This post strikes me as odd, or at least, I'm not at all sure why the price of art commissions should be derived by saying "this is what I need to get to survive at 40hrs/week, therefore this is what my art is worth." https://twitter.com/lazuliro/status/1337841561724338176

19th century rail tycoon that I am, I think your art should be priced at whatever the market will bear. And, although this particular slice of the art world is alien to me, it sounds like that might be around $35.

I sold plenty of paintings at levels that would have failed the OP's test, but... let's try to break down some of the reasons that price might have ended up at that level, or that in 2007 you could have gotten a Kendric painting for $175 or whatever.

I'd suspect that a lot of people setting that art price are:

Very young
Students
Doing it as a fun side gig (or)
Semi-accidentally monetizing something they were already doing

(These aren't mutually exclusive, obvs)

So if you're offering a comparable product, I find it extremely unlikely you're going to have much luck tripling your prices relative to a small army of sixteen years olds who just want to draw.

If you're not in one of those categories, though, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get 100/commission (or 1000, or w/e), just... I think you're probably better off viewing that $35 as a subsidy to a continuing learning & reputation building process/

and that process is likely to require infusions of capital from an outside source to reach a self-sustaining level, be that outside source barista job, rich parents, or whatever else.

(The other thing to remember is that making art is [sometimes] fun and [potentially] high status, meaning you're going to get people who are willing to indefinitely subsidize a nonsustainable art career with outside funds, which has a... predictably effect on prices.)