Price Artwork
How do I price my artwork?
For first-time exhibitors (or artists who are new to selling artwork), pricing artwork is often a last-minute, difficult decision. It’s daunting to assign value to your own work, and beginning artists often tend to err on the side of under-or over-pricing.
Let’s start with two main assumptions:
Your work has value, and you deserve to be paid for it.
Someone out there will like this piece, desire to own it, and be willing to pay the reasonable price you set.
Now, what does “reasonable” mean?
Here is some standard advice for an artist contemplating pricing for the first time:
give yourself a fair hourly wage
add to that the cost of materials you used and other expenses
So, if a piece took you 10 hours to make and you wish to earn $15 per hour, plus the materials cost you $45, you could use $195 as your starting point (10 times $15, plus $45 = $195).
Once you have calculated your costs, compared prices with other artists, and made any necessary adjustments for size and medium, the next trick is not to allow your emotions get in the way of your price.
Pricing your artwork needs to be predominantly about the physical attributes of the piece and not about your personal attachment to it.
However, this is often easier said than done! After all the blood, sweat, and creative effort you have invested in your work, it’s easy to get emotionally attached. So now you have to put your impartial art sales hat on and have a cold, hard look at your price to make sure you haven’t increased the price based on the artwork’s personal value to you.
This is a starting point for artists who are new to exhibiting and selling artwork. Artists at different points in their careers may use different formulas that aren’t based on time, and those formulas are valid too!