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Hey guys and gals

I've recently started doing commission painting, but my only job so far has been paid with trading goods, not money. So now I'm still wondering about how to price my work.

Can you help me with that? How much should I ask for, say, a painted ork boy? What'd be a fair price for somethin like these?:






Thanks in advance!

The basic rule is charge what you can for what you do!

In terms of market placement and pitching competitively, these examples are pretty low-to-basic tabletop standard, you're unlikely to be able to attract much business unless you're willing to paint 20 boys, to that standard for less than about £60 total, including assembly.

The low end of the market is pretty well covered, including by studios in countries with very low running / living costs. This drives the going price down hugely.

winterdyne wrote:The basic rule is charge what you can for what you do!

In terms of market placement and pitching competitively, these examples are pretty low-to-basic tabletop standard, you're unlikely to be able to attract much business unless you're willing to paint 20 boys, to that standard for less than about £60 total, including assembly.

The low end of the market is pretty well covered, including by studios in countries with very low running / living costs. This drives the going price down hugely.

Pretty much this, I would say a tad more than that though.
England is a expensive place to live and commision painting at this level isn't a job. Perhaps some holiday money though

Anyway if you were GD standard then perhaps a living could be made, or if you worked for GW in EM...

Stick with the day job would be my advice, but keep painting on the side for extra cash.

Thanks for the replys guys!
Well, I don't want to turn this into a job, just a way to pay for my hobby stuff....
Only three pounds? That'd not be worth it really.... at what point are paintjobs good enough to pay better than that? Have any examples?

Also, are there people who would pay for converting?

The rates I charge:
Basic marines like this:

Come in at about £12.50 each.

Wow, that's an oversaturated image. :-/ They're not quite that harsh in the flesh.

Slightly more complex schemes like this:


Put the cost up to around £15 per mini.

Character level work:


You're looking about £60 per mini, starting cost.

Finally competition level work:


You're looking at a bare starting figure of AT LEAST £150 for a single 28mm miniature. Monsters etc are a lot, lot more.


Conversions etc are extra, depending on the work.

Yeah, people pay for conversion / sculpt work, but again you need to be good. Kitbashes generally don't fit a client's 'vision'; that is the client won't often suggest it, they'll just describe what they want - it's up to you to figure out if a kitbash is doable or not.

Edit: Digging in the OP's gallery, there's a shot of 5 Nobs. Much better picture than those in this thread - those are looking close to £10 per mini sort of standard, I think. It's quite possible photography is letting you down a little.

Yeah, I belive my pics are letting me down a lot. Your pics are amazing! But I can easily reach the level of your basic marines, and I guess I could do the scouts level of paintjob as well. The other ones.... well, I'm going to learn that!
Here are some other pics of my models (the base is done by now):

And plasticard work, not just kitbash. The bike is still very much WIP, but you get an idea.....

I think it would be easier to judge your work if you showed more of a variety of figures, not just orks.
just my 2 pence

The buggy / chopper is a good start, but pull the wheels off, buy a circle cutter and redo the insides. Looks sloppy, and not in a good, orky way.

Get on the photography. If you can pull off work to the standard you're saying, then you need to be able to show it. Get a good daylight lamp, a sheet of gradient paper
(http:www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/images/commissions/backsheet_light.jpg or http:www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/images/commissions/backsheet_light_wide.jpg) and a tripod. Those three things will make for MUCH better photos. Have the light above and slightly in front of the mini. Don't worry about the mini filling the whole frame of the shot, it just needs to be in focus, cropping the image does the rest.

Thanks both of you!
@Rayvon: yeah good point.I do have more things to show, but the pics currently available to me are not very good... I'll be home in germany in two days though, I can take more pics then...

@winterdyne: Thanks for the photography infos. I don't know why I haven't bothered to take proper pics yet, my parents are photographers. I probably didn't really think about the importance of good shots.
Well, it shouldn't be hard to improve my image quality, they can teach me....

btw what's a circle cutter?

A bit like a compass, but with a knife blade instead of a pencil lead. Super useful for wheels, shields, anything with a circular form or arc. A vernier caliper is also useful to measure diameters etc.

I'll look around my local store, might find a circ. cutter...

I'll bump this thread once I get home and have some good pics to show. Thank you very much for your help so far!

I always take my hat off to the guys who can do commission painting and make it worthwhile. You have to be able to paint extremely well to actually make money off it, but on the flip side you'd have to be pumping out competition standard models almost daily to make it worth doing.

That model winterdyne posted as being worth at least 150 pounds looks incredible, even if you worked on it full time it would take a lot of skill and a few days if not weeks to do, certainly worth more time and effort to the creator than 150 pounds!

You'd certainly have to do it for the love of it before anything else.