Art per square inch

January 26, 2007 11:50 PM

How to scale prices for my paintings

My first MeFi question, so please be be nice!
I'm an artist, I price my paintings by the square inch, furthermore, prices are scaled by cost per unit.
Example: the smallest size work is 5"x5" and retails for $xxx, cost per unit = 10. The largest 60x60, retails $xx,xxx, cpu = 3.
All the rest of the sizes inbetween are priced accordingly.
What is the term for this price scale? (yeah "Price Gouger" "Swindler's List" ha ha! I need the real term, folks)
For the big points & prizes, how do I use the scale to increase next year's prices by a (small) percentage?
Many thanks.

posted by artdrectr to media & arts (4 comments total)

I'm a little confused. It looks like you've already figure all of this out. It seems like the most difficult part of the whole pricing scheme is figuring out what the cpu for any given painting is.

length x height x cpu = cost. Next year, you increase cpu by whatever percent you want, say 5%, and you get length x height x (1.05)(cpu), or just 1.05 x last year's cost.

But that's really simple math...is this kind of thing what you are looking for?
posted by folara at 10:03 AM on January 27, 2007

Is this "art" or wall covering? Shouldn't the market dictate the price for art, and shouldn't the cpu be irrelevant?

Sorry, that's not nice, but you said you're an artist. I would think it's really difficult to put a creativity premium on a cpu basis; hence, the market.
posted by sagwalla at 1:03 PM on January 27, 2007

Pricing your artwork is one of the hardest things to do for new artists, period. It takes time and price experimentation. I run a small business for art promotion and sales. You gauge interest with the amount of money your audience is likely to have. If, you're quickly selling everything you make your prices are too low. If you can't sell a damn thing your prices are too high. For some I recommend having cheap posters, more expensive giclee prints and original artwork. My wife does this and income is about 50% original / 50% prints, posters.
posted by edgeways at 2:51 PM on January 27, 2007

folara: you're the closest to what I'm looking for. Yes, the most difficult part is figuring out the cpu's. I know the minimum & maximum, but I was hoping there was a formula I could plug in for determining all the cpu's in between, so they are relative. Part of it is simple math, I suppose. If there is a name for the formula, I'd like to know that.

sagwalla & edgeways: I simply want my paintings to be relative in price to whatever size a patron might purchase.
I'm looking for a mathematical formula, but thanks for posting your advice.
posted by artdrectr at 9:10 PM on January 27, 2007