How much do paintings sell for

Why is art so expensive? Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Art collective Obvious Artists who stand out in a graduate show or another setting may go on to have their work displayed in group shows with other emerging artists. Next Up In The Goods. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy.

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Your job is to explore and get to know your market, keep an open mind, find that similar art, find the artists who make it, focus on those who have similar experience and qualifications to yours, and see what they charge for their art and why. For those of you who have little or no sales experience, who haven't sold much art, a good starting point for you is to price your work based on time, labor, and cost of materials.

Pay yourself a reasonable hourly wage, add the cost of materials and make that your asking price. Don't forget the comparables, though.

If you use this formula and your art turns out to be more expensive than what other artists in your area charge for similar art, you may have to rethink your pricing, pay yourself a little less per hour perhaps. So in summary, here are the basic art pricing fundamentals: Step 1: Define your market. Where do you sell your art? Do you sell locally, regionally, nationally or internationally? The art, artists and prices in your market are the ones you should pay the most attention to.

Step 2: Define your type of art. What kind of art do you make? What are its physical characteristics? In what ways is it similar to other art? How do you categorize it? If you paint abstracts, for example, what kind of abstracts, how would you describe them?

This is the type of art you generally want to focus on for comparison purposes. Step 3: Determine which artists make art similar to yours either by researching online or visiting galleries, open studios or other venues and seeing their work in person. Pay particular attention to those artists who also have career accomplishments and resumes similar to yours, who've been making art about as long as you have, showing about as long as you have, selling about as long as you have and so on. Step 4: See how much these similar artists charge for their art.

Their prices will be good initial estimates of the prices you should charge for your art. More About Price Comparison Techniques At the same time you're zeroing in on art that's similar to yours, you also want to keep an eye on what's going on with other artists in your area, even if their art isn't that much like yours.

If you focus too much attention on too narrow a slice of the art world and too little attention on the rest, or even worse, you dismiss the rest as irrelevant, your prices may make sense to you and a few people around you, but not to anybody else.

The more aware you are of the big picture, of what other artists make, how much they charge for it, who buys it for how much and why, the better prepared you are to price your art so that it has a chance to sell in a broad range of circumstances. In case you're thinking this is all nonsense, I appraise art professionally.

Sometimes, I have to justify or defend my appraisals to entities like the IRS, insurance companies, estate executors, and the legal system-- and sometimes those appraisals and justifications are subject to penalty of law. My point is that people place dollar values on art all the time, that certain rules, methods and techniques exist for doing so. I'm showing you some of that here, techniques any artist can use to value their art. So let's get pricing.

The following factors aren't in any particular order, and may or may not apply to you. You decide what works best. To begin with, be objective about your art and your experience. In order for your prices to make sense, you have to fairly, honestly and objectively evaluate how your art measures up to other art that's out there.

In order to make valid comparisons, you need a good ballpark idea how the quality of your art and the extent of your accomplishments stack up against those of other artists, particularly the ones who you'll be comparing yourself to. In other words, don't exaggerate your stature. If you've been making art for three years, for example, don't compare yourself to artists who've been making it for twenty.

Being honest like this is not necessarily easy and it's not necessarily pleasant, but it's essential if you want to make it as an artist. Base your pricing on facts, not feelings. Don't confuse your own personal opinion of your art, or what you think the art world should be like, or how you think it should respond to your art, with how things actually are. If you find yourself saying stuff like "People don't understand my work" or "People don't appreciate me" or "I'm just as good as Vincent Picasso even though he's famous and I'm not" or "Sooner or later I'll find the perfect dealer or collector or whatever and live happily ever after," you may be making some errors in judgment.

If you're not quite sure where you stand, invite a few people to look at your art and tell you what they think-- preferably professionals who know something about art-- not your best friends or biggest fans, but ones who'll be honest and direct. Encourage them to be truthful because that's what you need. And don't get defensive; doing this will help you.

