how do you price your paintings?

[alisonsage]

i am getting ready to sell some paintings to help pay for my homebirth and i am a little confused on how to price them. how do you price your work? are there certain guidelines you go by? tia

[melissa17s]

There is a book by Wendy Rosen, Crafting as a Business and it discusses how artist should charge for their work depending on if the sales are in a gallery, a festival, a trade show, or individually.

I charge by the hour for labor, plus material costs x2.

[alisonsage]

how did you decide how much to charge per hour?

[mumkimum]

When you price artwork - do always try to make sure you are giving yourself a decent 'working' wage per hour with consideration to how much you may want to 'just get rid of' a piece. Personally, I always figure out approx. $20/hour and increase or decrease around that figure based on how attatched I am to the work. Say I have a large oil painting that I spent the part of one day on - say 10 hours. That would be at least a $200 painting, and then say it was a personally important piece I might bump that to $450 for that and to consider material costs. If you are using pricey materials definately figure that in, or you could be selling at a loss without meaning to. Certain types of work I do that with, others I don't. And try to compare (best you can) your prices to other prices of similar work so you aren't over or underestimating yourself. Consider what its price would be with a comission added or taken out depending on how you are selling it.
And ask people if you have people around who would give you unbiased feedback about your prices too.

[alisonsage]

thank you for the advice!!

[Arts Therapist]

there's a couple ways to look at this:
1) price according to what others like you are pricing
2) price including supplies and your time it took to make it (for example $20per hour) and overhead like electricity,etc. (my least favorite way to do it)
3) price whatever you feel like is FAIR. that way you want undersell yourself.
good luck!