Demystifying The Art Pricing Process For Beginners - Nela Dunato

A few weeks ago I found myself in a tricky situation. During my exhibition, a potential collector asked me how much I was selling my art for — and I blanked. That was embarrassing. I did not prepare for this conversation at all.

The reason I wasn’t ready is that I’m making art for my personal enjoyment, and I haven’t thought of parting from my originals yet. My main source of income is logo and brand identity design.

Back to the story. Luckily, I personally knew the buyer and I told them I’d get back to them, and they still wanted to buy the piece when I finally did get back to them 2 days later. This may not work every time, because sometimes buying art is an impulsive decision, and if you give people too much time to think, they’ll find reasons not to buy in the meantime.

Featured artwork: “Nourishing Heart” by Nela Dunato, acrylic on canvas (2013)

Don’t do what I did and ignore the question of pricing before anyone asks you. You need to come to the art buying conversation prepared.

If you have no idea how to figure out how much to charge for your creations, I’ve got you covered! I’ll show you the exact process I used to figure out the pricing for my art. Grab some paper and a pencil, you’ll be doing some second grade math. Don’t worry, it’s actually very easy.

Update: Listen to the art business experts, not me :)

This article was written back in 2014 when I had very little experience with the art market, and things haven’t changed since. In fact, I no longer even exhibit my work since I’m fully focused on my branding design career. But for some reason this blog post is getting a lot of traffic, so I feel like I should point you in the right direction.

There’s a person I trust to have the correct information for you: Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Success. She has a free report on pricing your art that you can access here. You do need to sign up to her email list to get it, but if this is important to you then it shouldn’t be a problem.

You can still read the rest of the article below, but please be warned that this information is very old, and that I’m currently not even actively using this pricing method myself.

Still here? All right.

What goes into pricing your art

Pricing art is tricky because it’s a unique item unlike any other, and you can’t precisely account for abstract things like “creative genius”. Every calculation you make is going to feel odd because you’re not just selling your time here, you’re also selling a tiny piece of you.

You might feel, like I did, that your painting is subjectively more valuable to you than the price you’re selling it for. But objectively, you can’t put the “right” price tag on it, because you’re a no-name and no one is going to pay you that much (unless you have some very rich friends, in that case you’re more than welcome to send them my way).

Here are some things that affect your pricing:

• Your professional reputation – education, awards, art shows, publications, reviews…
• Your costs – materials, tools, rent, electricity, education…
• Your process – more time-consuming work should in theory cost more than works done in a quicker manner.
• Artwork size – affects the costs and process, but also there’s a limit to how much you can charge for smaller works.
• Art market conditions – for example, art is so cheap in Croatia that even I can afford renowned artists like Dimitrije Popovic, and that’s depressing.
• Demand for your art – if your art sells out fast, it’s time to raise your prices.

Figure out your baseline numbers

Before you go comparing yourself to other artists, I want you to do an exercise.

You’ll figure out your hourly rate and your daily rate, and this will help you in pricing your art.

Hourly rate is not an ideal thing to use when you’re a professional artist with a lot of sales under your belt, but in the beginning you need some kind of direction, and an hourly rate is going to help you with that.

Depending on your skill and experience, determine what monthly salary you’d be most likely to get if art was your full time job, and you managed to sell all the art you created in a month’s work.

Please be realistic. If you’re a novice, you can’t expect more than a minimum wage. If you’re very skilled, than choosing a salary appropriate for a commercial illustrator or a designer in your area would be more appropriate.

Divide your monthly salary with 22 working days, and you have your daily rate.

Divide your monthly salary with 176 working hours in a month, and you get your hourly rate. (This is in theory that all your working hours are billable. They are usually not, since you need to do other things like market your work, write blog posts, go to the art store, sit in the art market… If you want a more accurate number of billable hours, it’s closer to 90)

Keep these numbers in mind for the next part of the exercise.

Now pick one piece of artwork and answer the following questions about it:

• How long (in hours) did it take you to make it? If you don’t know the exact number, don’t worry, just make a guess.
• How long in days did it take you to make it?
• Based on the numbers you got from 1 and 2, how many art pieces like this can you reasonably complete in a month if you were producing art full time?
• How much did the materials for this particular piece cost you?

After you’ve answered these, you can deduce how much this piece of art should cost so you could cover your costs and earn your desired salary.

In case you need help, here are the formulas:

Hourly rate X number of hours spent + cost of materials = Price

or

Daily rate X number of days spent + cost of materials = Price

or

Monthly salary / number of paintings you could do in a month + cost of materials = Price

You could do this for all your art types/sizes for the sake of an exercise.

