How much to charge for art?

By the way, about prices. As a complete unknown I’ve just had an expert tell me I should charge about €150 for my 45cm square pieces, €180 for the 60cm square ones and about €230 for the 90cm squared. This shocked me as it seems very low, but she said one of the biggest mistakes new artists make is charging too much and not getting any sales. What do y’all think?


I'm tempted to make them a bit more expensive nevertheless, as I'm paying for nine small canvases to make each picture instead of one (each of my paintings is painted on 9 small square canvases to make one big square), and the special frame needed for each one costs between €60 and €120. Or maybe I'm again falling into the charging too much syndrome all beginners apparently make.


Is it better to sell for very little but have the satisfaction of actually making sales and feeling 'validated' as an artist (as well as recuperating costs into the bargain)? I'd appreciate some feedback from people who have already been through this process, cheers!

There's a rule in a certain art society that the minimum charge for a watercolour (therefore mounted, glazed and framed) should be 7 times the framing price. Sometimes this seems a bit high but on many occassions I've been really annoyed when I see a good piece of art so lowly priced that the cost just about covers the framing and the artist is virtually giving their art away. Not only is the artist not valuing the quality of their own work but makes it difficult to understand the cost on others' work to the average punter. If you want to sell work cheaply get good quality prints made of it and you are in a win, win situation. (Or offer to sell the piece unframed)

Thanks for all the feedback folks. In the end I priced them just slightly above what the expert advised me, thinking I was taking into account simply the price of my materials, and didn't sell anything. But the experience taught me plenty, I'm just in the process of working out what... Cheers,

Ron is bang on there,you must always value your own Art and price accordingly,never mind what these so called “EXPERTS” say !

I know

Ron that makes total sense.

Just one comment Sab, for me the notion of selling Art by the square metre is not the approach.

You should calculate what return you want per piece, and that is a simple equation for anything labour intensive. How much do you value your time at? 20 euros per hour, 40 ? whatever. So @ 20 per hour if a piece takes 10 hours that's

200 euros add materials say

50 euros

The sale price is there fore 250 euros. ( add on any number of cotisations and other over head costs if you wish )

It is THIS equation which establishes the value of your work, NOT what other people charge. Because they cannot do what YOU do, as YOU are original, that is the beauty of it.

As a beginner Sab I personally would be happy to get whatever I could and be happy in the knowledge that my work is being displayed and appreciated by others?

Sid.