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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reprisal" data-source="post: 631660" data-attributes="member: 1161">Once an artist decides to sell his or her work on the open market that art is now (or at least should be) subject to market forces. As many have stated or agreed with, part of the trouble with art is that it's value is fairly subjective after we figure in the cost of labour and materials.Barring that, I remember someone stating that a piece of art should cost materials, plus labour. This, I agree with, but at the same time, the example of a week has me somewhat skeptical. Is that a 40 hour work week? Did this particular piece take 40 hours to complete? Then it most certainly would cost [Materials + (Wage * Hours)] but I'd have to take issue with the artist on how long a particular piece takes to finish.For example, I do not believe that the period of drying (for a painting) should be included in the price, because the artist isn't actually doing anything at this point. If we're approaching art from the standpoint of any other job, that artist should be working on another piece while the first one dries. This is simply for the sake of efficiency.Essentially, I'm saying that if you want to work in your chosen field for a living, it should probably be a truly full-time endeavour. That means 8 hours a day and five days a week (taking things like breaks, lunch and holidays into account). To be honest, I don't see many artists doing this sort of thing -- but my experience is essentially limited, so please enlighten me if this is somehow different.I think the question everyone should be asking is "What should the base wage rate of any given artist?"Obviously, an artist should take as much as s/he can get without gouging the client, but barring that, what should it be? No experience and no certification? Minimum wage -- to start at least. College or University degree in Fine Arts? Probably something higher -- which would then go up.Once the basic wage is determined, we must them subject it to the whims of the market. Commercial art is a buyer's market. If you ask too high a price, you obviously won't get many orders -- you'll get some, but probably not much to get by on. Therefore, all one really needs to do is try to determine the equilibrium price based on supply and demand.Doing so in practice is rather difficult, but generally speaking, in order to make a living wage producing art, you need to churn it out at a rate or more than one per week, to be certain. It's like any other industry in that the winner is generally the one that can produce the most for the lower price.Efficiency is the key. If you really want to make a living producing art, or writing fiction, or what-have-you, you need to be prepared to do your best as quickly as you can... Doing so will hopefully keep supply and demand up at an acceptable level so as to make the price of each piece affordable, but also able to support your livelihood.Of course, it's probably much easier in theory than it is in practice. But, please, don't look down your nose at artists that have embraced this ideology. They've determined that it's better for them to produce what the people want, rather than what the High Arts Establishment decides is "Art." I personally think that these people should be commended for their industriousness, it seems that they would be the most likely to be able to live off their artistic skills (unless you win the Fine Arts lottery known as "High Art" or whatever the acceptable name for it is... Modern Art?)Yeah, I'm a capitalist dog, <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> - Rep.</blockquote>

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