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The problem
3 years ago
Hello everyone. I wanted to ask of opinions. For me lately, I spend more and more time trying to complete bigger and more detail drawings. I've become slow to work on almost any drawing, when before in my cartoon style I can make them pretty fast so long as I have the time to sit and make them. (Which that's a different problem but I don't have all that time to sit to draw.) I have more of a problem lately where everyone wants realistic style almost every time, and the ideas of detailed and lots of characters or lots of drawings at once. That's how I had to close commissions, it got to much at once.
So now my problem is that I never wanted to become that one who charges a crazy price for one drawing. Its hard because I can't afford that and I never could afford that for myself so to ask someone else to give me that feels like a hypocrite. But I now spend extra time on each commission that I can't make the money as fast as before. And I look to other artist who offer similar style and their prices are high above mine.
For me, I need advice. I don't know how to make a fair price for the realistic style. I already raise the price some from before but even that didn't fix the problem. So what do I do? Does any artist have advice? Or customers to tell me what they thought is fair? I don't want to exclude the art from everyone who doesn't have alot of money.
So now my problem is that I never wanted to become that one who charges a crazy price for one drawing. Its hard because I can't afford that and I never could afford that for myself so to ask someone else to give me that feels like a hypocrite. But I now spend extra time on each commission that I can't make the money as fast as before. And I look to other artist who offer similar style and their prices are high above mine.
For me, I need advice. I don't know how to make a fair price for the realistic style. I already raise the price some from before but even that didn't fix the problem. So what do I do? Does any artist have advice? Or customers to tell me what they thought is fair? I don't want to exclude the art from everyone who doesn't have alot of money.
That should aid in getting you more sales for your toony style while also still selling some realistic.
In order to determine how much to sell the realistic you could time how long it takes (hours) then decide how much an hour of your time is worth. Multiply the numbers together and you'll get your average cost of a piece. Let's say you feel an hour of time is with 20usd and you average 5 hours on a realistic that would make 20x5=100 or 100usd for a single realistic piece (assuming the average time spent per piece is 5 hours). Also that's only an example of how to figure out the cost.
I can imagine your best style is in highest demand. Why settle with a sketch when you can have an affordable high detail piece. But I think those that specifically want a high detail piece will be able to pay a bit more for that. It's a luxury after all. And those people who just want a piece from you, but can't afford much, will be fine with something a bit more simple, it's from you after all, that is important. That last part here is speaking as a low budget comissioner myself.
I could imagine you can also set prices where you do not have to raise them a lot for your better styles alone, but rather raise the price per extras, backgrounds, extra characters, extra effects, stuff like that. Or try to involve people in your own projects and charge less for that. That's something I liked to do.
Then also what kind of art would you prefer to draw? If you'd like to do more cartoony style drawing that are quick and easier, you could open those up specifically. I'm sure plenty of people would be chomping at the bits for them :)