When you're objective about your art, you maximize your chances of succeeding as an artist. If it's any consolation, and I know you want your art to sell for as much money as possible, your art is still the same art, it's still just as good, you're still the same artist and you're still just as good, no matter how you price it. Don't use dollar values to validate yourself as an artist; use them to sell your art. Nothing is worth anything until it actually sells, and someone hands you the money and takes your art in exchange.

This next point I already made, but because it's so important I'm going to make it again this time from a different angle. Don't think that your art is so unique that you can price it without regard to what's happening with other artists or elsewhere in your art community or in the art world in general.

All art is unique. Every artist is unique. Uniqueness, however, is not and never will be the sole criteria for pricing art. But wait. Let's say, for the sake of argument that your art is unique and that it's unlike any object, art or otherwise, ever created in any manner since the beginning of time. Now let's do a quick switch and consider that art from the perspective of experienced dealers, curators, critics or collectors. These people almost always compare art from artist to artist and from gallery to gallery before they decide what to buy, sell, collect, write about, exhibit or represent, no matter what kind of art they're looking at or how unique it is.

They rarely, if ever, find themselves with only one choice. Can you imagine any knowledgeable art person looking at an artist's art and saying things like, "I have never seen anything like this! I must have it. I don't care how much it costs. I don't care who you are. Artist Daily contributor and professional artist, Lori Woodward multiplies the size of her painting - in square inches - by an appropriate dollar amount.

To get the square inches of a painting, multiply the width of the work by the length. Next, multiply this number by a dollar amount that makes sense for your reputation and credentials.

Then round to the nearest hundred. Finally, double the cost of your materials and add it to the square inch dollar amount. Emerging artists should consider pricing their art at more affordable rates, while established artists can charge higher rates. Make sure to not outprice your buyers, though.

With larger paintings, Lori uses a smaller dollar multiplier. Your price should reflect the money and time you put into creating it. How dose a non-trained price there art compared to a artist that has art training? Thank you so much for the advice! The linear pricing feels so much better. I do have a question about pricing for the use of a painting. If someone wants to buy the rights of an digital image of one of my paintings to use on a website, how much should I charge?

What a concise and helpful post about pricing art. Hi, I was wondering about pricing for an emerging artist. I am an art major and my strength is graphite. I took a painting class though, because I knew it would benefit me.

It was a nice landscape painting though. The buyer responded by saying he was surprised at that price, but happy. Did I undercharge?

What is reasonable for someone who is just beginning? Melissa, Thank you so much for this article, It was really helpful not only on how to price my work, but how to not feel apologetic about it! With that being said I will take your advice…I will not undercharge myself and what I state for prices I will stick to with no explanations!

Thanks again for writing this! Best, Lina. WOW, Thank you for all the wonderful information on pricing your art.

I also am in the same situation of pricing and will use the linear pricing method. I have been painting for 25 years and have never felt this confident about a pricing method.

Thank you so much for this information. When I first started with sterling silver, labor-intensive jewelry I priced items too cheaply. The lesson I learned was this — how ever cheaply you price your work there are always people who will want it cheaper. I think that it also reassuring to customers to know that the heft, feel and appearance of your work is in-line with the prices that you are charging. Hello Melissa, thank you very much for this amazing article. It was full of great advice and I have to reread it at least once to truly catch every subtle nuance, but I saved it for the future because it is so incredibly helpful.

And so I was thinking — you must have spent a lot of time in the art biz, cuz you seem to be very knowledgeable… right? May I trouble you, then, to ask you about pricing?

I studied painting at art school. I am just an every-day person who happened to study art a loooong time ago, and was not trying to pursue it after school at all. I moved on and I do something else; to be honest, I returned back from work to go to university, which means my funds are very scarce, almost non-existent.

I am really in a bad need of some money, and I am willing to sell my paintings at all cost which is probably a bad thing , cuz I really need to eat. How much can I want for them when they are this small?

I want to sell them somewhere abroad. I would also like to know if they are any good. My friends like them, but they are no measures of quality, you know, they are my friends and they might lie out of sympathy or friendship. I want a honest opinion to know if I can sell them at all. Could I trouble you to look at them?

