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I often wonder about the professionals. I notice that it seems to take them months to complete a painting, judging by the paintings they post, even though they work at it steadily each day.
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It does take me months, but a lot of that is up front prep: discussions with the client, planning the photo shoot, (location, lighting, clothes, props), choosing the photos, fine tuning the composition, creating color studies, prepping the canvas, etc. In the case of the Governor's portrait, this sort of planning work has been going on, albeit not continuously, over the course of nine months, before the painting of the actual portrait began. That is, of course, an exception.
The actual painting takes me around 100 hours for a one figure portrait, three quarter length, with background, on average. Sometimes I can do a full figure portrait in 80 painting hours, sometimes a more difficult three quarter can take 150 hours. There are also a few days of follow up work involved too. (Delivery, possible tweaks that the client might request, billing, thank you cards, etc.) If there's an unveiling party that can take a lot of time to help plan, too.
In addition to that there's marketing which takes up about 25% of my time. There's admin time (doing quarterly and annual taxes, buying supplies, organizing my studio, etc.) which takes up another 5 to 10% of my time over the course of a year.
All told, then, the amount of work time I spend putting brush to canvas for the actual commissioned portrait is probably no more than half my working hours.
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