Pricing your art is different from making art; it's something you do with your art after it's made, when it's ready to leave your studio and get sold either by you personally or through a gallery, at an art fair, online, at open studios, through an agent or representative, wherever. Making art is about the individual personal creative process, experiences that come from within; pricing art for sale is about what's happening on the outside, in the real world where things are bought and sold for money, and where market forces dictate in large part how much those things are worth.
The better you understand how the art market works and where your art fits into the big picture of all the art by all the artists that's for sale at all the places where art is being sold, the better prepared you are to price and sell your art. Just like any other product, art is priced according to certain criteria-- art criteria-- and these criteria have more to do with what's going on in the marketplace than they do with you as an artist. They're about how people in the art world-- people like dealers, galleries, agents, publishers, auction houses, appraisers and experienced collectors-- put dollar values on art. You have an idea of what your art is worth, the market has an idea of what your art is worth, and somehow the two of you have to get together on a price structure that makes sense.
Let's take a non-art example of how market forces dictate prices. Suppose you see a 2001 used Toyota Corolla with 180,000 miles on it advertised for sale and priced at $45,000. The owner is probably not going to sell that car. In order to sell a used Toyota Corolla with lots of miles on it, you have to price it according to certain criteria, used car criteria. In the same way, in order to sell art, you have to price it according to art criteria. Learning what these art criteria are and understanding how they apply to you is essential to pricing your art successfully.
Art prices are not pulled out of thin air. When you price your art, you must be able to show that your prices make sense, that they're fair and justified with respect to certain art criteria such as the depth of your resume, your previous sales history and the particulars of the market where you sell. People who know something about art and who are interested in either buying, selling or representing your work are going to figure out one way or another, not necessarily by asking you, whether your art is worth what you're selling it for. In order to sell, you have to demonstrate and convince them that your prices are fair and reasonable. If you can't do this, you'll have a hard time selling art.
So how do you start? If you don't have a consistent history of selling your art in a particular price range or in a particular market or your sales are erratic or you're making a change or you're just plain not sure how much to charge for whatever reason, a good first step is to use techniques similar to those that real estate agents use to price houses. The selling price of a house that's just coming onto the market is based on what are called "comparables" or "comps" or prices that similar houses in the same neighborhood sell for-- real estate criteria.
For example, let's take a nice big mansion and plop it down the good part of Beverly Hills. It'll be worth maybe five, maybe ten, maybe forty million bucks. Now, let's plop it onto the plains of North Dakota. It'll be worth maybe $500,000, maybe $1,000,000 or maybe a little more... max. Same mansion; different neighborhood; different criteria. Get it?
You see, you can't price your art in a vacuum; you have to consider its "neighborhood," its context, the "art criteria" that connect it to the rest of the art world. You'll find that no matter what market you sell in, whether local, regional, national or international, that for the most part, every type of art by every type of artist has its own price structure, and that includes yours. "But my art is unique. You can't price art like that." You may be thinking this, and you're right, your art is unique, but so is every house in any given neighborhood. No matter how unique your art is, it's also similar in certain ways to art by other artists-- just like one house is similar to another (they both have bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, roofs, and so on).
Here are some of the ways your art may be similar to other art-- it may be similar in size, shape, medium, weight, subject matter, colors, the time it takes you to make it, when it was made, how long you've been making that type of art, how many you've made, what type of art it is (abstract, representational, conceptual, etc.), who your audience is, and so on. Your job is to explore 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 it 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. For example, if materials cost $50, you take 20 hours to make the art, and you pay yourself $20 an hour to make it, then you price the art at $450 ($20 X 20 hours + $50 cost of materials). 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 that you want to generally 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 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.