The right title will help you to sell a painting....or to find it again on your computer. Here are some practical tips for inventing the perfect title for your painting.
1. Title it something. "Untitled" is a title. It's fine if you have one painting called "Untitled," but it's a headache for art historians or grandchildren who have to agree whether to call them Untitled 1, Untitled 2, etc. Above are some of the images that come up when you search for Picasso's untitled paintings.
2. Title everything you do, if for no other reason than so you can find it again on your computer. Come up with a regime for titling minor works, so that, for example, "Dead Neon.PA.jpg" means the plein air sketch of the neon sign, while "Dead Neon.LO.jpg" is the preliminary layout.
3. Write the title on the work. Write it as soon as you know it at the edge of a drawing, on the back of the illustration board, or on the stretcher bar of the painting. Also write the title in a database that you can find easily. That way if it comes up for auction someday, you piece won't be forced to live under a dishwater-dull descriptive title such as "Man Kneeling before Blonde Woman."
4. Let the file name reflect the variants. My system is to use caps for a big file shot by a professional photographer, such as "DESERT_CROSSING.JPG". If it's a large file I shot myself with my good camera, I call it "Desert_Crossing.LG.jpg." If I shot it with my so-so camera, I call it "Desert_Crossing.lg.jpg." If I have vignetted it to white in Photoshop, I call it "Desert_Crossing.LG.WT.jpg," etc.
5. Try not to start with articles, such as "The" and "An." This is simply because you can find it easier in an alphabetized computer folder. "Ferry Crossing" works just as well as "The Ferry Crossing," and it's filed under "F."
6. Be consistent with names. And here I confess I have failed to follow my own advice and have lived to regret it. I tend to make up new names if I am too lazy to find the painting and see what I called it last time. I have called one painting "Rainbow Bridge" in one exhibit and "Gideon's Bridge" in a book. Unfortunately, both names will follow that image forever.
7. Sometimes you may want multiple names. For example, if I paint a cover for a paperback book and the book title does not suit the painting, I rename the painting. So the cover painting for "Michaelmas" I know as "Hologram." Still, both names will always chase that painting.
8. Use an abstract or conceptual title only if you can remember it. For some paintings, an abstract or conceptual title can work well, such as "Fragments of Infinity", "Whispers of Eternity", "The Geometry of Dreams", "Echoes in the Void", "Remnants of a Forgotten Age", or "Secrets of the Ancients".
9. Make sure you recognize the piece from the title. I try to use a title that is my mental shorthand for the piece, and I try to keep it as short as possible. That's why I usually avoid poetic titles. I called one painting "Last Gift of the Sun," and I can never remember which of the sunset paintings that was.
10. If in doubt, just be specific. If it's a plein air study of a street scene, I like to use the street names, such as "LaSalle and Notre Dame." If it's a sketchbook study and there are written notes beneath the image, let those notes become the title. Richard Estes titled his paintings with a random word that appeared inside the image. Plein-air painters may want to tie the image to the date or the GPS coordinates.
11. If you run out of ideas, consider letting your friends or your spouse generate titles. Betsy Wyeth came up with many of Andrew Wyeth's great titles. Reader Diana said, "A friend of mine took one look at a new landscape of mine and exclaimed "OMG Alice in Wonderland Goes Farming." I used the title, and it sold within 24 hours of being hung. I will always wonder if the title wasn't hugely responsible for the sale..."
Do any of these methos resonate with you? Do you have additional tips? Let me know in the comments.
I liked the comments about friends and acquaintance exclaiming upon 1rst seeing a finished work. Once I painted a delft vase with mandarines (blue & orange) and when my husband saw it he said "it looks imposing like a colonel with its broad shoulders". So I named the still life "the colonel" and yes I used the article "the" to emphasize we're talking about that particular, important character in my little story.
Also, when naming files (generally, not just for art) think about how you will sort them in the future. Yes, the words "the" and "a" are usually redundant (except as noted by Tundra Swan) but also think about how you would naturally group these items. Would you ever want to sort them by something within the title? If so, think about using that first.