Hi Lacey,
I've really enjoyed seeing your works in progress--and finished works--on the forum, most recently your fascinating self-portrait. I just checked out your website and I think it is very well-designed and it showcases your work very well! Michele's advice on how to improve it was right-on!
I agree about the prices for oils. $1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 sound reasonable to me. I'm not sure about the graphite and pastel work because I don't sell any myself. $100 might be a little low for a pastel but I'm not sure. It seems to me that a lot of people would want your work and will commission you.
I keep thinking about what an art consultant told me about 10 years ago. She said, "You really should raise your prices for your portraits. If you keep them too low, you are not only undercutting your own business, you are undercutting other portrait painters' business." That really stuck in my head: the idea that I could actually not only hurt myself (by not valuing my work enough) but hurting others, both by taking business away from them, unintentionally of course, because of my lack of awareness of the market; and by lowering the bar on how much people expect to pay for a certain level of work.
Off to a great start!
Alex
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