Pricing Artwork: A Practical Guide for Emerging Artists

For artists who freeze when asked ‘how much?’

Before getting into pricing methods, it’s important to understand why you need one at all, and the answer is consistency and transparency.

Why pricing that is both consistent and transparent matters!

When emerging artists don’t show their prices, it often reads as unprofessional for three simple reasons:

1. It suggests uncertainty about your own value. Collectors expect you to know what your work is worth. No price can feel like you’re still figuring it out.

2. It adds friction at the exact moment buyers need clarity. If someone has to message or hunt for the price, many won’t. it introduces friction. Lack of information kills momentum.

3. It creates doubt about fairness. Without a listed price, collectors can wonder whether the number changes depending on who’s asking. Transparency builds trust. opacity undermines it.

Collectors aren’t just buying the artwork today, they’re buying confidence that your pricing will grow steadily, not erratically.

Collectors need to know they’re not being charged based on who they are, how they present, or the circumstance of the sale, but on the actual value of your work at that moment in your practice. When your pricing has a clear structure behind it, it becomes explainable, even as it grows over time. This builds trust, removes doubt, and signals that your prices evolve because your work evolves, not because you’re guessing or adjusting to the person standing in front of you. Collectors aren’t just buying the artwork today, they’re buying confidence that your pricing will grow steadily, not erratically.

Galleries want to see that you understand your own market position and that your prices are not arbitrary or reactive.

Galleries look at pricing as one of the strongest signals of professionalism in an emerging artist. They want to see that you understand your own market position, your prices are not arbitrary or reactive, buyers won’t get confused or feel misled and your “value story” can be told consistently across platforms. If a gallery sees wildly different prices across your Instagram, website, and previous exhibitions, it creates extra work for them, and introduces risk. A consistent, transparent pricing structure tells a gallery this artist has maturity, which is something galleries may value even more than talent, because it makes their job easier.

Where to start?

Art is often described as subjective, and at an emotional or conceptual level, that’s true. But before we get anywhere near meaning, interpretation, or value, there is a very practical reality, artwork is a physical thing that costs money to make. Materials, tools, studio space, time, transport, none of these are abstract. When pricing your work, the first step isn’t confidence or comparison, it’s acknowledging the real, tangible cost of producing it. Everything else builds from there.

Material Costs

Before thinking about confidence, formulas, or what the market might pay, you need a basic understanding of what the work physically costs to make. You don’t need to calculate this for every single piece, just establish a baseline. A good approach is to take to gives you a reliable reference point and removes guesswork:

• One typical-sized piece you make often, or

• Repeat the exercise for small / medium / large works

Category	Examples (use what applies to your practice)
Surfaces & supports	Canvas (stretched/unstretched), canvas board, wood panels, plywood, MDF, hardboard, paper, fabric
Preparation & sealing	Gesso, primer, sealers, varnish, fixative sprays, wood sealant
Paint & colour	Acrylic paint, oil paint, watercolour, gouache, ink, oil sticks, pastels, pigments, mediums
Drawing & mark-making	Charcoal, graphite, pencils, markers, pens, chalk, crayons
Adhesives & binding	PVA glue, gel medium, spray mount, paste
Printmaking (if applicable)	Paper for editions, plates (wood/lino/metal), inks, solvents, registration materials
Sculpture & 3D (if applicable)	Clay, plaster, resin, wax, wire, armature materials
Finishing & presentation	Frames, glass or acrylic, backing board, hanging hardware (D-rings, wire), labels

Table 1. Typical costs to account for.

If you for example compare a 30×30 cm work with a 60×60 cm work and notice that the material usage increases in direct proportion to the surface area (for example, the larger work uses roughly four times the materials), then it’s a good sign that your material cost scales by area. In that case, one practical way to estimate future material costs is to calculate an approximate cost per cm². This doesn’t need to be perfect, but it gives you a consistent baseline for understanding how your materials behave across different sizes. From there, you can build your final pricing using the other components.

Once you’ve calculated this once (or a few times by size), you don’t need to revisit it constantly. The goal is awareness. Knowing your baseline material cost gives you confidence and prevents accidental underpricing.

As a side effect, this exercise often helps artists reflect on how they use materials, whether it makes sense to stretch their own canvas, make their own gesso, buy materials in bulk, or work more economically. Those are useful conversations too, perhaps we will cover those in another blog post!

