Signing your work - Challenge

[Mike McCarty]

This is always an interesting challenge - where to sign your name on your finished work?

With most paintings if you misfire you can just scrub it out and try again. Not so with a painting like this. Once you make your mark you are committed and must follow through.

Where would you sign on this painting?

[Richard Budig]

Mike . . . I'd say your have two basic options: Pick a color/value very close to the color/value of the material on which it is painted so it is unobtrusive, or pick a color/value closer to the color value of her hat, sweater or her flesh tone, making your signature a design element within the painting. Of course, there are other options, but even so, my thought is you either want your signature to be part of the composition/design, or you want it not to stand out. Just my thoughts.

[Mike McCarty]

Richard,

Your response is a bit slippery. If pressed where exactly would you make your mark? The location is enough. Your gallery has called again and they want to hang your painting right by the front door.

This is a contest and the winner (as if there were absolutes here) gets to drive Cynthia's Bentley for a day.

[Richard Budig]

Well . . . one thing I might try is to find some cardboard, or colored paper that is close in color and value to your canvas. Then, I'd do several signatures in various color/values. Then, like a jigsaw puzzle, lay them on the painting and move them around until, like an English Pointer on a quail, something locks in, and you cry out, "Zeus!!! I've got it!!!"

[John Crowther]

I'm with Richard in making it a design element, something I do frequently. As the work becomes increasingly sketchy in the lower third, I personally would make the signature "vertical-ish", moving upward to meet the silouhette line of the breast (as if the contour of the breast were continuing downward. It would be dark enough to be distinct, but light enough to be unobtrusive.

[Mike McCarty]

John,

Thanks for your input. You've offered an actual placement and that's what I was looking for. If I understand you correctly it would look something like this.

My photo editor is not that sophisticated so please make allowances.

I think there is merit to the method that Chris Saper has employed to sign her work, using the simple and short "Saper." I've employed a less manageable moniker: "Mike McCarty '16" to identify.

Maybe there are other ideas that could come foreward ...

[John Crowther]

Mike, I was thinking of something more like this, i.e. as if the signature was a continuation of the contour line. (I've used a "generic" unrecognizable signature to illustrate what I mean. It could go darker or lighter.)