Hello again all you fine fun-houser's. With November around the corner, I am continuing my drawing/cartooning efforts and preparing for the local display I am doing in November. My intentions are to offer the drawings for sale. This is where things get difficult for me. I try to go through life without any real sense of ego and trying to put a dollar amount on any piece of drawing/art that I do seems really alien for me. I have intentions to put little printed captions in with the drawings in their frames and offer prices for prints of drawing but I am also planning to sell the originals as well. I have spoken with some people in my circles out here and tossed around a few numbers for prices of the orginals [settling on $10 for a print]. I am not so full of myself that I would think to put a price of $300 for a original, but what do you think is fair pricing for someone of the kind of work you may have seen my post. All drawings are 11x17 on illustration board and the frame would come with it, frame runs me about $5. Drawings are finished with Copic markers. Sorry for the jumbled writing, just getting going this morning and only 1/2 done with coffee.
I am not familiar with pricing schemes for art work, but over on DeviantArt a lot of people separate cost into these categories: B&W Single character pose (let's say for argument's sake $5) download only. Colour Single character pose ( $7) download only. Original with delivery, that really depends on the mail service in your community, but the cost of delivery may well be a lot more than the artwork itself. Here's the loose breakdown on charges, a lot of artists could crank out good quality pieces based on the above scale fairly very quickly and without much extra cost to themselves so the prices are good. The client however might want more, they are paying you for a fan service. People love their characters after all. So most artists charge an extra penny for a random background but due to the extra time and materials would charge a couple of bucks for a recognizable background. Hobbit Hole, Hall of Justice, etc. They usually add a charge for additional people, usually per person. This may seem odd but the client won't want to pay for a piece of garbage and while every additional character does indeed take more time and materials, it's also another chance for the artist to screw up. This adds up was well, imagine 5 characters, all posing in front of the ramp to the Millennium Falcon, this just got very time consuming. My advice to you is to set the minimum price for what you are both comfortable with and know you can accomplish first, offer that and only that until you can do multiple pieces routinely. That's the safety benchmark, then expand and experiment a little. The biggest problem you will run into is when you have 5 single pose drawing on the go and could've finished four already if the first one didn't specifically request their character be flying across the New York Skyline and now you have to go research the New York Skyline. Good Luck, AC
Going by some of your later work, could see the minimum being around the $30-$50 mark, for the physical artwork plus the frame, more if it's the original signed pieces Plus of course what Agent Canada said about extras like (recognizable) backgrounds and extra characters (including simple thugs getting beat up)
You think a print could go for $30-$50? Wow, I was not thinking that. I was thinking that for the original. This is all a new experience for me. I appreciate all the input. Please indulge me as I self depricate, but I would be highly surprised if anyone bought anything. For me, this is more an exercise in vulnerability.
Yes, you have a distinctive style, and your later works have shown a vast improvement, but that is just personal opinion, to give you an idea of the pricing you are comfortable with Would rather have an artist be self-deprecating and humble than one who is 'full-of-themselves'
Similar to what Agent Canada said, DeviantArt is one site where there are a lot of talented artists who do commissioned art and rightly so, prices differ based on skill, style, and popularity. For example, similar to Ebay, on Etsy, comic book art or commissioned pieces can start as low as $4 to as high as $5000 . I'd say go with what Agent Canada said. Also, good luck
Thanks Ms. Benz. Again, this is all a whole new experience for me and am approaching it with as much realistic expectation as possible. As I have said before, it is more a act of vulnerability for me than anything. I did do as AC suggested and looked around Deviantart and found that $10-$50 [for similar style/quality] are the going rates for art prints of a simialr size to the 11x17 size I do. that being said, and having some appreciation for my own work. I might feel comfortable setting a $ of $15 for prints of my stuff. Having done a little research around beginners selling the original pieces of their work, the formula I found was: Hourly Rate x # of hours spend + cost of materials = Final $ That being the general idea, I think giving myself a fair [as deemed by the research I did] of $15-$20 per hour x 2-3 hours spent on a given piece + the cost of my boards, markers and frames and time writing the little stories/explanations of the characters in each piece. I think settling on around $100-$120 for an original. Again, I am not expecting to sell even a print and if I did it would be a huge surprise. As November approaches I will post pictures of the assembly of the display and of the actual display when it is all hung up. Thanks for all the info and kind words all.