Production Costs

When it comes to pricing, artists often wonder whether their skill level should factor into the calculation, especially early in their careers. For emerging artists, skill usually shows up in the work itself, not as a separate “line item.” As your skills improve, your work improves; as your work improves, demand increases; and as demand increases, prices rise naturally. In other words, skill is reflected over time through recognition, sales, and opportunities, not something you explicitly need to add into a formula. What is helpful for emerging artists is to understand the production costs, the number of hours that has been invested in the work. Preparation, layering, drying time, refinement, problem-solving, finishing. The other part of the production cost, is the actual cost of maintaining your creative space. This is important because you might want to think about setting an hourly work rate that covers the production costs. Even if your hourly rate is modest at first, acknowledging it helps build a realistic pricing baseline.

Experience and Quantifiable Success(Recognition, Sales)

Your experience as an artist naturally plays a role in how your work is valued. Exhibitions, art fair participation, residencies, grants, awards, and even consistent sales over time all contribute to a sense of momentum. These markers show that your work is circulating, being seen, and being validated by curators, institutions, or collectors, and that visibility tends to increase demand, which then supports higher prices. It’s important to be practical about what this means. You don’t raise your prices because you were in one show or accepted into one residency. As sales and exposure accumulates, slowly and steadily increase your prices. A helpful way to think about this is as a success modifier, a scale from 1 to 2. At 1, your work is largely unknown, pricing is about covering costs and building confidence. As you move gradually toward 2, through repeated exhibitions, returning collectors, steady sales, and growing recognition, your pricing evolves alongside that trajectory. Most artists spend years somewhere between those two points.

Success Modifier	Artist Stage	What This Represents
1.0	Baseline / Starting Point	Covers materials + labour + production costs. No profit margin, but not selling at a loss. Good starting point for brand-new artists.
1.1 – 1.3	Early Emerging	A few finished works, early exposure, maybe a small local show or early sales. Building confidence, beginning to create demand.
1.3 – 1.5	Emerging with Momentum	Consistent production, several exhibitions or group shows, growing social/media interest, steady small sales. Prices begin to stabilise.
1.5 – 1.8	Growing Career / Mid Emerging	Increasing recognition, more exhibitions, returning collectors, residency experience, stronger artistic identity. Demand is visible.
1.8 – 2.0	Established Emerging / Early Established	Solid sales history, meaningful recognition, curated shows, gallery relationships, increased demand. Market supports higher pricing.
2.0+	Established	Strong collector base, consistent sales, significant exhibitions, reputation in the art ecosystem. Scarcity and demand naturally raise prices.

Table 2. Example of what the success modifier might indicate.

The key is to adjust prices slowly and deliberately, in response to sustained activity rather than one-off successes. This keeps your pricing credible, explainable, and aligned with the real development of your practice.

Commission

If a gallery or sales platform will be engaged to sell your work you need to take into account any fees they might add in reference to representation, promotion, and others. Galleries usually take up to a 50% commission from sales. Having this in mind will avoid deducting the fee from your final profit, and also, be consistent with your prices in all spaces where your art is showcased, giving collectors more security to invest.

How to calculate?

Now you have some baselines to use in price calculations.

• Width of piece

• Height of piece

• Material costs per cm² (or Approx material costs for specific size)

• Hourly artist rate (to cover production costs)

• Number of hours worked

• Quantifiable success modifier(between 1 and 2)

• Commission %

let's look at two common strategies, take them as a starting point and adapt them to your own case to come up with a formula that fits your needs.

Strategy 1: Hourly Rate

What is the average living wage in your city? This will help you define a value for every hour of your work that fully reflects the value of your work, of your voice and experience, and also provides you with the living conditions needed to keep working on your art. For example, in Spain the minimum wage is just over €7 per hour(2025). This number is further influenced by your context, your location, the cost of maintainig a workplace, etc. It's up to you to set your hourly artist rate to suit your situation.

Your formula (before commission) could be:

(Width x Height x Material Costs per cm²) + 
(Number of Hours worked x  Hourly Artist Rate) x
Success modifier.

or

 Material Costs for specific piece  + 
(Number of Hours worked x  Hourly Artist Rate) x 
Success modifier.

Example One: 30x60cm work with material cost = .01 cm² & six hours to complete where artist rate is €7 per hour.

