Pricing your paintings is one of the hardest things artists do.
What dollar amount should you put on your latest masterpiece? Let’s face it, your paintings are your babies. You don’t want to give it away and you don’t want to over charge. So, how do you decide the price?
Considering there are many ways to price your paintings the question is, which one is right for you? Let’s go over the three main ways to price your paintings.
Pricing by Square Inch: This is probably the most popular method but there is a flaw using this method which you will see in a moment. Let’s take a 20 x 20 painting:
20 x 20 = 400 square inches. You then decide the amount you are going to charge for each square inch. It can be $1 dollar or as high as you want to go. Let’s select $3.20 x 20 = 400 x 3 = $1200
If that is normal amount you get for a 20 x 20 then $3.00 is your number….but there is a slight problem.
Let’s figure the price on a small painting.
6 x 6 = 36 x $3 = $108……I bet this is way too low….if it isn’t….it should be.Now let’s take it to the high level…
48 x 48= 2304 x $3.00 = $6912…This may be a bit too much…
This is the problem with the square inch method. The middle number is fine but the low and high isn’t.
This is when you must raise the lower number and lower the higher number. Not to worry, let’s take it step by step. Take your middle size canvas/ painting and decide your price. Then you can adjust as you go up and go down in size.
Pricing by Lineal Inch: This time you add your canvas size.Let’s take a 16 + 20 canvas:
16 +20 = 36 lineal inches. Now you need you need to decide what to charge to cover your labor, materials, taxes, marketing, etc. and take that number and multiply it by your lineal inches.Let’s just use the amount of $20:
16 +20 = 36 x $20 = $750
Pricing by the hour: Let’s say you want to make $25 hour and it took you 30 hours to paint this painting.25 x 30 = 750
Here again you need to figure what it cost to run your business.Let’s say you decide on the amount of $120.00
25 x 30 = 750 + 120 = $870
The flaw in this method is you have to keep tabs on all the hours and minutes you work on the painting.
Hope this helps you in deciding how to price your paintings. If you have any questions just email me at gwen@gwenfox.com
Be sure and watch the YouTube video I did on this subject as it has more information in it that I think you would enjoy.
Also don’t forget if you are wanting to deepen your knowledge about developing Dynamic Abstracts then you might be interested in my workshop September 5 – 9.
