Main character is an artist

Depends on where, when and who she is selling to. Also depends, maybe, on the type of work she does - oils, pastels, watercolour. Size of work, frame, glass?
There is a farm shop not far from me that has a restaurant attached to it. The owner lets local artists display there work there - all subjects and a wide variety of mediums. Prices vary - one artist does miniatures and they can go for more than a large watercolour. I've seen some of the artists work displayed in other venues and the prices can be more or less. Depends on the sort of clientèle that the venue attracts. I know that I charge more if I try to sell my work at a craft fair than at a boot sale. The motive of the buyer is also a consideration - I sold a work to a woman who told me she was buying it not because she liked it but because none of her friends would have anything like it. She told me that before she asked the price - so I charged her more than I had intended to!

Watercolors from a new (not established) artist can go for about a sixty to two hundred pounds, depending on the size and quality of the work - generally to the lower end of that, and rarely below sixty from the paintings I have seen (this is, of course, framed and signed). Oils tend to be higher, around the £150 to £200 mark. For a while in the late nineties and *just* into the 00s there was a fairly large amount of numbered prints going for about £20-50, but I don't tend to look to closely at those. The last painting I bought was a beautiful watercolor of a bridge, and that was £120 from a woman who has never sold her work before.

Can't help with other forms (glass sculptures and such) as I really don't think about those much at all - and I have a habit of breaking things, so buying them makes no sense.

My daughter began selling her work recently, oil paintings. Her professors told her to sell by the square inch. She started out at $0.20 an sq in. Her work is selling well.

I used to sell oil paintings for between 300-1000. It was never about size for me...more about the time I spent on them and whether or not I liked what I was painting...and the person I was painting it for. That sounds oogie...but it's the truth.

I'd like to suggest that naming a specific amount in a story will "date" your work very quickly. Even if it's correct for the historical period, it may throw the reader out of the story ("My, prices were low back then.") and you don't want to do that.

Is there any way that you can show the significance of the sale without naming a particular price?

Aside:
I was a picture framer for many years and it was not at all unusual for a customer to spend $300 on a $150 painting bought at an art fair. The sad thing is they would not have spent $450 for the same picture already framed. The artist should make more than the framer but often they do not.

Could you frame the price point in reference to something else?

She sold her first painting - it wasn't much, but she got a nice dinner out of it.

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She sold her first painting and got exactly what she needed for the down payment on a car.

Something like that might keep it from dating so fast.

The prices really are all over the place. There are some reasonably well-known artists who can't sell anything. While some people sell well from the back of a car of the wall of a gas station. If this is a first sale, then keep it well under $1000, unless the character is becoming an international phenomenon.

Alessandra Kelley said:

That's $86 for an 18"x24" painting. That seems awfully low.

Please note this poll and thread on an artists' forum about pricing one's art, which is intended for pros and non-pros alike. There's also a good debate on pricing.

Here's an good thread on why artists undervalue their work, begun by a gallery owner.

And here's one begun by an artist on square-inch pricing. Their formula is more or less $225 + $1.50 per square inch, adjusted by "feeling."

Click to expand...

It also depends on where you live. East coast or major city, yea, an unknown artist might get paid more, but Backwater, USA? Asking more means not selling.