How do you figure the price of a painting?

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Question:

I have seen so many, some are very good, interesting, and just plain inventive!.!.!.!. Others, not so much!. All priced in the thousands of dollars!. How do come up with these prices!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

ARTISTS are very SPIRITUAL in nature
when you buy spiritual art works
and put in your home or office or hotel etc

the ambiance will become BRILLIANT

ART is RARE!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.IF Created by SPIRITUALLY VIBRANT ARTIST

ART these days is purchased not for BEAUTY ALONE
But as an INVESTMENT - to RE- SELL and EARNWww@QuestionHome@Com

probably the more famous the higher price, you have to like a painting to buy it ,if you want to look at it!. Then again if someone offered me a million dollar painting i hated for $10 id buy it!. So theres unlimited reasons !. Best if you have some knowledge of art before you buyWww@QuestionHome@Com

Hourly seems to work for me!.
First off you'll have to be confident enough in using your chosen medium (i!.e oil paint, acrylics,watercolor etc) to know when you are going forward in your work or just putting different colors on the canvas with not much educational rhymn or reason until it eventually comes out the way you originally intended!. You're confident enough in your technique!.
Follow me here: How much does a kid working at Burger King make an hour!? $10 an hour or something close to that!?
LEt's assume it is $10, aren't we worth as much as a kid working at Mcdonalds/Burger King!? I'd say so!
Just clock yourself when painting!. No, it's not a race and you shouldn't be so overly concerned with time that you try and document every second!.!.!.just be aware of approximately how much time you are actually working on a painting/drawing etc, then multiply those hours by $10 to come up with your fee!.
Once your work begins selling within a certain price reange, you'll know what the average joe is willing to shell out for one of your paintings and can much more easily adjust your prices from there!. Sure enough, after your name and work has been in the public eye for awhile via public and juried exhibitions, you'll be able to tack on a few more bucks just for posterity sake if you desire, but don't get to money-hungry that your prices shoot up through the roof within the first month of your first piece being hung in a gallery!.
You'll get a feel for when it's right!.
Usually a good portrait will take me between 300-500 hours!.
3-4 months at a casual 4-5 hours a night @ $10 an hour that'd bring the selling price up to $3,000-$5,000
Guess what, that's what I'm gonna price it at!
Why should i rip myself off and pay the public to take my artwork away from me!?!?!? That's what is happening when you spend waaaay too much time on a painting and a reasonable price has passed you by!? I mean if you spent 10,000 hours working on a smiley face for example, which if you were working at your normal pace, would've only tAken you say 4!. You're gonna try to sell your smiley face for $10,000!?!?!?
In that scenario, you'd have lost out!. The painting should've been priced between 40-50 but because you weren't confident in your technique, you messed around for 9,996 hours and cost yourself some potential profit!. you actually paid for someone to take your painting for free and then some!. Time is money and that is what you are putting a pricetag on!.!.!.!.your time!
Gallery's charge from 30-60% for selling your stuff through them so many artists add that percentage to their asking price so they can still bring home a nice profit!.
Make several sales with a gallery or two, become well known and your work will justify those price tags that have climbed into the thousands :)

I'll shut up now as i've probably gone in circles a few times here and confused you more!
Jim
http://www!.artworkbyjim!.comWww@QuestionHome@Com