I saw this repost earlier today and it shattered my heart.
Wonder how long it will take for some champion anon to chime in with “well you should be lucky anyone even cares about ur art” or “its on the internet so it’ll be reposted, deal with it”.
No.
There is no excuse for reposting art and it is perfectly reasonable for an artist to want credit, whether they draw fanart, sketches, official art, commercial art, art you like, art you don’t like, photos, cosplay, writing, literally anything.
Stop reposting art, please.
I am begging you. Stop.
Seriously. For most artists, posting their art online leads to freelance opportunities. If you don’t credit the artist how are they supposed to get those opportunities to further develop their art and make money.
Plus I don’t know if this is the case with every artist but most artists like to see the feedback their getting for their art whether it’s positive or a critique. And they enjoy getting acknowledged for the hard work they’ve put into that piece.
Please always tag any art you post!
Don’t just tag it though actually source it in the post description.
Tagging works for the original post itself, but once anyone happens to reblog it, they’re not going to see the tag unless they put it there themself
Honestly don’t even repost art?? Especially on tumblr where you can just reblog from the source. It’s unnecessary, and doesn’t really do the artist as much justice as even sourcing it would do.
DON’T. REPOST. ART.
I know that sometimes, this is a result of the post being seen on tumblr, and someone thinks “I want to show this to facebook!” so they repost it on fb. Then someone sees it on facebook who is unaware of the original tumblr post, and reposts it on tumblr. I get that this happens, and it’s out of enthusiasm for the art and that’s part of how things go viral, which is what we want. Google reverse image search is a polite thing to do when reposting.
However, artists, do make sure to always put your name and/or website on your work, even if it’s just a doodle. (Everything of mine that’s ever gone viral has been doodles I made in under an hour.) The way most people use the internet is very casual, a wind-down, and it’s focused more on “Hey, this is funny, I want to show this to my friend,” rather than “I need to support this artist.” It’s not that they want to sabotage you, it’s that it really is our job to make it easy for people to find us when our work spreads beyond where we put it. We want our stuff to go viral and get out in the world, but the nature of that means we give up some control. We need to be the ones to put down the breadcrumbs for people to find their way back to us. Put your name clearly on the work. Doesn’t have to be a watermark, but something, anything to help people find you.
