Signing paintings

Csontvary

As I've started improving my work after watching Mark's videos, I still struggle with signing them in a more "painterly" way.  I'm wondering what type of brushes forum members use to sign, and any other suggestions you may have.  Thanks!

(Apologize if this has been covered, but I didn't find anything using the forum search option)

dencal

Csontvary

Use the other end of your paintbrush to sign into wet paint with a dry, contrasting underlayer (Sgraffito).
Practice and develop a standardised, confident signature, appropriate for the canvas size.
Initial and surname with optional year is fine, but so to are initials or a readable logo.
Alternately, a rigger is a useful brush to paint a signature.

Denis

PaulB

Some galleries insist on a full name.

Csontvary

dencal - I will try both options. Thanks.

TedB

While I'm somewhat casual about it since I'm a hack amateur who doesn't sell his works, a friend of mine had a successful artist friend die unexpecantly at a young age leaving his widow a studio filled with paintings and watercolors ...all unsigned.   No galley or collector will touch them.  Instead of a rich catalogue to support his widow, she has several dumpsters of waste as she faces hardship.  Even if he had just initialed them they would have remained marketable.

I have three-levels of authorship;
- The good stuff gets a signature and the date.  Typically the year unless it's part of an en plein air series that might get the day or just month since it's part of a grouping.
- Studies, and decent sketches on loose-paper, get initials.  Maybe the year sometimes just on the back.
- The stuff that might be of-interest later get a stamp of my initials I carved in the end of an eraser; studies, free sketches, etc....  Though I doubt anyone will ever care, but stranger things happen.  Periodically when I'm straightening-up a make stack and stamp-away.
...Everything else is just trash that hasn't made it way into the kerb-side bin yet.

For bound sketchbooks I don't do much other than the occasional dated page.  The frontpiece page I've already signed with contact info if I lose it.  If I take a page out, then it gets treated as-above.

The one caveat l'd offer is to sign or initial in the same media as the work.  I have heard of competition idiots declining or excluding watercolors as "mixed media" due to an ink signature.  They rank on the Circles of Hell with the absurdists who differentiate "transparent" watercolor from watercolor-and-gouache.