How To Price Your Art

How to charge for your painting

As an artist your main focus is creating masterpieces out of nothing using your creative genius, and we can bet you can probably do this blindfolded by now. You have spent countless hours perfecting your craft in such a way that you’re ready to start making a lucrative career from it. This brings upon the most daunting part of this process, pricing your artwork.

Pricing

Pricing is a laborious but necessary task, and one that most would prefer to avoid. However, if you’re going to become successful this is a vital part of the process. Determining the price is a personal task as you are critically evaluating your own skills and comparing those to others on the market. So it’s a fine balance finding a price that is both representative of your work and acceptably to customers.

This is especially important at the beginning of your career as you need to build up your reputation, have an eagerness to make sales, but you don’t want to sell yourself short.

There are a few different ways you can start selling your artwork whether it be priced per piece, by the hour or by size there are several options. We have created a guide to help you price your art and hopefully, kickstart your career by doing the boring work for you.

Don't Undersell Your Talent

The fastest and most sure fire way to burn out is to overwork and undersell. It’s understandable to keep your prices low at the beginning as you build a customer base and get your name out there, but you don’t want to undersell yourself too much to the point where you can’t afford to live. Creating masterpieces isn’t cheap. Good materials cost money, studio space is expensive and so is travelling to the wedding venue.

Research, research, research!

Unfortunately there isn’t one art pricing guide that suits everyone but, thanks to the internet, we now have access to everyone else’s artworks (as long as they’re online) which makes our job a lot easier. All you have to do is start looking for artists who match your style, experience level, geographical region and current market price; it could be that demand for unique artwork is high which correlates to higher pricing.

By comparing all these different factors from an artist in a similar situation will give you a better starting point rather than starting from scratch. Just make sure you give an honest evaluation of your own work, as it’s easy to add sentimental value which won’t be reflected from a customers’ standpoint. You could even reach out to other artists and ask for some tips and reasons for their pricing. Being honest with people is the best way to get the answers you are looking for.

Charge per hour

If you are pricing your work by the hour you need to determine the £/ph that you require to live then work up from there. The average hourly rate for the UK; location will have an effect, is £16.30ph. If this is your preferred method you will need to be diligent when recording how long a piece of artwork takes, then factor in materials and travel costs on top. This can be a good starting point as it’s easy for customers to evaluate an hourly rate compared to experience based pricing.

The important thing to know when charging hourly for a live wedding painting is the time you’re going to spend at the venue. This will need to be discussed with the couple beforehand and, a few appointments may be required to finalise the timing. This isn’t taking into account any touch up or extra work required for completion afterwards. So be sure to always be transparent with couples, and ensure you keep a detailed record of time spent on each piece. This will help you provide the couple with the final price. It’s important to quote fairly accurately, as it would be very uncomfortable to have under or overcharged drastically.

Charge per artwork

Alternatively you can charge per piece of artwork. For this method to work you have to be meticulous when working out the cost of materials and travel arrangements, as these can have a big impact on your profit margins. These skills will get better with time which is why this method is usually adopted as experience grows. However once you have all the raw materials totalled up it’s time to add on your work cost. Try to be as subjective as possible and remove any emotion when calculating this cost, as sentimental value can cause you to overvalue your work. Depending on the size and complexity of the artwork may depend on how much you add onto the base price to give yourself enough room to run over should it take longer than expected.

This is indeed a balancing act but once perfected opens up many opportunities. This style of pricing is very well suited to the wedding industry for several reasons. It allows you to create package deals, give discounts and much more to entice customers in. It also allows couples getting married to factor in the price for your masterpieces straight away, as charging per hour might not be suitable for couples working to a tight budget.

Separate feelings from facts

This one is probably the hardest aspect of pricing. It’s easy to add sentimental value onto artwork which you have created, but it’s much harder convincing a customer. Artists will always value their own work higher than others because of all the time, creativity and emotion put into each piece. Taking a step back and pricing any work on it’s physical attributes; time taken, material costs and size, is the only way to overcome this issue. If a mark-up price is to be added this needs to be linear as well, such as a 20% increase in price for a larger portrait.

Separating feelings from facts is much easier to do if you are pricing per artwork rather than per hour. This is because the more time an artist spends on a piece, the more sentimental value and emotion it holds. Whereas pricing per artwork forces you to generate the cost before any work is conducted. Locking you into a mutual contract, removing any feeling which may inflate your price.

Of course feelings are always going to be felt no matter what, it’s just how you manage them that makes the difference. The same is to be said for live wedding paintings, being part of someone’s special day is going to create an emotional bond between you and the painting. You just have to remember you are there to provide a service. If you ask us, there is no better service than capturing a couple’s love on canvas, right before their very eyes.

Create prints of your artwork

You don’t have to generate all of your income directly from the painting, there are other directions you can take. One great one is to create prints from your original pieces of artwork for buyers to share out amongst their friends and family. Though a print may not be the original artwork, it can still hold the same emotion, quality and be produced in a decent size. This allows customers who have had a portrait from you to share it, giving you free publicity and getting your name out there.

This would be especially useful where portraits are conducted such as graduations or weddings. Where the original owner of the artwork can provide the prints to all of their loved ones who may either want one, or may have not been able to make the special occasion. This also gives you the option to offer discounts to anyone who purchased a print from you, should they wish to have an original art piece created. The more streams of income you can think of for your artwork the better!

Be transparent and confident with your pricing

Clearly stating your hourly rate or price per piece builds a level of trust right away with the customer, even before any conversation has been had. Of course there are factors that may result in the price increasing, such as additional requests from a customer and travel, but it’s easy to be transparent on these two. Telling customers on initial contact that these items are not included in the price; if they aren’t, is always the best way to avoid nasty surprises later down the line.

Additionally, if you hate talking about money and would rather avoid any uncomfortable conversations later on it helps to lay all your cards on the table straight away. It also gives the customer time to evaluate the costs and decide whether it fits their budget. Be mindful that you will always get customers telling you the price is too high, just be ready with a definitive answer explaining your reasoning. Not everyone will go for your artwork and some will blame the price, lowering your prices just because someone disagrees can be a sure fire way to run yourself out of business.

Make a start

It can be daunting making a start, but everyone has to start somewhere. Remember even the professionals were once amateurs. So, whether you have been producing art for several years, have just started or have decided you want to turn your passion into a career. Remember to do your research, take time mapping out your pricing model whether it be hourly or per piece, and most importantly enjoy the process.