How do you put a price on your artwork?

truth
Lightwizard once presented a list of prices and their determinants on one of these threads.

Do you remember the name of the thread JL?

look at what other people in your area are charging, and compare the quality of your work to theirs. Ask around.

I try to never sell my work for less than the cost of supplies + $10/hr worked. That way I am not making much less than I was working at the grocery store.

truth
Shepaints. Sorry, I can't remember. I looked around but couldn't find it. Maybe you should ask LightWizard.
Portal, I like your modest solution.

truth
Shepaints, I found LightWizard's prices for NEW painters based on size (I had it pinned on the wall of my studio):

16X20......$1,500

14X18......$2,000

24X30......$2,500

30X40......$3,000

If a potential client complains that the prices are too high, I'm going to answer "That's because I'm new."

An artist friend helped me out about 5 years ago when I was in the same situation. She asked me if I wanted to keep it or sell it. Usually I will check the prices of others work who are in the same show or just follow my gut instincts. If I don't have to pay gallery commission, I lower the price.

Thanks for the list Nobody. Those prices are a lot
higher than I charge. I have always thought
with an art work you can put a price on the hours worked but perhaps not on the art part.

This is a good general guide though it doesnt take
into account the complexity of the subject.
A Bateman, for example, with a million details
per square inch, is a lot more labour intensive
than a Mondrian. Does it seem fair to price
according to that criteria?

truth
Shepaints, I don't feel that the amount of time spent on a work should figure into the cost. It's the results that count. That is what the customer is buying. When I was teaching, students sometimes complained about the grade of their written works on the grounds that they spent SO MUCH time on the project. My standard answer was that "the only place one is rewarded for time spent is prison."
Kayla, I too feel most comfortable following my "gut" But LW's guide gives me the confidence needed to be more gutsy.

True enough JL, the results are what really counts.
However, if one works on commission, one has to take into account how complex a painting is
going to be. In a portrait commission, for example, hands will take about the same time
to paint as a face....Also, if the background requires
great detail, one would charge more than just
painting monochrome....But I am not Rembrandt
nor Alice Neel.....

I am going to hike up my prices and see what happens!

As someone already said, you have to consider the quality of your work compared to what other artists are charging in your market. The last time I let a gallery price my work, they used a per-square-inch formula, and priced my work at $1.00 per square inch. As I recall, the most I sold anything for in that gallery was $1200. One lady I knew was really not a good painter, but she had audacity. Her work was on the level of most untaught beginners (bad color, flat values, poor paint handling, bad perspective and proportion, etc.). She put very high prices on her paintings, and they sold! People who don't know any better figure that if the price is really high, then the work must be good, I guess. It was incredible.

truth
Welcome, Desertartist. Great to get your input. And I appreciate that you are reviving some older threads.

I've been asked to comment, so here goes.

After taking care of framing, fixing prices is the next most vexing thing about being a painter that I know of. The higher the cost, the smaller the market becomes. Too low, and I feel I'm giving away the work and that the folks who carry it away won't really value it much. The whole question of setting "proper" of pricing is subjective.

Some suggest that painters use a quantitative approach. Typically this is to price either by size, or by the amount of time it takes to produce the piece. It's already been pointed out that these methods, if used alone, fail to take into account the aesthetic, or even technical quality of the work. Fine paintings aren't produced on an assembly line in a factory. However, size and time should enter into your pricing scheme.

Small and miniature works often sell for relatively modest amounts, while very large paintings tend to average much higher prices. The amount and cost of materials needed to produce small works is smaller, but not that much. The time needed to produce a good quality miniature is often longer than that needed to produce a similar quality on a larger surface. Large paintings are generally meant to be seen at some distance, while most smaller works are looked at at pretty close range. At a distance, we know that the viewer's vision will grasp the whole; will blend colors and brushstrokes into one another. I paint reasonably large pieces, and I rely heavily on the viewer as a participant in the finished work. They will be "seeing" colors and textures that I only suggest, and their imagination is personal. Hopefully, that gives my large paintings an impact that is deeply felt. Smaller works, on the other hand, must be much more precise in execution and detail. When the viewer is less than three feet from the picture, the eye is so finely focused that the smallest error is instantly visible to the knowlegable viewer.

