How to Increase the Value of Your Paintings! 🎨

hi friends today I want to talk about pricing and specifically how to increase and essentially double the value of your artwork so I started out selling my paintings in high school for like $40 each and now I just painted this last week and within a couple days it was sold for $1,200 it's 24x 36 in or 24 by 30 in and that is my standard price now for a painting that size if you went back one year ago two years ago I was Selling paintings this size for $300 so how did I manag to increase

my prices tripling quadrupling my prices without push back from my audience right people are paying it paying for it now normally pric is determined by supply and demand as we learn about in economics class but art is a luxury art isn't deodorant and so normally when you're pricing a product if you were trying to sell your start your own deodorant company there would be a ceiling to what you can realistically price your product at because the consumer knows that what it's valued at isn't that high of an amount it unless I created a deodorant that

would solve my chronic sweating all the time um then I might pay $200 for a stick but art is a luxury and Studies have shown that when consumers don't know how to gauge the value of a product as they don't with luxury items they just use price as an indicator so high price luxury item they assume well it must be worth that and vice versa so things like artwork there is no set Universal pricing structure for art we can see that some paintings sell for1 million and some paintings sell on eBay for $2 what is

the difference between the two and how can you take your art from this one to this one so there's two real things that I see being in your control as the artist where you can change the value perceived value of your art because you might think your painting is worth a million dollars but you have to convince your audience that it is as well for someone to buy it so scarcity is number one scarcity is something that also drives and influences number two but let's focus on scarcity first artwork that is scarce is perceived as

being more valuable and something could be scarce in terms of this is a one of one original or it could be scarce in terms of you are at the top 1% skill level for your art type for I I know art is subjective but for hyperrealism painters Fabiano Milani is in like the top 1% scarcity could mean that you have created an art style that nobody has ever seen before because the more unique your artwork is the less competition there is somebody falls in love with your painting they can't just hop on Etsy and find

the cheaper artists that's going to paint them the same exact thing because when you're painting a little landscape um on and you're putting it up for sale on Etsy for example what sets you apart from the other 50,000 Landscapes of the same kind of scenery by other artists on Etsy when you are creating the same style of artwork that isn't diff you can't really differentiate it from another artist's work well then you're just stuck in the same cycle as the deodorant bar where you have to kind of price accordingly with the other artists in your

Market that's why finding your own Super unique fingerprint and style as an artist increases the value scarcity is number one but it's not the focus of this video I actually want to focus more on number two which is I think what has helped me increase my prices in the last year from the $300 to the $1,200 for my small paintings here it is if you want to double the value of your painting you have to double the value of the artist so it really has absolutely nothing at all to do with the artwork and everything

to do with the perceived value of you as the Creator we see this in the art world all the time because anyone off the street could recreate an exact perfect replica of the Mona Lisa any oil portrait artist could create a portrait of the exact same style and quality and skill level and it would never ever ever sell for want to be accurate here $860 million because it is not a da Vinci original the Mona Lisa is worth that much money because it's a da Vinci original it's the same reason why bangy has created some

very simplistic pop art right not necessarily very scarce because it could be recreated very easily by another artist it's valuable because it is Banksy um and so if you could make yourself be perceived as a more valuable artist you can kind of skip over the scarcity rule you can kind of skip a step forward and create artwork that is perceived as highly valuable regardless of the skill level regardless of how scarce or unique it is or how meaningful it is it's the same reason that we get super invested in celebrities on TV it's the same

reason why when Kim Kardashian's daughter Northwest when Kim shared her painting which was good it was very good um but if anyone else anyone else's child painted it thousands of people would not been begging to buy it but because of the name because it was painted by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's daughter it was intrinsically immediately more valuable in the consumer's mind because of who painted it so how do you make yourself more um valuable as an artist there's actually a book that I read that talks about some things but I think it applies so

perfectly and it's a book called the defining decade by Meg J it's written by a psychologist who talks about just the importance of that the decade of your life between the age of 20 and 30 but she talks a lot about something in that book called identity capital and it's kind of how you make yourself more marketable to employers to just people just in general in life how to become more compelling and more perceived as more valuable let me just read you her definition identity capital is a term used by sociologists to describe a person's

unique skill set experiences and resources that make them who they are so what are the parts about you that make you you and uniquely you and not someone else why do you create art and when people go to your website or your Instagram or your Tik Tok wherever it is you're posting your art what do they know about you are you just sharing pictures of your paintings because of course your art page should be focused on your art but your art is not a separate um entity from you art and artist are one at least

