You’ll hear people tell you about different techniques, but usually these are artists who mostly do one thing, and what works for a classical portrait painter doesn’t necessarily fit someone working with photo / video works; you can’t really charge by the square cm or inch for video, and charging by the minute quite frankly questions the whole concept of what it means to make art opposed to craft. So in the hopes of giving advice that could help as many of you as possible, lets talk pricing:

1. Pricing by the hour

A popular practice is setting an expected hourly wage and calculating how much time you spent on making the work. Classic but archaic. This option may be good for the classical portraitist or any realistic style painting or sculpting or similar practices. It reflects the labour intensive work of creating realistic depictions, and communicates the sheer number of work hours, that one puts into making a portrait like this. But for someone, who makes abstract paintings, that take a day or sometimes a few hours to complete, this isn’t really a realistic approach (though you could brag that your hourly wage is 400€+! Just don’t tell anyone how manny hours there are in a work day or year for that matter!) You just don’t base the price of a Rothko on the number of man hours he and his assistant put into one of his works and you don’t compare him to Raphael or Tizian either. 

This option is also interesting for anyone making complex works of art, like installations, video work and similar. If it’s labour intensive, you could set an expected hourly price. But keep in mind that you will have to give a quote when doing commissions; don’t expect that people will just let you work for 100 hours on a project that could’ve taken half a day to complete, because you spent half of that time “thinking outside of the box”.

2. Pricing by square cm or inch

Similar than by the hour, pricing by size of the art is an option. In both cases I would recommend taking a day or two and going to some private galleries and checking the prices and backgrounds of other artists, placed similar to your current position. Or just go online. But going into a gallery and being the customer for once and really trying out what it looks like to be sold an artwork is a really valuable experience. 

Also don’t aim too high or too low, you wouldn’t buy the newest iPhone for 50€ and not be questioning what’s wrong with it, but you wouldn’t give 2000€ for one either! Again, try to find a base point from which to make your calculations or just reverse engineer other similar artist’s prices by any of the methods to get your starting price. And don’t sell yourself short; your not IKEA, so please don’t make a business plan based on quantity with minimal earnings!

The problem with pricing by size is the large inequality with earnings when comparing smaller pieces to big ones. I recommend with both pricing by the hour or by size, keeping in mind a nominal fee, like a studio fee or some base number, to which you then add the calculated value of that particular work. This is especially good for smaller works, where if you would use let’s say a price of 0.10 € for a square cm of your work, a 100 x 70 cm sized painting would cost 700€ — [ (100 cm x 70 cm) × 0.10€ = price] (if you deduct expenses for materials, like colours and canvas your left with at least 600€ if not more depending on what the prices for materials are in your country and how much you loath no-brand acrylic colours or cotton canvases) which is a solid price for anybody starting out anywhere in the world. But a 20 x 20 cm painting would cost 40€ (and if you deduct expenses your probably left with a small existential crisis). But if you add a nominal fee to every work, let’s say a 50€ or 100€ studio fee, the price for the larger work won’t  change drastically, but smaller works won’t be worth less than a soy vanilla late at Costa. 

3. Pricing by project

You can just estimate the price for any project as a whole, though good luck with consistency. Also you will have trouble making changes to the price when commission expectations change, for example the initial canvas size of 100 x 70 cm is changed to a 50x 70 on the last meeting and they want a new price quote on the spot. You’ll probably go too low as it’s hard making changes that still keep in mind every expense, while letting you earn enough to make it worth your time and effort. So I highly recommend to have an internal pricing scheme, that you don’t reveal to your customers based on method 1 or 2. Not because you’re a horrible person ripping them off, but because let’s face it, nobody buys art made by their favourite artist (yes you!) and wants to hear him or her explain the same pricing scheme as the plumber, that came to fix their toilet last week (nothing against the respectable and important profession of plumbers, just making a point of distinction). 

Have an internal schema, that you can take a look at anytime you need to quote a price, lets you stay consistent, but I recommend using full amounts when quoting the base price, rather than estimates.

4. Don’t forget the expenses

Really, don’t! Don’t forget to calculate every single expense you have with your work, your not a charity, so don’t act like Liquitex Heavy Body’s grow on trees. But don’t expect to get a full reimbursement for a 200ml paint tube because you made a 2 x 2 cm large dot on your painting with that particular colour. Be fair to yourself and to whoever is your customer. Otherwise you’ll just end up disappointed with how they’re not paying nearly enough for your work or they’ll think your ripping them off (unless you’re using the best linen canvas and highest quality pigments, a 150€ quote on material costs for a 40 x 40 cm acrylic painted canvas is about in the ripoff ball park in my honest opinion).

