If you’ve ever wondered how reposting hurts artists- yesterday I found a post from 2012ish featuring one of my Sherlock/Doctor Who pieces. That post had 17,604 notes. It wasn’t my post. My post of that art had 0 notes.
Apparently I saw the post once when it was at 6k because an artist I admired reblogged it, but at that stage I was very unwell & not experienced enough with Tumblr to realise what effect it might have.
Looking through the notes now I see that in the six years since then-
- Several people got the design as a tattoo.
- A number liked it enough to want custom designs but didn’t know how to contact me so that’s approximately £300 I didn’t get a chance to earn.
- Someone used that art in the front cover of a comic by accident and while the company fixed it after I contacted them that’s exposure that it’s far too late to capitalise on now.
If you like an artwork that you find off tumblr, please, please I am begging you search for the artist’s name and see if they do actually have a Tumblr you could reblogged from instead. If you’re an artist search your username(s) every so often to see if your work has been taken.
A few hundred quid might not seem like a lot, but that’s a few months of income for me
occasionally do a reverse image search of your art too, to see if it pops up anywhere it shouldn’t
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