There was quite a discussion at my Facebook page about what an artist should use as the perfect avatar to represent them. On Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +, this would be your profile picture.

Your perfect avatar should be consistent across all social media sites including the Gravatar you create to attach to your email address. A Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar that is stored at Gravatar.com and will appear when you leave comments on blogs. This article at Wikihow.com shows you how to create a Gravatar account.

Many visual artists feel that people will be prompted to click through because of their art and not what they actually look like. But studies show that people are more likely to remember your name if they can associate it with an image of you. What to do?

After giving this considerable thought and re-reading all the comments on my Facebook post, here are some solutions for the visual artist’s perfect avatar

1. A photograph of you standing in front of your work.
2. A photograph of you actually working on a piece.
3. Photoshop together an image of you and a cropped image of your work.

I chose option 3 for my fine art perfect avatar and for my business avatar, I photo shopped together an image of my smiling face with my logo. It’s a win, win.

My biz avatar

This my perfect avatar for all my social media sites as well as my Gravatar. My smiling face with my logo, which gives me face and brand recognition.

This works well for me because my business name is short and the typography of “artbiz” is also my logo.

My fine art avatar

My work is small so standing with the work or posing holding a piece really did not appeal to me. And since I work in series it’s difficult to chose any one piece for an avatar.

This is what I came up with – my perfect avatar for my fine art. I created detail image slices from two pieces and a slice of me too. Another win, win!

As an artist do you think your perfect avatar should be an image of you or your work?

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