How to sign a painting, drawing or fine art print

Last week I published a new page "How to sign a painting, drawing or fine art print" on this website. Importantly, it covers how a signature can affect the marketing and selling of your art - and what factors you should consider before signing your art.

The NEW PAGE covers:

• Pros and Cons of signing your art
• Initials, surname or change your name?
• Monograms, initialed signatures & motifs

HOW TO SIGN

• TIPS: How to sign your art
• How to sign:
  • an oil painting
  • a dipytch/triptych
  • a watercolour painting
  • a pastel artwork
  • a drawing
  • a fine art print (limited edition)
  • a copy of another artwork
• Signature Membership (of an Art Society)

This is the third reincarnation of this page which started off some years ago and has been on two other websites where I ran polls which asked people how they signed their art. Those polls received over 2,000 responses but I've had to restart the polls on this website - and below you can see some of the results from previous polls. 

The charts below cover:

• size and location of the signature
• whether you plan your signature in advance
• whether or not to date your artwork

Size and location of the signature: 75% of the 2,444 people who voted on the first poll made an effort to make sure their signature was readable and was also somewhere where you might expect to look for it. The most traditional place for a signature is one of the bottom corners with bottom right being the most favoured - but there is no rule about this. A signature can be easily found without being in a traditional place or obvious when you first look at an artwork.  In general, I caution against loud and ostentatious signatures as you instantly eliminate a number of potential buyers with signatures which overwhelm an artwork.

Size and location of an artist's signature

Planning the signature: More than half the artists who responded to the polls thought about their signature when planning the artwork. Other were more spontaneous - or only signed when in the mood or remembered.

Planning a signature on an artwork when planning an artwork

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Dating the artwork: Dates are very often associated and aligned with signatures - so it seemed sensible to also ask about dating. As you can see, opinions on dating are much more mixed.

Dating an artwork

You can read a lot more about signing an artwork - and the impact this has on its value and both contemporary art markets and over time - if you study the new page about How to sign a painting, drawing or fine art print.