A tip, try to not incorporate expenses into the total amount, rather give them the quote for your work + expenses. This will be a life saver and will eliminate any complications due to more materials used or actual changes in materials used. People are more comfortable with a higher price due to extra material costs, when the base price for your work stays the same, than with one larger amount, that just got bigger because they now want gold leafs on the portrait of their aunty. 

5. Consistency of pricing

I also recommend you make a list on your phone or, if you’re into such kinky things, analog with an actual pen and paper, and put down how much different materials you use cost; like the price of different canvas sizes, or a kilogram of clay/plaster, block of marble etc. So when confronted with the question of how much, on a meeting with a potential client, you can just take out your phone and get the price estimate by a few steps of multiplication, and give them the full price (so your price plus expenses), thus making your communication more professional and less: “ohhh idk, maybe like 200€ or thereabout, is that OK with you?” Have fixed prices and don’t do discounts. You don’t go to Apple and ask for 20% because your a patron of iPhones. It’s also better to haggle over a full price than being immediately confronted with a 30% discount. You wouldn’t trust 50% off seafood, what makes you think they would a 500€ sculpture with the same discount.  

6. Giving a receipt and paying taxes

I am more than aware of how hard it is to sell anything at all, so why on earth would anyone bother with taxation, right? Wrong. I will tell you I do not trust my weather app nor do I trust my watch (self-winding mechanism needs an overhaul), but I know for a fact the tax man/lady will come for you if you keep making stupid decisions like tax evasion. Maybe not for a tenner, but when you start to see sales rise, believe me some automated bank bot will to. Be fair; I live in a country with far from optimal tax laws, but the peace of mind from knowing my accounting is in order is worth a lot (my 15 year old punker me is probably questioning his life choices). Do a bit of research, ask people who maybe pick and sell mushrooms (the legal ones) or berries, or someone who does babysitting. Usually there are always good options or even untaxed small amounts that one can earn every month (for example Austria has the Honorarnote, about 480€ per month, that any citizen can earn without having to be taxed a cent, or even declare that they earned anything (you do have to make a receipt and follow some guidelines on what you can do though). And I’m sure you could find some form or way to legally earn your commissions when they are not yet steady income (because let’s face it, if your getting more than 1k per month, you will need to create some form of legal business entity anyway.

7. Having warranty or some promise concerning long-term quality.

This will probably surprise no one, but warranty is important. Like really important. You don’t pay the extra 70€ for that extended warranty for nothing, and whey you buy a camera for 500€, if it turns out the shutter isn’t working properly, you don’t just accept your curse of bad luck, but instead take it to the store and demand a replacement or for them to fix the problem. 

Do the same with your art. 

Watercolours can fade, charcoal can get smudged if you don’t use a good fixative or miss a spot, and sculptures could crack either by the fault of the owner or your own. These are things to consider before closing the deal. Make a certificate of authenticity, some document stating that this is an original piece you made and add to that document a line or two concerned with some form of warranty. One of mine I use for my collages made with sublimated prints reads: 

“The highest standard of quality is my guarantee. If anything may happen to the artwork due to improper production or damage from mistreatment, accidental damage or natural causes (water damage, sunlight damage, similar) please contact me to arrange restoration of the artwork.”

I would never decline a restoration of my artworks, but would take care in finding out what the cause of the problem was. If it is the owner, who poured a gallon of coffee on the photos, I would give him or her a fair price covering all my expenses and my time, to fix the work for them, but if any of the photos started to peal of, I would repair the work for free, as the fault is on my end.

So to recap, pricing is a tricky topic in art, you can’t just decide on a whim how much you’d like to get for your work, as the people selling coffee can’t just make up prices. Though it’s much looser in our business and thus easier to miss-price your work. You can’t objectively put a price on creativity, but you can definitely find the exact cost of materials and an estimate of how much time you spent on your work. 

Maybe you already spent tens of thousands on college tuition, an a good option is to make a plan of how you will be getting back that investment. You can add all the money spent and parcel it out over a span of 2 or 5 years, add to that living expenses and whatever hobbies you dream of having while working 25 hours as an artist, and see how much you need to earn, based on an estimate of how many works you plan on making and selling and see how that matches other similar artists to you. Here it’s quite good to remember that probably not many others do price their work according to such a schema, so if your off quite a bit when comparing, keep this in mind, it’s quite possible your on the right track and they’re just shooting in the dark.