Try This at Home:
Make three artworks in your signature style using materials you intend to be working with for the foreseeable future. If everything you make is on canvas, use three canvasses, if you vary surfaces a lot between paper, panel, etc., make three of each.
Make each surface 12 inches by 12 inches. 1 square foot.
Make three artworks. Detail the cost of the surface, the cost of every material used (if you use 1/4 of a $10 tube of paint, that is $2.50 added to the materials cost). Keep track of the time spent working on the making of the artwork.
When you are finished with the artwork, subtract the time spent analyzing the artwork and/or fussing needlessly over things. Be frickin’ honest here. If you completely messed up the artwork, start the time clock back at the beginning, but keep in any materials cost that do end up adding to the finished piece.
Add up your materials cost. Add up your labor hours and multiply by the federal minimum wage (or state wage if your state demands a higher minimum). Add these two together.
Average out the costs over the three artworks. Try to determine the differences in your artwork and processes if one or more of the artworks is radically different in price – this is especially important if the artwork is indistinguishable from the others in terms of superficial characteristics associated with appearance.
When you have arrived at the cost, know then that this is what a square foot of your artwork costs to produce. This is your basement. You can never go below this cost in pricing what YOU get for an artwork. If you make a 24 x 24 artwork, the price should be quadruple this base price. And so on.
This is not a gallery price, this is your cut from the sale price.
If you are using cheap shit materials, your work MUST be priced as the cheap shit it is.
Until you have sold a thousand dollars of art retail, you must work for the minimum wage, if only to assure that your art is competitively priced. Add 25 cents an hour to your labor cost for every thousand dollars that you reap from the sales of your artworks. At $10,000 of sales, give yourself a dollar an hour raise.