“How Long Did That Take?”
Helping People See the Value of Our Art
By Sue Pendleton, Founder
“How long did that take?” You’ve probably heard this question before.
Sometimes it’s asked with genuine curiosity. Sometimes it comes up when someone is trying to understand the price of a piece. And sometimes, whether the person means it this way or not, it can feel as if the value of the work is being measured by the number of hours it took to make it.
As artists, we know the answer is rarely that simple.
A painting may take three hours because the artist has spent decades learning how to see, compose, mix color, make decisions, and know when to stop.
Another painting may take weeks because something isn’t working yet, and the artist keeps returning, revising, experimenting, and searching for the moment when the piece finally feels complete.
The time matters. But it is not the whole story.
And that is where marketing comes in.
Value Is an Artistic Fundamental and…
Painters understand the word value in a very specific way. It refers to light and dark. It helps create form, depth, contrast, structure, and clarity. Without value, a painting can feel flat or unresolved. With strong values, the viewer can understand what they are seeing.
Value helps the eye make sense of the work. It is one of the fundamentals that artists return to again and again.
And interestingly, value is also one of the fundamentals of marketing, too.
In marketing, we often talk about something called a value proposition. That may sound like business language, but the idea is simple:
A value proposition helps people understand why something matters, why it is worth paying attention to, why it is worth choosing, and, when something is for sale, why it costs what it costs.
For artists, that doesn’t mean turning our work into a sales pitch. It means helping people see what may not be visible at first glance.
The same is true across almost anything people buy. A coffee table from a big-box store and one made by an artisan craftsperson may both be called “coffee tables,” but they don’t offer the same value. One may be about affordability, convenience, and accessibility. The other may be about craftsmanship, materials, originality, skill, longevity, and the maker’s hand.
Understanding value matters in both cases. Walmart needs to communicate value. So does the craftsperson.
For artists, the challenge is often that the deeper value is not always obvious from the finished image alone. That doesn’t mean turning our work into a sales pitch. It means helping people see what may not be visible at first glance.
A Finished Piece Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
Social media tends to reward the reveal.
The artist turns around, and there’s the finished painting.
A time-lapse shows hours, days, or weeks of work compressed into a few seconds.
A finished piece appears beautifully lit, framed, photographed, and ready to share.
These posts can be engaging, satisfying, and often very effective. But if the finished reveal is all people see, they may accidentally get the wrong idea.
They may see the final image and miss the years of practice behind it.
They may see a fast time-lapse and assume the work happened magically and effortlessly.
They may see ease and mistake it for simplicity.
That is one of the strange challenges of becoming skilled at something. The more practiced you become, the more effortless the work can look from the outside.
But effortlessness is not the same as ease. Often, it’s the result of invisible work: time, dedication, practice, failure, education, resilience, and the fortitude to keep returning until the work becomes stronger.
People Can’t Value What They Don’t Understand
This is true in almost every skilled field.
When I worked in television production, creating branded content for HGTV, clients were often surprised by what it actually took to create a short makeover video with a “big reveal”. They see the final piece and think, "It’s only one minute long.”
But behind that one minute were concepts, budgets, logistics, crews, schedules, equipment, lighting, locations, talent, construction, props, editing, revisions, and hours of footage that had to be shaped into a clear story. A sixty-second finished video could represent weeks of preparation and multiple days of production.
The shorter and cleaner the final piece looked, the more invisible the work behind it became. I used to think of the line often attributed to writers: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Making something concise, clear, and polished often takes more skill, not less.
Art is no different.
A buyer may see one painting. But the artist knows what came before it:
the studies
the failed attempts
the composition choices
the color mixing
the materials
the drawing
the revisions
the trained eye
the years of practice
the moment when something finally clicked
When people don’t understand the process, they may try to understand value through the easiest measure available: time. But original art is not an hourly-rate product.
Make the Invisible, Visible.
Providing occasional, but regular, glimpses into our work and process can help people understand the value more clearly.
A tool you use.
A color you struggled to mix.
A composition you changed.
A canvas you restarted.
A material choice.
A technique you’re practicing.
A moment when the painting surprised you.
A detail that took longer than expected.
A decision no one would know you made.
These small details matter because they help people gain an informed understanding of the work behind our art.
This Is Not About Justifying Our Prices
It is important to say this clearly. Helping people understand value is not the same as defending ourselves.
We do not have to prove that our art is “worth it” every time we post.
We don’t have to explain our pricing to everyone.
We don’t have to turn our creative life into a constant argument for why our work matters.
But part of marketing our art is helping people come closer to the work. That means giving them ways to understand what they are seeing, why it matters, and what went into it.
This is not about pressure. It is about providing an invitation.
Our Marketing Practice
In the studio, value helps people see form. In marketing, a value proposition helps people see worth. Both are fundamentals. Both take practice. Both become clearer over time.
We don’t have to explain everything all at once. Or turn every post into a lesson, or make our art feel technical or overworked. But we can begin offering small windows into what the finished piece does not show on its own.
A glimpse of the process.
A moment of decision.
A challenge we worked through.
A material we chose with care.
A detail that reveals our eye.
That is marketing, too. Not because it is slick or salesy. Because it helps people see our work fully and more clearly.
