How to Price Your Art

How do I price my art? It's the single most often asked question from new and emerging artists. It's also one of the most discussed questions in online art forums with many and varied approaches of how artists arrive at a dollar figure on each piece of art they create.

There are many variables to consider, all quite valid, with no one "correct" way to set your prices. In this article I will outline the various considerations and hopefully provide you with some direction when it comes to pricing your own artwork.

Things to consider:

• Cost of materials
• Cost of your time
• Living/Working Expenses
• Size and complexity of the artwork
• Intended market
• Commission Fees
• Importance of the Artwork to your artistic development
• Your reputation as an artist

Cost of Materials

This aspect of pricing is a "no brainer". If you aren't at least pricing your work to cover the cost of materials how are you going to fund your next artwork without getting a second job? No matter what method you ultimately use to price your art cost of materials should always be a factor.

Cost of Your Time

Many artists find this a stumbling point because they don't know how to put an hourly dollar value on their time. Rather than just picking a figure out of the air you could determine your hourly rate based upon research of:

• Hourly rates of other similar artists (it never hurts to ask)
• Hourly rates earned by commercial artists producing similar work
  e.g. graphic artists, photographers, jewelers. Any similar profession that has an entry level base salary or wage.

You could base your hourly rate upon any previous entry level jobs you may have held. Even if the job wasn't in the arts, It's still your time that was being paid for.

Living/Working Expenses

Do you want to be a full time artist? If so you'll have to factor in the cost of your living and working expenses since now you're attempting to pay all of your bills.

To make these calculations you'll need to have an approximation of how many hours a month you intend to spend creating your art.

Living expenses are fairly self explanatory. You'll need to work out approximately how much you spend per month for things like rent, electricity, water, food, vehicle expenses, entertainment etc. Divide that total figure across the number of hours you intend to work a month and add that to your hourly rate.

Working Expenses are everything you spend money on not directly related to creating each individual artwork but related to the production and sale of all your art. For example, studio hire, advertising fees, letterhead, business cards, printing costs etc. Total these up over a month and divide that figure across the hours you intend to be working.

Note that if you're factoring in living and working expenses, to some extent the hourly rate of these are absorbed into the cost of your time. Essentially you're trading time for dollars to pay the bills. Like you do with any form of employment.

Size and complexity of the artwork

One approach is to calculate prices by the size of your artworks. A popular method is to charge by the square inch. Set a dollar figure for one square inch and simply multiply that by however many square inches each artwork is in size.

In order to do this you will need to know approximately the cost of your materials per square inch and your hourly rate per square inch. To calculate your square inch rate you'll need to create an artwork of average size and complexity.

Decide upon an hourly rate for your time and determine the cost of the materials used. Calculate the total cost of that artwork once you've completed it i.e. Total cost of time + Cost of materials. Take this figure and divide it by the total number of square inches in the artworks surface. The final number is your cost per square inch that you will apply to all future artworks.

Pricing by size tends to fall apart if you work in several different mediums, styles and complexities. In this case you'll need multiple size scales for different types and complexities of artwork.

Intended market

After cost of materials this is the single most important consideration when it comes to pricing your art. Your intended market covers things like:

• What type of person buys your art?
• What kind of income does that person earn?
• How much does this person spend on art per month/year?
• Where will your art be exhibited after purchase?
• Where does that person go to buy art?

Where a person goes to buy art is a big factor. People who buy from galleries expect much higher prices than people who buy from art fairs. Research is key here.