Art Blog - ArtId

Describing art for the internet requires artists to shift gears and think much differently about the word "description".

In gallery speak, a "description" is "watercolor painting of my grandmothers garden where I loved to play as a child." In internet speak the same painting has to read "original watercolor painting, of garden in summer with purple and yellow flowers and a white chair." Then, you add "painting of my grandmothers garden where I loved to play as a child."

Put The Story In A Blog Better yet, the story of the painting, it's whereabouts and it's meaning to you, the artist, is a perfect entry for a blog. A blog is the place where you start a conversation with your buyer, let them get to know a little about your work and as much about you as you want to divulge. Telling a story, gives the reader something of interest that may attract them even more to the art. In your Member mode when you upload images we've added "Blog about this art" to make it easier.

Tags Descriptions on the internet need to contain keywords or "tags". Put yourself in the position of someone searching for art. What are they going to put in as search terms? "painting, horizontal, watercolor, garden, yellow flowers" because that is what they are looking for. If your description contains those words then, the search engine findings will include you. The same is true for all media, sculpture, jewelry, prints etc. Words like I, my, and, the, with don't qualify as a tag.

Titles The same is true for artwork titles. Traditionally artists have named pieces "Motif #3", "Beyond Gratitude", or "Three Red" and that's fine, but understand, it will not help in the search. "Untitled" is exactly that, you will end up in the sea, make that the universe, of work titled "Untitled". Titles like "Blue Nude", "Urban Landscape in the Rain" or "Sunflowers" now, we're getting somewhere. It's alright to name a painting "Sunflowers" and in the description repeat "blue vase with three sunflowers". You ask, "There is a picture of it right there, why do I have to keep saying sunflowers when it's so obvious?" Remember this, search engines work with words not pictures. Describe you art as if there were no picture there. It's counter intuitive but we're talking marketing and technology here, not creativity. If you do not describe your work properly for the internet, don't use good tags or titles, you are sabotaging yourself and no amount of marketing on your part or ours is going to get traffic to your site.

Keep it Short Keep your tags to less than ten really succinct words, especially for eBay. Learning to speak internet will greatly increase your chances of exposure and sales.

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