Hello all you lovely ladies, and hello to the dads too!!! I have a question and I know I should have asked sooner....I am having an amatuer art show this afternoon, in just a few hours actually. I had not thought of pricing because I didnt set this up with the intent to sell but was "gently" reminded that I should have set prices in case someone wants to buy. I have already set down and listed the cost of the canvases themselves and now just need to price from there. How do you decide pricing when selling one of your paintings? and I know that I have to decide the value of each piece myself etc, just trying to get some general info here. Like to you charge for cost of canvas and then a fee per color plus the time it took to create, or a portion of the supplies including brushes etc etc? any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all and have a great weekend!!
Thank you ALL for your help! I actually sold 2 pieces. One piece, which was my absolute fav and the biggest I had there, measuring 30X40 I actually sold for enough to put new tires on our van, so that was far and beyond my expectations. and the other I cover the costs of materials to make plus a little extra. all in all it was an awesome day. Thanks for all of your advice, and for the websites given as well, I gained a new perspective on my art from one article.
$50, no less, for a full 8x11 or larger. I'd suggest $75.
$35, no less, for a smaller piece.
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That's based on what would attract me as a buyer. Oh, a new artist nobody's heard of - hmmm, but the prices are very good
(i.e. not discounted TOO much to make me question talent, but not competing with "Bill the 10,000 mountain scenes master" charging $150 for a mountain scene)
The thing with art is it is about the worth to the viewer that sets the price. What you need to determine is what is the minimum you would take and then during the show figure out what it is worth to the buyer. I say this thinking you have never priced and sold your art so there is no external data as to what your art is worth.
The problem with going by how much time it takes you is that what you set as your hourly rate may not be what someone is willing to pay you. The other thing is it takes my kids a month to finish a paint by number, even figuring on minimum wage no one would pay that for their "art". Not comparing you to my kids mind you, just using it as an example of when time does not equal value.
Anyway I may have typed a mess for nothing. It sounds like you aren't setting out to sell today so this is a just in case. Go with figuring out what is the minimum you would take, in other words your costs. Then if someone wants to buy something you won't lose money but you will also gain the value of your art being out there. Name recognition is more valuable than money in most cases until you are a known artist.
The general rule of thumb is that you take your cost and multiply by 3. In this economy, I have had to use 2.5 as my factor, just to sell it.
Keep in mind people buy bulk art somehow and then sell it for $125 - $150 in fair's all day long. So for someone to pay beyond that, they must be in love with the piece.
It will help sometimes if you open up and share with the person what you were feeling when you created the piece and then sometimes it is good to just let them have their own perspective of it. You just have to watch them and then take it from there.
What is the bottom line price you would take for the painting? You'll never be paid enough to cover the amount of time and care you put into it. Buyers are only interested in what it's worth to *them.* Figure the out-of-pocket costs for each painting. That's your minimum. What you're hoping is not that people will pay you a lot of money, but that people will like your work and ask for more! So you need to be as reasonable as you can. (This is one reason artists are called "starving artists"!)
I have found it depends totally on your area. For an unsigned (no gallery) artist, you want to price things comparably to what you would see for similarly sized and genre pieces in other stores or people's shows, depending on venue-art fair, local gallery, and so on. You don't want to be the only cheap amateur, but you don't want to be way out of everyone's league if it's inappropriate. If you feel a "fair price" is not worth parting with a piece-don't sell! Therein lies the conundrum. If you really want to sell, then I would be sure to charge 3X cost or a fair sum for your hours above materials (but this often bumps things "out of people's league" unfortunately). So use your judgment based on what type of people you are selling to, the venue, the competition, etc.
I don't sell anything locally because in our area no one would pay even $100 for a painting, and mine take months to do and I use gallery quality custom linen canvases which are sometimes a few hundred $s in themselves not including paint and hours spent. So I take commissions from out of state. Work I see selling well here is very inexpensive if you can swing it and if it's fair to yourself.
I'm not an artist and I hope you get some good answers that help. I would think that besides the canvas and paint that the biggest cost to you is your time. So you would have to remember how LONG it took you to create them and then figure out an hourly rate for yourself. That's what I would do, but I'm an insurance agent so what do I know? lol Good luck and congrats on the show, that's awesome!!!
I multiply my hours spent on the piece by the hourly rate I want plus the cost of my materials. The owner of the gallery where my work is being displayed then doubled my price to set the retail price.
