"So let me share the following with you...
- A single 200mm tube of Winsor & Newton cadmium yellow oil paint costs $51.89 at a mail order discount store. List price is almost $90. A single brush can cost anything from $3 up to $100. A good-sized professional oil painting may have $200, or more, in materials tied up in it.
- A pack of Premium Glossy Photo Paper in 13x19 costs $57 at the online Epson store; and you need a pro-level printer.
- Commercial art galleries will take between 40 and 60 percent of the retail price of an artwork (depending on the artist’s popularity and demonstrated ability to sell.)
- In 2005 (the last year for which I could find numbers) there were an estimated 172,000 book titles published in the United States—and in Great Britain, 206,000 titles.
- Artists and writers need to eat.
This scattershot summary—you can extend it as far as you wish—is meant to demonstrate several things: being an artist is not cheap; the competition is extreme; earning a decent income is brutally difficult..."
Full article here.