For example, if you post your art online and are more well-known by your screen name than your first and last name, you might want to sign your artwork with your screen name (although you could also use both). Try writing your signature in a lot of different ways—experiment until you find the one you like the best. Remember, this is your brand! You’re going to be using it on every piece of art you create, so it’s important that you like it.
If people see a piece of your art and like it, they can also use your signature to search for your name and find other pieces of art that you’ve created. Typically, you also want to put your signature in the same general location on each piece, so consider the place carefully—you don’t want to be stuck with something that won’t work for every piece you create.
For example, if you have a following on social media, you might decide to make mugs or T-shirts with your signature on them and sell them to your fans. With digital art, it’s fairly easy to create a digital stamp that you can simply add to the piece once it’s finished.
With a painting, you generally want to use the same type of paint that you used in the painting itself. So if you used acrylic paint, you would sign it in acrylic, while you’d sign a watercolor painting using watercolor paint. Choose a color that’s distinct from the colors around it so your signature doesn’t blend into the rest of the art. For some types of art, this just isn’t possible. For example, if you’re a photographer, you would usually sign the photo with a pen or marker.
Since this is the most common place for a signature to be, viewers of your art will automatically look there to find out the artist. If you follow this tradition, people won’t have to work very hard to find your signature. If the piece will be framed, keep the likely thickness of the frame in mind when you sign your piece so your signature won’t be covered up by the frame.
Even for individual works that aren’t in a series, adding the date helps your fans trace your evolution as an artist. Knowing when you finished a piece can also be valuable information that helps sell a work, particularly if the year or date has some special significance.
If you’re selling prints, it’s also good to hand-sign the print on the back as an additional way to identify the piece and add value to it because it’s “signed by the artist. " You might also include additional information about the piece with your signature on the back, such as the mediums used and date of completion.
This is an especially valuable technique for digital artists because a signature in the middle of the work isn’t so easily cropped out. If you’re worried about people stealing your work online and not attributing you as the artist, this can be a good fix.
If you sign your work immediately, it will be more likely to fit with the overall composition of the piece. If you let the piece sit for a little while, on the other hand, you might have trouble getting back into the “zone” you were in when you originally created the work.