in my opinion you you are your art and your art is you and and and the value of the both are interwoven together and in her book Meg J says that identity capital is the currency that we use to metaphorically purchase relationships jobs and connections it has value in our minds it's why some of the most profound public speakers and inspirational motivational people in life have have very unique stories and experiences and traits about them that make them stand out from the rest makes them instantly recognizable and it serves as a form of currency in

the world for them that they can purchase your admiration or opportunities or value oh why'd my dad just pull up I love that he comes over every day I I do I'm going to miss it someday one second remind me at the end of this video to tell you the story of how I got detained by the Mexican Army at the airport identity Capital essentially just means building a very unique identity that makes you perceived as being more valuable and interesting in the world so as an artist how does this correlate to Val valuable art

well look at the artists that are selling their work for incredibly high amounts of money in the world there's one artist particularly that I follow that I've followed for a while I hope I say his name right Jeff wire Jeff we oil Works he has about 250 15,000 Instagram followers his paintings are very easily identifiable as his work he does a lot of like bears and um like cowboys and I think his work is stunning and it also sells for a lot of money he has weit lists for his prints he only sells prints once

a year and they sell out he also has people sign up on a weit list if they ever want to own one of his huge Originals these are all his sold originals but here's the thing when you go go to Jeff's page he is on his page he does voiceovers of his videos he has kind of influxed his humor and actually the very first video that got me to follow him was kind of a funny video where he had a funny voiceover so he is not separate from his work you get to see plenty of

him you know what he looks like you know what he sounds like and he's just a unique person next I want to look at Talia Stanton another one of my absolute favorite artists to follow if you don't follow Talia she has 700,000 followers on Instagram her work is absolutely beautiful and she has done an amazingly incredible job not only at finding her style because I've never seen another artist paint like her but she as well if you go to her page she is all over her page with her art her voice is very recognizable if

you actually just played me an audio of her voice I would know right away that that's her I love her accent she is the artist when you purchase her painting means you're purchasing a piece of Talia and I've thought about before like gosh I would love to own a Talia Stanton original why because it would be such an honor to have her original painting that her hands touched that she glazed it's almost like a form of um admiring a celebrity like fandom almost so seeing it from the perspective of the ad admirer the person that

would love to one day own one of those paintings I can recognize right away that it's not the painting alone isolated if I ran across a painting a western style bear painting on Etsy and it wasn't Jeff's um I don't know if I'd be as inclined to own it because it because the entire value of why I would like to own a Jeff wire original I'm probably butchering these people's names but I just read them in my head online own an original by my favorite artist is because it is a piece of my favorite artists

anyway so you get the point oh UPS is here now gosh everybody just wants to interrupt my videos I wonder what I got obviously you want to become a valuable artist how do you do that you're probably wondering I want to do something today I want to start taking action what do I do well a lot of people um I get a lot of artists that follow me and I love clicking on their pages and looking at their profile the UPS man is sometimes even though I see them coming and they knock on the door

and it still startles me I hate when people knock on my door I want you to stop and I want you to think about who's your favorite influencer or your favorite if you hate influencers who's your favorite person just person that you don't know that you only know online why are you why are you so invested in certain people that you don't know in real life is it because there's something about their story that you resonate or identify with is it because their style of talking and speech is something you identify with think about all

the reasons that you get emotionally invested in a person you don't know I would guess that a lot of those things are deeper than surface level I know that my favorite people I follow online share the most unperfect sides of themselves I'm not really invested in the influencers the people online who have perfectly uh perfect perfectly perfect lives you know you get you get attached to realness and authenticity so as an artist how can you give people a glimpse of who you are authentically I think number one if you're not already you should be equally

involved in all the photos on your Instagram right it should be your art and you it should be you holding the art I think you should not just post photos you should post videos of let people see what you look like what you talk like um I think you should share about yourself if you don't have a bio on your website sharing your story and why you create art a lot of people will go to your site interested in possibly purchasing from you and um they want to learn more about you but there's no bio

number four uh goes along with people knowing about you um I I don't know I like to share a little like favorite art quote every time I post a new painting I'll kind of share what the meaning of the painting is for me like this painting is Meaningful for me because it's the feeling of holding your breath underwater like the same feeling as when you are crying and you're like holding your breath and it's like you hear the ringing in your ears I don't know give people a story give people something that connects the painting

