I know I should be flattered (and believe me, I definitely am stoked that people like my work enough to have it permanently put on their bodies), but this entitled mentality of “Well I found it on the Internet, I should be able to use it however I want” is what bothers me. I consistently come across or have other people link me to photos of my work tattooed. Most of whom did not ask for permission and definitely never let me know after the fact. Maybe I’m just overreacting, but I think this is rude for numerous reasons.

1. Most of my pieces were created as birthday gifts for my friends, so it’s kind of rude that people just take them for themselves without even asking.

2. I design for a living (I’m not just an artist that makes art for the sake of art; most everything I create is commissioned), so I’m essentially losing money and business each time someone uses my work without permission. I had someone inquire about using one of my drawings for a tattoo but then they wanted all these changes made to it. I politely told them this is my job and I get paid to design so I wasn’t going to draw a new design for free, but that I’d gladly create a custom design if they were interested in commissioning me. To which they responded, “Okay, I’ll just have the tattoo artist change it then.” I was pretty offended. A lot of thought, time, and effort goes into making and thinking up the ideas for these designs and drawings. So to be willing to pay a (usually shitty) tattoo artist to trace it on your skin yet not be willing to pay or acknowledge the original artist for their time and creativity invested into the actual design is kind of backwards, in my opinion.

However, that’s how the Internet goes. And I’ve just learned to accept that people are going to take my work and use it however they please. It would just be nice to believe that people have the common courtesy to at least ask and/or let me know so I can, at the very, least see a picture of it… :/