Trying to put a price on the time and cost of producing a painting is similarly flawed, but useful in considering price. To produce a fair sized painting, say 24X48, takes me four or five sessions spread out over as long as a month. Each session may last up to 8 hours, but I'm usually working on several paintings at the same time. Just guessing, but I suppose that it takes about 30 workhours on average for each painting. I typically value my time at around $50/hr plus expenses when doing consulting work. That is pretty low considering what some others charge for about the same services, but putting a $1,500 price on a painting seriously limits the number of buyers. By charging less per hour, say the minimum wage is $10 (I have no idea what it actually is. I think it was around $3.50/hr the last time it intruded into my world, but inflation.), then the cost should be somewhere around $300. That's a giveaway price for a serious and technically well-executed painting even around 9X16 in size, and it's robbery for anything larger. If we use time as a factor, then the range for a painting in this case is between $300 and $1,500. That's a pretty big range, but it can be one factor in setting a price. Although neither time nor size define the quality of the work, they are factors in pricing.

Trying to price original pictures on a qualitative basis is even trickier. If value has some relationship to how "good" the painting is, then what is "good". Elvis on black velvet, or Four Dogs Playing Poker, are to some people about as good as it gets. There are abstract and mimimalist paintings hanging in some of the finest museums, that many in the general public believe might have been done by a retarded six year old. Trying to be objective about the technical and aesthetic quality of our own work is probably impossible.

We are sometimes urged to compare our work with the prices being charged for similar work in our area. If 24X30 impressionist landscapes done with technical skill are selling at $750 each in your venue, then that should be the starting point for setting a price. If you use this approach, you should also know what sort of pinch the gallery is taking. 50% seems to be the standard these days. So if the retail price is $750, then the painter will gross about $375 from the painting. If the gallery takes a smaller pinch, then you can lower the price or take home a bigger check when, and if the picture sells. Not every picture sells, and some may take years to get off your inventory.

Another question that you should ask yourself in setting prices is, "how badly do I need to sell this picture". If you need income from your pictures to pay the rent, put food on the table, and buy baby new shoes, then you need to have a steady and reliable income. That generally means, selling at the lowest possible price where almost anyone can afford to buy. There is the old adage about sales, "Either sell a few items with a large profit, or a zillion for a very small profit". Production v. Profit may have little, or nothing to do with the quality or even the "real" value of the work, but can keep the enterprise afloat. I'm fortunate in that I'm rich enough that the sale of my pictures is just extra icing on an already overdecorated cake. Sales, in my case, have more to do with validation of the work than any actual return.

Re: truth


Then what would my 8 ft x 5 ft painting be?
It is of a man on a horse, a hero figure in front of a landscape.

I hate seeing work that is much crappier than mine at much higher prices. I also don't like haggling with people. I don't think I've ever asked for a ridiculous price, but many people won't buy unless I go down to prices that would make me a pauper.

We should have a "Price - estimate this artwork" gallery.

truth
Excellent suggestion, Portal Star, a "'price--estimate this artwork' gallery".
Notice that the largest picture size addressed by Light Wizard is only 30x40. I hope he sees this and lets us know if, in his judgement, paintings larger than this requires pricing in terms of different criteria.

My prices vary according to the buyer's ability to pay.

When someone wealthy wants to purchase a work, I'll say it's $25,000..........when it's someone middle class, I'll ask maybe $1500..........when someone can't afford to buy it but really loves it, I'll say, "You can have it for free."

