I belong to a few on line groups and over the years I have heard some horror stories about artists getting their images stolen on line.  It almost makes you afraid to post anything these days for fear of being ripped off.  An artist can watermark their name across the whole image and somehow thieves find a way to photo shop it out and display it as their own. (If they only used their powers for good, huh?)  

The way I see it we only have two choices:  One to post and the other not to.  Personally, I like seeing all the beautiful art in the blogosphere and I love sharing my art.  Its scary knowing that there is no full proof way to protect yourself before the art gets stolen.   But we can after… and have been doing something to protect my work if it gets stolen.  Now as far as I know no body wants it, lol….but you never know!

Over the past couple of years I have been embedding stuff  with in my drawings that can’t be cropped out like my signature or a traditional watermark.  I mean it could be anything, a word, a symbol, a tiny picture, just anything your heart desires.  But it has to blend in using the same medium and so discreet that no one knows it is there, but you have to be able to find it.  I use to embed different things, but it was just getting too hard to remember what I did where, so now I use the same thing over and over.  Say, for example you are working in acrylic and you chose a heart to embed in your art.  So you paint a hidden heart in your painting.  Sounds easy, but it is pretty hard to do.  Because although it can’t be found by anyone at the same time it has to be proven intentional when it is found.

The owl above is embedded (and no I won’t tell you what or where it is, lol).  It is completely obvious to me but I welcome you to try and find it.  Enlarge the picture as large as you want…I bet you won’t find it 🙂

I hope you guys find this helpful and that you all have a great weekend and wonderful week!

What do you do to protect your work?

Be Well and Happy!