THINKSLASH
The business side of making art — free calculators to price your work, quote commissions, set an honest hourly rate, split gallery sales, and run the numbers on a print run, plus plain-English guides to earning a living from your craft.
From pricing a painting and quoting a commission to setting an hourly rate, costing your materials, splitting a gallery sale, and sizing up a print run, ThinkSlash pairs free hands-on calculators with plain-English guides and a museum of the world of art. Make the work — and make it pay.
Art Business & Pricing Calculators
Free tools for the money side of a creative career — artwork pricing, commission pricing, freelance hourly rate, materials cost, gallery splits, and profit-margin & break-even.
Artwork Pricing Calculator
Cost a piece by time or by size, add materials, overhead, and a markup, and reach an asking price you can stand behind
Art Commission Price Calculator
Quote a custom commission from a base rate scaled by complexity, subjects, extra revisions, commercial rights, and rush
Freelance / Studio Hourly Rate
Turn a target income plus overhead and tax into the hourly rate you must charge across the hours you can really bill
Materials Cost per Piece
Enter each consumable and the percentage a run uses to get the true material cost of one piece, for any batch size
Gallery / Commission Split
Split a sale into your take-home and the gallery's cut, and find the retail price that nets your target
Profit Margin & Break-even
Get margin per unit, units-to-break-even, and projected profit on a print run or product line
Pricing Reference Tables
Hourly rate by billable hours, gallery take-home by commission, and edition break-even by margin — computed from the ThinkSlash calculators
Museum of Art
Step into an illustrated museum of the world of art — the media and techniques a picture is made from, the great movements that changed how art was seen, the galleries, museums, and fairs where work meets its public, and the materials and studio behind it all, each in its own gallery. Get to know the world behind the picture: how art is made, shown, and sold.
Tour the museum →From the Journal
Fresh guides on pricing and selling your work, quoting commissions, freelance finances, working with galleries, and building an art business, plus plain-language explainers on the money behind a creative career.
The Order to Run the Numbers In
The six calculators on this site connect: each one's output is the next one's input, and running them in the right order turns a set of guesses into a…
Do Print Runs Actually Make Money?
Prints are usually pitched as the accessible tier below original work, and whether they make money depends on numbers that are easy to get wrong in both…
Comparing Sales Channels Honestly
Selling the same work through several channels is normal, and each channel takes a different cut in a different way. Comparing them properly is a matter of…
The Hours Nobody Pays You For
The three-quarters of a creative practice that is not making things gets very little attention and determines most of whether the practice survives.
Pricing by Time or by Size — and Why It Matters
There are two defensible ways to price a finished piece, they produce different answers, and knowing which you are using is most of the discipline.
The Material Cost Artists Consistently Understate
Materials are the cost artists most consistently understate, because most of them are bought in bulk and used in fractions.
Keep Learning
Plain-language explainers on pricing and selling art, the mechanics of galleries and commissions, the freelance finances of a studio, and how to market a creative practice — everything you need to run the business behind the art.
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