Since selling doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the price you came up with is still subject to change base on the market prices and the humbling realization of how much your name is worth.

Competitive analysis (ie. looking at what other people are doing)

If you want to sell your art locally, you’re going to need to compare your art prices with those of local artists.

I understand that if you’re living in a small area (like I am), there may not be many artists who create the style of art comparable to yours, so you’re going to need to look at those that do stuff that may be completely different subject-wise, but is done in a similar medium using a similar process.

It’s good to know what renowned artists are selling their art for. For me that was a huge wake-up call, because I realized that art is much cheaper than I thought.

If you’re selling art in a local art market or a gallery, you can’t demand prices that people online are asking if your local market can’t bear it.

To find out the prices, you can either go via the old fashioned scouting in your local galleries and art markets, or if there are galleries and local artists that sell online, you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

If you’re selling online, then look at global art marketplaces such as Etsy, Artfire, Bigcartel, as well as artists that are selling from their own websites.

Make note of sizes, mediums and prices for each artist you encounter during your research. Then when you have at least 10 artists and their pricing sheets lined up, find an average for every size and medium.

This medium price is a reference point for you to set your prices.

Make an honest assessment where you stand in terms of reputation and skill, and price your own art accordingly — either below, or above the reference point.

Create a pricing sheet for your art

Now take that piece of art from the first exercise and adjust its price based on the research you just completed.

Do you need to lower it?

Can you comfortably raise the price and still be within the price range of your competitors?

If you calculated your daily rate and monthly salary based on this new price, would you be able to make a living?

If the answer is no, there are several things you need to think about:

• If you have a day job, you could sell your art below your nominal price to make some kind of income off your hobby and cover the costs — that’s what a lot of amateur artists do, which is one of the reasons why art is as cheap as it is.
• You might decide it’s not worth to you to sell your art for that price. Maybe you’d rather give your work as gifts and hold onto it until you raise your profile with some art shows and awards.

Both options are valid, and it’s up to you to decide which one you’re more comfortable with.

If you decided your prices are OK, move on with creating a spreadsheet where you will list all your works available for sale, and make a note on the following parameters: dimensions, medium, year, price, buyer.

A note on dimensions and mediums will help you quickly sort out which artworks are in the same price range, and adjust higher or lower depending on the size. The year might become relevant if your skill or style had changed over the years, and you intend to sell older works for less. The buyer is the new owner’s contact information (name, email, phone), so you can see at a glance where your works are now.

Test drive your pricing

You don’t know if your pricing works until you’ve actually sold a piece.

Before I told the price to my collector, I was worrying sick because I didn’t know if they would believe me that my art is worth it. (Thankfully, they replied it’s a “completely reasonable price, let alone for a painting like that”, which really boosted my confidence.)

Now that I confirmed that other people believe me, I know that I can base my other prices on that single painting that sold.

Please be aware though that just because people don’t buy the piece right away, it doesn’t mean that the price is wrong. Maybe you’re just hanging out in front of the wrong audience. Maybe your Etsy listing isn’t seen by the folks who would adore it if they just had the chance to stumble upon it. You need to market your art. (But that’s a topic for a whole different post)

When a customer admires the piece and is engaged and asking questions about your art, then their reaction to your pricing is the one to pay attention to. (And one person doesn’t make or break your price — maybe that one person was just broke and disappointed that they can’t afford it.)

There is a “hidden” parameter that can make or break your price credibility, and that is your confidence. If you followed the steps I described then you know your price is valid, you’re not just pulling the number out of your thumb, and you know that selling for less would actually cost you money. This means that as you state your price, you’re fully standing in it. You believe it. And if you believe it, other people will believe you as well.

When you go out ans tell your prices, try to remain as calm as you can and say it with a positive, confident attitude. If you’re looking at your shoes and your voice is shake, they won’t buy it — figuratively and literally.

Review your prices regularly

As I mentioned earlier, if you start making a lot of sales, this means your art is in demand, and you can ask more money for it!

Also, since your price to begin with was probably very low, you need to be on the lookout for signs that you may be deserving better prices. Every time your reputation changes or your process and your art improves, it’s time to raise your prices.

You can quietly start bumping up prices of new pieces by 10 percent and see how people respond to them (they probably won’t even notice, and will buy anyway).

Or, you can make a big spectacle of raising your prices and notify your current collectors and people on your mailing list that your prices are going up, and if they want to pick something up at their old prices they have until a certain date to do so (this is a very effective way of running a “sale” without having to offer discounts).

I hope this guide to pricing your art was helpful to you! If you know someone who needs it, please share this article with them.