They are displayed on DeviantArt. But I like some of them. Could you gimme a brutally honest opinion and an advice? Thank you very much, and thanks for your time. Thank you so much for your advice. I have been painting many years and decided recently to start marketing my art work. One issue I have is that I frame my work according to the subject matter and colors in the painting.

Sometimes this gets rather expensive because different pieces merit nicer framing. I paint in oils, and in layers and glazing. So yes, my work is time consuming but at least I come out with a nice painting. Thank you again, I would really love to hear from you. Maybe we can share a piece of work from time to time. Also, for paintings, what multiplier do you suggest I use for the very first paintings I sell.

Hi Julie, we wrote a blog post on pricing prints. As for your first multiplier, start low. Do some research on other artists similar to you and just set something that will get you started.

It should make you feel a little nervous, but not so much that it prevents you from moving forward. I need something new to put in my home. However, in order to do so, I need to get rid of what I already have. I want to find out how much the resale value is on it.

Should I list it at its old price or lower? Jessie, you might reach out to a local auction house, art dealer, or even a website like Lofty. Ive never really sold or exibited.. Are we homogenizing the work of someone who labors for weeks on a portrait vs. Or beginner vs. Thank you so much for our answer.

Thank you for all the work and information you provided, I have one question. I understand the difference in calculating size, but why does the multiplier change? Use the multiplier that works for you. I am doing linear as well based on your article and love that. Best pricing help I have found yet regarding pricing so I thank you for putting this out there for others to find.

I do have a question. I am doing the linear pricing.. How would you figure that out? Hi I am new here. I love to sketch and paint landscapes and trees. My medium is pencil and Acrylic paints I watch tutorials and try to paint the same.

I need assistance. I have just stumbled upon your website when I was looking for ideas on how to charge for paintings. Great advices and ideas! Thank you for this information. I have done a ton of research and still cannot decide on what price to charge per a linear inch which is what I want to do. I paint acrylics and I am just starting to sell my work.

Anyone have a good to put this at? This is very much down to you, and there is no definitive answer. However, one common way is to decide an hourly rate for yourself, then price each artwork according to the time it took to create. You may also want to factor-in costs such as sales commission and framing. You might find it useful to compare your prices with those of artists similar to you.

This is a very informative discussion. Hi Melissa, thank you so much for this post. I learned the hard way back in the 80s and 90s with tole painting on wood. So when you are trying to start selling your painting what would be the easiest way to price them. Price definitely is the hardest part, we struggled a long time while setting up our prices. Size-based is a good idea. Unfortunately the issue is always coming up with the value of x in either square or linear.

I paint mostly abstracts but also semi-abstract landscapes in acrylic. I paint various sizes. I have a one month solo art exhibition coming up next week and I really want to sell my original work. And how would I offer this — on the placards? Or on the bio hanging on the wall? Thank you for any advice. Hi Melissa, thank you for this useful article. Even We use dimensions wise pricing at our website. Thanks for pointing out that art prices tend to be quite fluid and always up for negotiation.

If I can get a pieces from the same collection that would be great as well since they will have some form of uniformity among one another. I think the biggest quandary is the multiplier. What is a good multiplier for a newbie? Using the linear formula. I think those of us starting out would really appreciate your suggestions.

What is a good starting point so we are not undervaluing our work? Hello everyone. I loved this site and the topic is a never ending topic.

As an artist I would like to share with you 2 extra aspects to always consider. The first one is about painting superdetailed and a lot of time dedicated mixed media on masonites miniatures. The size and quality of the art piece works differently with the final pricing. And the second aspect is the aesthetic problem solved in the painting or the intellectual challenges for example in the solution of the composition or with heterodoxal handling of glazing techniques and the overall proposal of the art piece.

Some clients value this things the most and one never knows when we are fortunate enough to find someone who values this important things in our art creations. Have a nice day. This is incredibly helpful, and I especially liked hearing your stories.

But this helps. Your email address will not be published. The only problem? Now I was going to have to come up with a price…. Your mileage may vary with this: start to pay attention to whether you tend to undervalue or overvalue your work, and adjust accordingly. Comments You are so right, especially about never being apologetic for your prices!