Pricing Your Artwork
Pricing your artwork is an important component of your strategy for marketing art. Pricing should not be an over-complicated procedure in the primary market. (Secondary market sales can be much more complicated.) If you are new to pricing your artwork, there is a formula to determine where to start.
Pricing Your Artwork Formula
- Start with the total costs of the materials used. Use the relative cost of only the materials used.
- Track the amount of time you actually spent creating the artwork.
- Multiply the number of hours by the rate you would charge per hour as a professional art consultant.
- Add the cost of materials and time.
- Multiply the result by a multiple based on your overall experience. This is typically between 2 (just starting out) and 10 (top of your field).
Price of Original Artwork = [Materials + (Time)(Hourly Rate)] (Experience)
For example, [$100 materials + (20 hours of work)($25/hr)] (5 years of experience adds a multiplier of 3) = $1800.
Pricing reproductions
- Highest quality (limited edition giclee prints or high-end reproductions) = 50% of original price
- Mid-grade quality (limited edition reproductions) = 30% of original price
- Low quality (one-off prints or open-ended reproductions) = 10% of original price
