Potential new commission - out of my depth and could use some advice

Start at £100 and work your way up: you need to take so much into account, but frankly whatever you need to take into account you can't make a useful profit at anything under that. You can always make exceptions for people you like/sympathize with, for so long as you keep them firmly to yourself. And don't make a habit of it. You have to ask yourself if you were doing this as a career, could you even begin to survive on the profit margins you establish? If you couldn't, then you're doing professional artists a very bad turn by undercutting them to a silly extent. If you value your work, you'll charge a realistic price for it - if you don't you won't - but do be aware than no one else will either. I'm not in favour of stupid, inflated prices: I'm also not in favour of making your work so cheap that you can pick it up for ridiculously low prices on E-bay - whose interests does that serve? Not yours, because you've cheapened your work: not even your buyers, because they can't really know the value of the work they've bought. Make a minimum price and never go beneath it - and if you're any good, increase it incrementally - some may be lucky enough to increase it exponentially, but that's not the concern of most of us.

Lucy, this is a problem for most of us who sell, or attempt to sell our work. There are no hard and fast rules, no easy little scale of charges booklet on Google so it's all down to your own gut feeling. Buyers do know that this sort of work takes time to complete and in the main they are prepared to pay a decent price for it - £300 - £350 is not ridiculous these days, I would charge vastly more for a commission. Have confidence in your work and don't under-sell yourself, good luck.

Your Nan, eh? Reminds me of my mum - she saw one of mine and said "that tree looks like a hedgehog"; harsh but fair..... Well, she's sometimes fair..... doesn't make a fetish of it. What annoys me (well, lots of things annoy me, to be quite honest) is the kind of painter who puts work on E-bay at ludicrously low prices which can't possibly keep them in paper and paint - the satisfaction of being able to say 'Sold' is very real, but if you've pauperized yourself by accepting a loss-making price, I don't see how it can be very long-lived. I think it's worse than giving a painting away, to accept an insultingly low price for it. You put your heart, soul, experience, time, and expensive paint into your work - underselling it is doing yourself and other artists a bad turn.

I think you have hit the nail on the head Robert. Some artists would rather say they have sold a painting even if they have practically given it away. Someone on the Forum once said that you are not a professional artist unless you have "sold".

What are you seeking, Lesley? There's going to be a difference between original work, whether it's produced by inkjet on canvas or in any other form, and prints of original work - which are we talking about here? Prints will always cost much less than originals - so, if you were asking (just off the top of my lovely head) £100 for an original, I'd be looking to charge around £25 for a print of same, plus framing. And work up from there, though there's a limit to how much you can expect for a print, and that'll depend on all sorts of things - the quality, whether it's a limited run, and so on. So that's a bit vague, but maybe a pointer. Again - if you're showing with others, I would discuss it with them so there isn't a massive difference between your prices. These things are vague, though, because there's not one easy answer ..... so much depends on conditions only you can know about; but tie it to what it costs you to produce the work, taking everything into account, and add a percentage for profit - what percentage? Ah ...... now you're asking. But 50% would be quite modest, wouldn't it?

You can sell prints of your own work, because you retain the copyright of the original piece - you might choose to limit the print-run, because that increases the value of individual prints (ie, there's only so many of them in circulation). But you can sell as many prints as you like - there's nothing to stop you doing that. It might be a courtesy to have a piece of paper to go with your original painting, explaining that you retain the copyright - Michael Edwards produced a template for this a while ago which you might find useful - I think it can be found on the watercolour thread, but if you ask Michael I'm sure he'd be happy to steer you towards it. Don't worry about asking questions - if we can answer them, it's always a pleasure to do so.

Looks like we're all trying to inch your pricing upwards -- thinking about this a bit more, I think that you have to be honest with your client and tell them how much time, and work, a piece will take; break it down into hours if that makes it easier for them to grasp; even quote the minimum wage .... you might be as surprised as they'll be where that could get you. If you charged £10 per hour, and spent 10 hours considering the composition; maybe travelling to meet the subject (I imagine you're working from photos here, though?); buying the paint you'll need, the canvas or board, adding in the preliminary drawing and planning; revising it and recalibrating when you realize it won't work at those dimensions..... adding postage and packing: and framing, if they don't want to choose their own - you'll be up to £100 to £150 cost price: and you want a lot more than that if you're going to put the baked beans on the table. I certainly don't believe in scalping people, and now and then you'll find someone for whom you'll make a concession, because you know they want a painting, deserve a painting, but really can't afford the higher prices - but make them the exception. Subsidize them by all means, but ensure you have a good profit margin on the majority of your work so that you can afford to make exceptions to your pricing policy now and then (but don't advertise it). This will be quite a challenging commission, so make that clear at the outset - tell your client where you'll be having to start the price; and if she jibs at that, well - there are other painters she could go to, and I'll bet they'll charge her more. Perhaps she'll understand - many do - that you can't afford to work for peanuts: just watch her face ..... if there's a sudden lightening of her countenance and perhaps a little hop, jump and skip, you'll realize you've quoted much less than she'd anticipated. But stick to it - I'm not at all in favour of starting at one price and then inflating it, either: but I'm sure you wouldn't do that. This gets easier once you've established a base price for your work - you have firm ground from which to calculate your prices then, but at the outset it's about feeling your way to a price at which you can make a reasonable profit, and with any luck spread your fame a bit wider.

Well I made it - the wording at the top of the form about interpretation is because this is the form I use for my abstract work - the wording is slightly different for representational works.