considered. 

My finances

The class total came up to around £11,300, so I feel like my budget is a lot more manageable at around £8100. I am glad that this can fit in to my student finance budget, but with the uncertainty of the world, covid and next year, I am still worried about financing and not having a job.  Also, where as uni calculated theirs by multiplying all of it by 12 months, a lot of mine I was able to only times by 8 college months I am in Leeds, as I am very fortunate with what I pay for at home. We also don't have a lot of streaming services and we share movies between us digital where we can save up free credit. But like any person, I have things that I would like to have spare money to save for future things, and I need job skills. Though the price was around what I expected, it was useful to figure out just how much I was spending on rent instead of just focusing on monthly totals. It also made me realise what I spend maybe too much on or too less on in comparison to the class, such as food.