Help With Pricing Art?

Hello everyone! I'm Angel, and I was wondering if I could get some help pricing my art.

I'm trying to get back into drawing again, so I don't have a lot of examples, but the files attached are the most recent. I'm currently trying to get back into doing line work as well.

My art style is mainly a mixture of realistic and toony? I do vectors in Adobe Illustrator. I don't do shading or backgrounds, but I want to practice those, as well as anatomy and perspective. I know most of my pictures are boring standing/sitting characters, but I don't really get much inspiration to draw my own characters in funky poses, so that's part of the reason why I want to do commissions. :)

So basically, what do you think would be a good price range for my art? I don't want it so high that no one would buy, but I also don't want it too low to the point I'm wasting my time. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them! I will not be offended if you think my work isn't worth much either; I'm quite young, so I will understand. :)

Also, since I do need some practice, the first person to post with some help/ideas will get a free picture of their character/fursona/etc.

A good place to start is to figure out how much time one of these images takes you and how much you'd like to be paid per hour.

For example, if one of these takes you 5 hours to do and you'd want to be paid $10/hr you should charge $50. :3

There are so many good ways to go about it, honestly, that it's hard to say for sure. Hourly is a good way to go, especially once you get your methods down, and streaming is a great way to drum up a customer base. I'm not a visual artist myself so my own experience is merely in working with artists. My suggestion would be probably to do what you're already doing; reaching out to the community and asking them for ideas/suggestions/critique etc. Try posting something on FA and Deviantart, I believe you said you had an account on both those sites? See what the general response is and use that information to come up with a model. :)

HerrAardy wrote: A good place to start is to figure out how much time one of these images takes you and how much you'd like to be paid per hour.

For example, if one of these takes you 5 hours to do and you'd want to be paid $10/hr you should charge $50. :3

Completely agree. How much is your time worth, realistically? If you're doing this to make money and can back up your work with a good skillset, charge what you feel is appropriate and don't undersell yourself. It

drives me nuts seeing all of these $5 commissions floating around on FurAffinity. The price is one thing, but looking at the product is often confirmation that you get what you pay for. Not always, but this is usually the case. If you're going for volume commissions and you have a format down where you can knock out quality $5 commissions in ten minutes each, great! But when they take longer than that, it might be time to reconsider your strategy. In the end its a question if you're just doing this as a hobby to make a little more money on the side, if you're doing this to hone your skills or if you want to do a lot of business and make a lot of money. The commission market is niche and pretty crowded.

Talented artists selling quality commissions that take an hour or two to crank out for $5 should really price higher - not to do so just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint and they are selling themselves short.

- The Desert Fox

Hourly does seem to be a very common method, and one that's the most fair to both parties, but in my experience, most people will not buy. They'll try to talk you down. Asking 50? They want to pay 10. It's insane. Trying to barter a middleground is an ok method, but then a guy often ends up making less than minimum wage...

Edit: speaking of which, I could use a few pricing suggestions myself... www.furaffinity.net/user/sever/

Not much on that page but the 2 drawings there do give a decent idea of my general skill and whatnot.