← OG Academy · Show your work at its best · 5 min read
Write titles and descriptions that collectors remember
A good description does not explain the painting — it gives someone a reason to keep looking at it.
A title is a door, not a label
"Untitled #14" closes the door. "The last warm hour" opens it. A title does not have to explain anything; it only has to give the viewer somewhere to stand while they look.
Titles also do quiet work in search engines. Someone searching for "abstract seascape blue" will never find "Composition 7", but they may well find "Storm over the shallows".
Write the story only you have
Buyers can see the colours themselves. What they cannot see is that you painted this in the week your mother was ill, that the ochre comes from soil you collected on a walk, or that it took eleven attempts to get the sky right.
Two or three honest sentences beat a paragraph of art-speak. If a phrase could describe any painting by anyone, delete it.
Then give the facts
After the story, be concrete: medium, surface, size, year, whether it is framed, whether it is varnished, whether it comes ready to hang. Collectors are practical people at the moment of buying.
Mentioning materials also helps you be found: "oil on linen", "cold wax", "cyanotype", "stoneware" are all things people actively search for.
Use AI as a first draft, never as the final voice
On Online Gallery you can let AI write a first version from your title and details. Treat it as a colleague who has never seen the work: it gives you structure, you give it truth.
Always rewrite at least one sentence in your own words. That is usually the sentence people remember.
In short
An evocative title, two or three honest sentences that only you could write, then the plain facts: medium, size, year, framed or not.