Art Inventory

How to keep an inventory of your art. The first thing I do is keep track of the paint I use in each painting. The reason I do this is so I know what colors to use if I ever have to match the paint. I use a cheap watercolor or drawing book as my pallet for this. In the book I put the size, the year and month I start working on the painting. When I finish the painting I put the month, year and name the painting. If I don't name the painting at that time I usually forget what I would have called it later. At some point during the creation of the painting I put an inventory number on the back of the painting and on its page in the pallet book. As I add new paint to the pallet I write the name of the color and the company at the end of my work session. This is how I know exactly what color was used, no need to guess. When the painting is finished I go to my inventory spreadsheet with the inventory number and name, there I add this information along with size, year, media, genre, location and calculate the price (formula discussed in Pricing without emotion, an earlier post). The painting is photograph, no signature, the jpeg is saved on my computer in a file depending on whether it is canvas, paper, board or wood. When the painting is completed and ready for exhibition or sale, I tag the back with the same information including the number. This way I can always identify the painting, I use to remember all of their names but not anymore. By the way the number is a combination of a letter and a 3 digit number followed by another letter (no letter means canvas, B means board, P means paper.) the letter indicates the year the painting was created, I figure that when I get to Z, I'll start with AA. The number indicates the number of paintings completed that year. For instance, H10, this year I am using H which is 2009, 10 is the tenth painting completed this year and no letter on the end means canvas.