(30x60x.01) + (7x6) =  €60 - for emerging artist with a basic success modifier of 1 & no commission to consider

 €60 x 1.3  = €78 - for emerging artist with some momentum(i.e success modifier of 1.3) & no commission to consider

Example Two: 90x90cm work with material cost = .01 cm² & six hours to complete where artist rate is €7 per hour

(90 x 90 x .01) + (7x6) =  €123 - for emerging artist with a basic success modifier of 1 & no commission to consider

 €123 x 1.3  = €160 - for emerging artist with some momentum(i.e success modifier of 1.3) & no commission to consider

This formula accounts for material costs, production costs and recognition for success. It would be wise to increase your hourly artist rate beyond the minimum wage, consider this formula useful for understanding at what price point you may be under-selling yourself. This formula might feel a little complex and might be a little clumsy for using day by day however doing this once or twice to get a good understanding of your overall costs is a must. Some artists do continue to use this formula.

First understand what your art costs to create, then simplify your calculation with the formula that works best for you. Consistency, transparency and simplicity is your goal.

Strategy 2: By Size

Once you’ve used the methodology above to understand your actual costs and establish a solid baseline, you can simplify your pricing dramatically by pricing based on size. A common and very practical next step is to create a cost per cm² which already includes your materials, time, and production costs.

With this approach, all you need to do is multiply the width by the height to get the total square centimetres of the piece, then multiply that by the price you’ve set per cm². This gives you a straightforward, consistent way to price new work without recalculating every variable each time.

The price you choose per cm² can be worked out using the more detailed formula first, that’s what gives you confidence that the number actually covers your costs. Keep the success modifier (between 1 and 2) as a separate factor. As your visibility, sales, and recognition grow, you can adjust your cm² rate by applying a higher success modifier, allowing your pricing to evolve gradually and transparently.

Your formula (before commission) will be:

Adjusted cost per cm² =  cost per cm² x success modifier

Total price = Width x Height x Adjusted cost per cm²

Example One: 30x60cm work with a cost per cm² of 0.035c

30 x 60 x 0.035 =  €63 - for emerging artist with a basic success modifier of 1 & no commission to consider

 63 x 1.3  = €81.90 - for emerging artist with some momentum(i.e success modifier of 1.3) & no commission to consider

Example Two: 90x90cm work with a cost per cm² of 0.035c

90 x 90 x 0.035 =  €283.50 - for emerging artist with a basic success modifier of 1 & no commission to consider

 283.50 x 1.3  = €368.55 - for emerging artist with some momentum(i.e success modifier of 1.3) & no commission to consider

Concrete Example?

To make this more concrete, here is the pricing structure used by Barcelona-based artist Shyne Eghosa, from Unmaking Art Studio. Shyne works primarily with wood board, oil sticks, pastel, acrylic, and supplies handmade frames and worldwide shipping.

Shyne calculates a baseline cost per cm² for each medium. The cost per cm² already includes materials, labour, and production costs. His current rates are:

• €0.25 per cm² for oil stick on wood,

• €0.20 per cm² for oil pastel on wood,

• €0.15 per cm² for acrylic on wood.

  
  

Once the cost per cm² is established, the final price is simply width × height × cost per cm², adjusted upward using a success modifier (between 1.0 and 2.0)to reflect his career progression, consistent sales, and growing visibility. It’s a simple, transparent system that keeps pricing fair, explainable, and aligned with the reality of making the work. Shyne's prices were last adjusted in July 2024.

Sample price guide from Unmaking Art Studio.

Further Considerations

For simplicity:

• Price framing separately

• Price packaging and transport costs separately

• Think about accessible pieces for example prints or smaller originals in order to offer different selling points!

• Commissioned art should have additional price consideration due to customisation and risk. .

Final Thoughts: Pricing with Confidence

Pricing your artwork doesn’t have to feel like guessing in the dark. When you break it down into real, measurable pieces, materials, time, and a structure you understand, you transform it from a source of anxiety into a tool that supports both your creative practice and your sustainability as an artist.

Remember:

• Cost clarity is your foundation — knowing what your work actually costs prevents underpricing and protects your confidence.

• A consistent system is reassuring — collectors are more willing to invest when they see stability and logic behind your prices.

• Pricing evolves with you — as your experience, visibility, and sales traction grow, your prices can grow with them in a clear, explainable way.

  
  

Whether you choose to start with a detailed formula, a simple cost per cm², or a hybrid method, the important thing is that you begin!

If you’ve read this far, and you have found this helpful please leave a like or a comment. If you have any other feedback, please also leave a comment!