Art thievery is running rampant in our beautiful online, artistic garden of Eden and sometimes, even worse is siting the wrong artist on the art we post. It is so important to site the original artist when you are posting art onto your tumblr page/blogs/inspiration walls or at least having the source go back to the original artist's page. Also, never post an artist's work onto DeviantArt that isn't your ORIGINAL WORK.

I know it all seems like a lot of work and I know for a fact that a lot of people delete original artist's comments and links to "cut down on tumblr page clutter" But it's the right thing to do and contrary to popular belief (I don't know who in the right mind would think this) but we artists are NOT RICH and sometimes the "tumblr famous"/ "online famous" artists aren't famous anywhere else. I can't speak for all artists, but I do know this though, whether you are a digital or a traditional artist, famous online, famous in museums or not famous at all, whether you have lots of money or are dirt poor, EVERY ARTIST deserves to be sited when their work is being posted up somewhere or admired.

And frankly, if you don't know the original artist, it's not that hard to find out who it is…

Some of you may not know this, but you can actually upload imaged you've found on the internet onto Google/image (just click the camera icon in the text box)

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Take the image you've found on the internet and upload it or simply paste the image's URL in the box provided

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Now here's the fun part! Your detective work comes into play. There are numerous options to finding the ORIGINAL artist you just need to find the method that works best for you in every situation.

I got lucky on this one. The artist's name was right on the front page of the google search, but sometimes you really have to do some detective work and that's OK! It's very much worth it and sometimes it can be kind of fun. There are so many different search options after you've uploaded your image "All Sizes" is  good one because sometimes (NOT ALWAYS) the largest image might point you to the original posting of the image. There's also a "similar images" section that can be pretty helpful for you.

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In this case my artist doesn't have a tumblr blog so you can either just put the artist's name in the description or you can link to their website/artwork homepage/facebook whatever.

I hope I've helped out in someway in my beautiful tumblr community and I hope I'd maybe made it a little more beautiful/thoughtful today.

If you find someone who is wrongly siting an artist, simply message them nicely. They don't know they are doing it. They aren't doing it on purpose. BE NICE.

BUT! If you've found someone who is claiming someone else's work is their own (on tumblr or anywhere else on or off the internet)… well… I don't care if you're nice to them or not. They deserve don't deserve a kind word they need to get kicked in the butt a bit.

Well, I hope I've helped out a little!

Please post this helpful information around and spread the word! If you have anything to add to this feel free to do so as well. Finding the original artist is really not that hard! And even if you have doubts on the artist's honesty it doesn't hurt to just double check! If you're wrong then no harm done, but if you're right you could be helping someone out BIG TIME. I know I would be super grateful if someone caught someone stealing my work.

Have a wonderful day!

-Carli Ihde


Full Article here  [link]