I’ll give everyone who ignores this post a handmade troll doll.
It’s funny, but the crafters in this thread seem to be getting hopelessly screwed, mainly because their prospective buyers are trying to get “useful” objects that cost the crafters 100s of hours of their time–who would ever wrap herself in $1000 blanket.
But the fine artists set a price geared for appreciating their artwork–it’s a tough sale, a few grand for a painting, but that’s the price. But it’s not like you’re inherently screwed.
Different mindset usually. Most crafters I know put a lot of love and effort into their work. It is a hobby and they remember all the time spent, things that happened, etc during the process. That piece is a labor of love, not an object to be sold to whoever for whatever. As an artist selling work, I remember that I watched/ listened to 4 episodes of whatever show on hulu because I need to remember I spent 4 hrs on the piece. I then pay myself a generous 2-10 dollars an hr for my creativity and get on with life.
I think that your time and talent are too valuable to waste on a threadshitter.
After buying a really nice painting from a gallery I was having dinner with the artist and he told me how much he appreciated me not haggling over the price. He didn’t paint a large number of works during the year but he’d obviously poured his heart into each of them. Apparently though it was common for people to ask him to accept less.
I got a call from David Reidel after buying a couple of his paintings as he was having trouble with a gallery apparently telling him they’d discounted his work. I told him what we’d actually paid, full price, and about a month later out of the blue I get another beautiful painting of his in the mail from him along with a very nice note.
I’d never offer less than the listed price to an artist out of fear of it being taken as an insult but that apparently doesn’t hold true for everyone. Either I like it at that price or I don’t, that simple. Not that offereing less is right or wrong, I’d just never do it.
My mother is a quilter. She makes a lot of baby quilts for family members and close friends, and frequently when she gives them to the recipient at a baby shower, someone she doesn’t know will come up and ask “Oh, could you make one for my daughter/niece/friend/whoever?” And they’re always gobsmacked to hear that it’ll be damn expensive–good fabric costs more than crap from Wal-Mart that will fade and fray after the first wash, plus all the work that goes into a quilt–laying, cutting, piecing, assembling, pinning, on and on and on it goes.
But my mother is a smart lady, and doesn’t work for idiots who expect that a hand-made quilt will cost the same as a pre-frayed piece of crap from Babies 'R Us baby blanket.
Yeah, I’d have to agree with you here. I price my jewelry and other items reasonably and geared towards what the market will bear. For example there is another artist making similar items that runs in the same circles that I do. My work is, frankly, not as good as hers yet (she’s been doing this much longer than I have) and my work is priced a little less. Unfortunately when your craft has become your income, you have to balance your love of your work with financial concerns. Could I charge a higher asking price for my work? Absolutely. But in all likelihood, nobody will go home happy. People will tell me how beautiful my jewelry is and how creative I am, but they’re not going to be willing to take it home if the price isn’t right. Like I said, it’s a delicate balance between suffering for your art and suffering to make the house payment each month.
I may not be making what I feel each piece is truly worth, but at least I’ll have had some enjoyment in the creation of it.
Ooh! A free troll doll. 
Just pitching in to say that, as a metalworker/painter, it’s rather difficult to make people realize the time and effort put into either. Furthermore, that’s already been said by people more literally gifted than I.
snip.
This exactly. I’m working on getting into a prominent gallery show next month. (crosses fingers) We’ll see how it goes. If it does well, I might get enough work to make it my full time job instead of having to look for part time work.
Ive done work for nothing or next to nothing. I’ve played gigs for free, done studio work for free. I’ve given away songs for nothing but the credit on the CD. I don’t have the illusion that my work is so precious that I deserve to be showered with gold for it. The truth is that art is a cheap commodity, and that very few artists are actually all that marketable. Here’s something else, the amount of time you spend on something has no relevance to its marketability. All that matters is the finished product. The notion that you are entitled to more money if you spend more time on it is completely false. Art is not priced that way. It’s not an auto repair. The product is the product. The market doesn’t care how much time it took you. The market is what it is, and you are not being wronged if the market doesn’t pay you like you’re Picasso. Artists are a dime a dozen and they all think they’re geniuses (including me), but the truth is that very few really are good enough that the market is going to reward them. There’s always somebody else who can do exactly the same quality work. I know I’m going to be accused of threadshitting for having a contrary opinion, but tell me what I’m actually wrong about. By what metric are you appraising your own work? Why do you think your work is worth more than what the market says it’s worth?
I’ve been doing stained glass for several years. I (literally) put blood, sweat and tears into my work. I’ve sold a lot of my work, rarely for what I think it’s worth. I usually charge material cost, and chalk up my time as my “hobby” If I didn’t, I’d be disappointed every time I sold something. I paint too. I’ve never sold a painting. We have no room left to store any more, so I’ve stopped.
Most people don’t want Art. They want art, things that match their decor.
I’m a self-employed consultant. People who have decided to start using SAP hire some consulting firm, which calls some agencies, which hire people like me.
Many agents have been trying to take advantage of the current crisis by hiring consultants to do two jobs for the price of less than one. Let’s say someone’s rates were 100Simoleons for one module (SAP is divided into parts called modules), he’d be offered 90Sims to handle two modules. I’ve actually hung up the phone on someone after saying “for that rate, this phone call is already over-cost.”
Don’t get me started on the rates offered for translation work and the timing for it. “Highly-technical manual, 100K words, due 48 hours after we tell you you got it, 0.05USD/word” is not an exaggeration.
In the case I mentioned in the OP, my time was worth my time. A guy wanted me to spend three hours helping him out with something, and I’d rather have spent my night doing what I wanted to do. I charged what I thought was a fair price for my time.
This thread is not about artists feeling entitled to money. It’s about others feeling entitled to an artist’s time and energy.
Your time is worth whatever anybody is willing to pay for it. If your time is not as marketable as you would like it to be, you are free not to sell it.
I was thinking the same thing.
Dio, if you had originally said this:
instead of this:
I wouldn’t be getting threadshitting reports.
Please make an effort to spell out what you want to say instead of making drive-by remarks. It is not just your opinions that piss people off, it’s the way you present them.
Thanks,
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Individuals aren’t a market, they are participants in one. One person expecting to get artistic effort for nothing doesn’t mean that the market has declared the value of the effort to be zero.
It’s a fact that the amount of effort and skill involved in producing something do not dictate the price that people are willing to pay. For most buyers, it has some influence, but they have no obligation to make a calculation. That’s up to the artist or craftsman to decide whether it’s worth doing or not. And anyone who runs into someone who expects their effort for free is perfectly entitled to be bemused, offended, or whatever else they feel like feeling.
I have to agree that from the POV of the buyer, how long it takes to produce the whatever is irrelevant. Maybe you are the world’s most indecisive painter, and meditate before each brush stroke and agonize after it. Maybe you paint like a demon on speed when inspired. Maybe that painting was done in an afternoon or over a decade.
The only question to me as the buy is, am I willing to pay the amount on the price tag to own in? (Well, that and, Can I afford it?)
I agree it’s particularly hard on crafters vs. ‘traditional’ artists. Especially for items with utilitarian aspects. Is it ‘worth’ $150 for a pot rest with handpainted tiles when I can buy a functionally similar item for $5.95 at KMart?
And how much is thread shit going for these days?
(sorry, I couldn’t resist)
As a producer, by his own rules, he’s not qualified to say. That’s up to us who make up the market. I bid $0.00.