A commissioned pastel portrait, how much would you pay and what amount do you hope it would cost you?

I had a beautiful, custom, graphite portrait done of my pet goose “Marwyn” in 2008 by an artist I found on C’sList.
I gave him my idea and he did a superb job. My gooses head and neck with bamboo stalks and leaves in the background and the chinese characters for “goose.” He is a white chinese swan goose.

I had him frame it with rattan matting and a black, semi gloss laquer frame…all for the bargain price of $250!!!
I cherish it!

It would depend on the quality and the artist. I have spent from hundreds to many thousands for works of art. I’ve only had a couple of pieces commissioned, both by world class artists and those pieces were in the thousands.
If it was by a local county fair blue ribbon winner I might pay a couple hundred bucks.

What @Judi said. It depends on who you ask to do the work for you.
And that depends on how well you resonate with a given artist’s previous work.
I just finished a week-long painting residency. At one guest lecture, the artist said, before she realized how funny it was,
“You can always do mediocre work.” So true! Try to avoid that.

Nothing.

Now, if it were a world class photograph, printed and fixed by archival standards from film on high quality fiber paper I might think about it.

I love digital. But nothing (so far) beats the chemical process.

As an amateur artist myself, I would charge £30 to £80 for a pastel picture in that size range, depending on how long it took me to do it and how good it turned out. Oh and it would have to be an animal. I can’t draw people to save my life. I would expect professionals to charge much more (and be better than me).

@Coloma That sounds really nice. Do you have any pictures of it you could upload?

@uberbatman Crap..tried to resize it to fit my avatar…shit…well…you get the jist…headless goose. lol

I would not commission a portrait in pastels, I’d commission a portrait in oils done by someone passionate and trained for years in the methods and techniques of painting.

I’d expect a full figure piece done from the live model and not photographs, to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $100K.

A ¾ pose always from the live model – maybe $50K plus

^ A live model? If it is a portrait I believe it would be you, unless you were having it done of a spouse or family member. If it were not a beloved family member of spouse would it be worth 100K to you still?

@Hypocrisy_Central I would never pay a dime for a portrait of anyone, including my dog, done from photographs. If I want a great photograph, I’d get a really good artistic photographer to do a self-portrait.

People who work from photographs lack the training and produce flat images that fail to represent the sitter’s moods and mannerisms over a period of time. I can sit and pick through photographs and find a large number that made me look so good I wouldn’t have recognized myself it I didn’t know it was me. But that’s not a real self-portrait of “me.” I’m a much more complex entity.

Yes, if I was determined to have a self-portrait painted and could afford to have it done, I’d pay for a real artist to paint it.