"Pika" is Getting Complicated

I have been mostly working on my portrait of "Pika" the chocolate lab dog. It is 90% done, but it is turning out to be a bit complicated. So I am going to get together with the client first before I continue with this piece, just to make sure she likes what she sees so far. Instead of just a regular one-image portrait, my client has requested 3 different poses of the dog, plus a background of rocks, water and foothills/mountains in the background, plus a little drawing of a pika mouse at the bottom. (The dog was named after a pika mouse.) The challenge of this piece has been to include all these elements without taking away from the focal point, which is the dog's portrait. The easy part was doing the actual 3 poses of the dog. The harder part was to make everything (including the rocks and the water, etc.) blend together to look like it flows as one piece. There is also going to be a special mat for this piece to incorporate the pika mouse at the bottom, and that is complicating things a big more than I had anticipated. However, this has also helped me to grow as an artist and I feel I have learned a lot from doing this piece. I am glad that my client did not have an exact deadline for completion or I would be in trouble! This experience has shown me that I need to change how I price my portraits and define things a little better. So I am working on a brochure on portraits of pets & people that does this. From now on I will have a basic price for a one or two image portrait, then there will be an extra charge for special backgrounds or including a pet toy in the portrait, etc. In cases like this one it may be wiser to give the client some kind of form that lists all the elements of the portrait and the cost for each then the total at the bottom. I don't know why I didn't think of this before!