Asherman
Asherman, gallery owners-managers often can give artists a good idea of the value of their paintings in the commerical market. If you are selling your own work, you can add back in some portion of the gallery's middleman price.

BBB

katya, I like your system....I have
done some trading of mutually beneficial
services lately for paintings. Sometimes it is
just better to get one's work out of the studio
and into someone's home where it may reach new viewers.

As with the art of painting, there are no fixed rules when it comes to parting with the work....

Well, I'll speak as a present (who knows how long, it is week by week) gallery owner and a painter of about thirty years experience, off and on.

Serious galleries try to represent you to potential clients; a one person show gallery like we are devotes the entire show space to your work for a month or longer. We are there at stated hours - which means we can't go out to lunch, do an errand, just so we'll be there; we pay the lease, we pay telephone, the business license, the utilities (which are high), we pay some advertising, we keep the place clean, we repaint the walls (in part) after each show, we hang each show of, say, 25 pieces in the best arrangement we can to highlight the work, we rearrange other work from past months in the rear galleries, we have title sheets for handouts in each room, we give an opening reception for several hundred people for the solo artist and serve beverages in real glasswear, and provide cookies and fruit. We clean up after that the next morning. Oh, yeah, and we have big, striking, flower/shrub bouquets in the windows, always fresh, meaning we replace them at least twice, sometimes four times a month. Since this is costly, we invent these from pruned flowering shrubs, and what we call "road kill". For example, gathered and wrapped bundles of cattails... about five feet high..

It frosts our cookies to hear that an artist then sells the work for minus the gallery percentage. That means that people approach the artist personally from the phone book, say, undercut the gallery, who gives the person the one person shows, say, once a year or so. One of our artists sold (we found out) 22 pieces at an Open Studios sale two months before her show with us, selling very cheaply, and then sold one thing with us, for $175.00, of which we took our 40% commission. We had failed to talk about that to her, our lapse, and a painful one. The more professional artists with us only sell real oldies in those studio shows and hold on to their new work for us.

We are the only gallery as such in town, except for the local museum and the local university gallery, which are both in trouble too.

Artists who don't work with their gallery to keep their prices stable will find themselves without galleries, not just them personally, but galleries will keep disappearing for good, for good reason. Cutting prices from the artists' studios also is an insult to the person who bought work by the artist for more... it instantly devalues that work.

On my own pricing of my own paintings, if you look at my work by size, I charge less than GWLightwizard says is average for an artist starting out, presuming he is talking about someone with some mastery or at least flair for whatever form he or she works in. GWLightwizard is familiar with the LA/Orange County scene and I would guess other urban gallery pricing. I think his numbers fit what I have seen in San Francisco too.

My 3 foot by 4 foot oil paintings that I have done recently have sold for $2600. That number is also a stopper to many people now... I have lists of people who want one or the other, but can't or won't pay that. I feel though that those prices are a little low, looking at a range of artists here who charge above what I do. Size has something to do with it, re how we mark work we show, but not all. We do sometimes price higher for a smaller work within an artist's show, though usually not in a way that calls attention to how we consider the larger work "lesser". Certainly artists with a track record of pieces sold for X can charge that again, and should.

We have found that if someone will pay, say, $800 for a piece, they will also probably go for 900, or $1000. but not, usually, 1600. Someone who will pay 3200 will not usually be stopped by 3500. Someone who is making a leap for a 150. piece will not care if you mark the one for $800. down to 650. We have one fellow whose work we think is worth about twice as much as what he sells for, but he is very keen to have his work enjoyed. His work ranges from about 500 - 1000. This probably helps him (and us) sell things, sometimes. On the other hand, his work hasn't sold lately, and it is just as good as it was before, and people now think of it as $800. work. What I am saying is that sometimes you can mark low and things still won't sell, you can mark higher than you think, and they will. But consistency is a professional choice. Personally, each time I sell a big one, I add a little bit onto the prices for the next show.

truth
Thanks, Osso. VERY informative.