to the person behind it let your personality shine through we're artists we're not lawyers we don't have to be professional I mean I understand a little bit of professionality especially if you're trying to get in Galleries and all that stuff but there are no rules to being an artist be F if you're funny be funny if you're shy be shy if you're outgoing and loud and hyper be that like you're you will find the audience for you when you fully embrace your personality and in mesh that kind of in your art like Jeff the guy

who paints the Bears like I said the video that got me to follow him he was so funny it was some joke about painting with his own urine I think which is normally not something I would that's not like normally my type of humor but what I forget what it was even but it's always stuck with me it's been years and I still remember it cuz it was so funny I think another thing that can help you is posting on different Platforms in different ways because um the content that I post here on YouTube is

much more personable and people get to know me better and hear me go on these long tangents and streams of Consciousness it's very much different than just seeing a picture of me holding a painting you know what I mean I'm going to see try to keep it small and and dainty for you guys so I guess my takeaway here is to shift your perspective from I need to sell my art to I need to sell myself I've been selling my art for years and years and years and in the last year the big big change

that happened is I went very very viral for um not just my paintings but I shared a part of myself a part of my story that I had not embraced for many years which was being a Teen Mom and the teacher the art teacher that kind of inspired me to paint because his classroom was my refuge as a team mom and then it turns out that that is what people found the most compelling about me about my story overall anyway and for you it might mean sharing the childhood trauma I don't know that you have

that is the reason that you create if people knew the re do people know the reason you paint cuz us artists we have a reason right I know that each one of you watching this video If you pause and think back to being a kid why did you paint was it your Escape because you didn't have a lot of friends was it your Escape your only quiet space where you could shut out noise from a noisy house full of conflict and art was your your little Dreamscape you could get away from share that share that

with your audience let them know why you're an artist because I think that makes them want to support your art more than anything else I hope this made any kind of sense at all so I don't think I think having a lot of followers could make your art perceived as more valuable but I think the quality of followers matters way more than the quantity because because there are I mean I've seen this happen with so many influencers who had millions of followers and they launched say a clothing line and it failed because they thought they

would sell out because of the fact they had all these followers but these followers really did not have a deep connection to them and so they failed essentially whereas there have been much smaller creators with just thousands who have done the same thing launched a clothing line they have built such a community of people who really care about them and feel connected to them that they would sell that they'd sell out and that's really I think what creating valuable creating yourself an valuable identity as artist comes down to is connection the connection that people feel

with you and with your art and you can't separate the two you want people to be connected to your art you have to let them be connected to you okay you guys want to hear this stupid story my dad just dropped this off it is a bullet shell casing I don't own a single gun I honestly I didn't grow up guns my grandpa was a Vietnam veteran and he had a funeral last summer in a military service where they shot off rifles and all these shell casings fell on the ground and they collected like 16

of them and they handed one out to each of his grandkids as a little momento from the funeral okay and I thought nothing of it I zipped it in the inner inner pocket of my purse and I never thought about it again next thing you know I I go I get married in Mexico last December in Cancun I get into Mexico just fine because I have nothing on me right as I'm coming back through me and my husband are coming back through TSA this alarm goes off and they're like ma'am there's bullets in your bag

and I was like there's not bullets in my bag I promise you but the challenge is they only spoke Spanish I majored in Spanish in college which was my only redeeming factor in that scenario I was explaining in Spanish I don't have bullets it has to be a mistake it has to be there would never ever ever be a bullet in my bag because I don't even own a gun I'm just a girl okay and I just got married they separated me from my husband and they said not leave until the Mexican Army arrives the

Mexican Army arrives they like four soldiers and a TSA agent take me in a questioning room by myself they bring my bag in there they dump out my bag and literally as this fell out it just I remember and in that moment I felt guilty even though I wasn't and I I was in Spanish I was like I am so sorry of course here's how it probably came out Grandpa dead Grandpa dead bullet gift funeral bullet gift honestly um they filmed me they were filming me that whole entire time my husband couldn't come in with

me finally finally they let me go and I was so terrified I was so scared anyway they they took it They confiscated it my dad just brought me an extra so I'm going to go lock this away somewhere very safe not in my purse have a great day guys comment any feedback or questions or if you have any tips for artists trying to increase their pricing drop them in the comments Below have a great day guys [Music]