Well, that went reasonably well!
Another week, another experience!
All this week, I’ve been trying to sell my paintings at work, to my ever-tolerant colleagues. I’d set it up as a blind auction, so that I could garner some information on how best to price my artwork. The conclusions I have come to are as follows:
- It’s a lot more difficult to sell art than I initially anticipated!
- Many people, while they may appreciate a painting and have kind things to say about it, may simply not be in a place where they want to purchase one.
- When you have no cachet, as an artist just beginning the journey, your work is worth a lot less than what you might envision in terms of real money. That does NOT mean that your work is any less VALUABLE, but you’re not going to make all that much more than cost + time if you want to start building up your reputation and credibility.
- You may have to be prepared to let a painting go for a little less than cost + time, if it’s going to generate more business or goodwill; ye olde loss leader. Just be sure that you’re not being taken advantage of, and I suspect that’ll be a completely separate lesson.
Having learned all of these, I have received two bids for two of my paintings, which is nice! I shan’t announce the details, as I believe to do so would not be proper, but I now have a baseline to gauge my pricing around; My 8×8 in pieces should go for an average of £50, so I now have real data to refine my pricing model.
It ain’t glamorous money, but it sure is exciting to think that people like some of them enough to pay for them!
Right, I’m off to practice some new painting techniques. If I’m lucky and get the time, I might have some new paintings done over the weekend…
Toodles!
M.
Are there any open market stalls in Manchester? They might be a different way to gauge prices, as people don’t generally go to work to spend money. I remember going to one in London and quite a few of the stalls were arts related.