I want to apologize with my lack of commenting on art lately. "She watches 643 people, while 812 people watch her." So... I think that speaks for itself. Sometimes it's hard for me to keep up.

Well it's that time again for an AR Newsletter! This time I want to talk about the importance of watermarking your work.

"No one'd ever steal this crap!", is what a lot of people say. I've noticed that's not the truth. Thieves will take anything they can get their paws on. As far as I know, no one has every stolen MY crap, but I watermark it anyway. You never know. Better safe than sorry! And so what if it's "crap"? It's YOUR crap, isn't it? And you worked hard on it! So don't let someone else run off with it!

"But it's so distracting! It ruins the artwork!", some say. Well, that depends, but 99.9% of the time I never even notice watermarks. Usually they're transparent enough for your eyes to glide over. There are plenty of ways to add them and make them mostly transparent. And would you rather your work be irrevocably stolen than NOT put one on? It doesn't have to be anything complicated, even a simple URL or username is better than nothing.

"It doesn't stop thieves! They'll take it and post it anyway!" True! But, thieves aren't known for being the brightest. Usually they don't have the know-how to remove watermarks. If they post something with your watermark on it, then art theft ninjas like myself will have a MUCH easier time tracking it down. If your username or website address is on it, we can find the original and link back when reporting it as stolen.

"I don't know how to watermark!" Well that's just silly. You can easily do it digitally!

Here's what I do. Since this is my only website, I put this URL on it.

I put the URL somewhere obvious but not totally distracting; somewhere that'd be really difficult or practically impossible to cover up or cut out without looking unnatural. I uploaded it at a smaller rez than what I scanned it as, so that it can't be printed too well. Anyway, that's what I have in mind when I watermark. And if you don't have Photoshop, something like this can be done in MS Paint.

When uploading to DA, there is an option for DA to do it for you! It will put your DA username and site on it along with a DA logo. Couldn't be easier.

There's also many tutorials on how to do it in Photoshop, all you have to do is search!:


Remember! Don't report art thefts if they're miscats. Directly report it as a theft. Do not comment on the fact that it's stolen to the thief. Naturally they're react in a hostile manner, and you never know when you might be wrong. Don't fling accusations or start a flame war, or you might just get yourself banned instead.

I hope this was infomative to you all out there! Let's keep your work safe.