Recently, my art friend Susan asked me ...”Just curious... how many hours do you typically spend painting/week? And how many doing business for art?” I couldn’t answer that accurately and thought I’d take a few weeks to keep my hours and compare. Well, I still can’t answer that accurately. It seems there is always something unexpected going on.
I’m getting ready for a spring show, so I’m spending more time on the computer and prepping - things I don’t do year round. I’m also spending more time painting, so even that isn’t quite as normal. My current guess would be for every 3 hours painting I spend maybe 1 hour doing business chores. At one time I would have said 2 to 1, but since I’ve changed how I deal with commissions, and hired Susan B. to assist, that has freed up my time. And where do I include teaching hours? hmmm. Of course, none of this takes into consideration the time I spend taking care of home, husband and my critter family. Do I include that as well?
What am I doing right now? Well, I’ve been painting for about an hour. Took a break to check on the dogs outside, sat here to get off my feet
(I paint standing) and post to the blog. I’ll be back to painting when I finish this. So this would fit into a 4 to 1 ratio - 1 hour painting, about 15 minutes for a break and blogging, which I consider business, since I blog for my clients and students mostly.
After show season, I’m going to try and make an effort to record my hours. I think I’ll divide it into quarters - home life, business attention, teaching and studio time. I’m curious to see what the outcome is.
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