Friday, November 21, 2014

I have a problem with a photo thief

Not my typical blog post, obviously, but I feel I need to warn people and to vent a little bit.  From time to time, I search my name on Google; just curiosity, just to see if I'm even a bit relevant in the big wide cyber world -- and I'm usually kind of okay with my level of relevancy.  However, I did such a search a few days ago and was upset at what I found:  Several pages into my "Dottie Dracos" search was a site that said something about Dottie Dracos Art, and I knew it wasn't someplace I had listed any of my work.  So I clicked on the site, and there were what appeared to be listings of my work.  I clicked on one of my photos of MY artwork, and I was taken to some pornographic images and videos.  I am appalled!

I did a little research online; and from what I can learn, there's probably nothing I can do to stop this outright theft -- and embarrassing theft at that!!  I do not support pornography in any sense at all.  I find it reprehensible on so many levels that it would take me weeks to even begin to scratch the surface of my loathing for such despicable exploitation of all that is (or ought to be) decent in this world.

I generally just create my posts of my artwork and move on to my next painting and hope that from time to time, someone will be interested in some of my artwork and buy a painting or a print.  But this time, I'm asking if any of you who read my blog if you know of anything I can do to stop these people (and I realize it's probably nothing I can do); or if I can't stop them, things I can do -- or stop doing -- to prevent their stealing and illegally using my images.  Is it because I post my images on this blog, on Pinterest, on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook?  How about my posting my artwork for sale in such places as Etsy and Fine Art America, where they're supposedly safe?  And I store my artwork in cloud accounts; can it be stolen from those, even though they're supposedly for my eyes and use only??

I know -- because I've tried it -- that one can steal the small files I upload to, say, Etsy, etc., but I thought my large images were safe.  And maybe that's what these people used, were the small images that anyone low enough to want to steal my artwork could easily take.  And I think the photos I saw on this site were this smallish size, by the way, although I didn't do any thorough checking to see.  

So if you have any advice on what I might do, please let me know.  And, please, if you're trying to sell me something to stop the theft/piracy/whatever-it's-called, don't bother writing.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

An absolutely beautiful Holstein cow painting I just finished

Holstein Cow Lying in Field Original Acrylic Painting 16x20x0.75"
I have been working on this girl fairly steadily - and lovingly for a change - since I was in France, where I roughed her in.  But today, I finally finished her.  She was such a great pleasure to paint; every paint stroke was well thought out and deliberate.  I am quite proud of her and hope I can continue to work in such a comfortable and relaxed manner.  (Well, I can't call this painting "work." It was too much fun.)

Hope you like her.  I'm still on a farm animal kick, so I'll be adding even more new paintings over the next couple of months.

And I also let in a couple of custom paintings to regular, long-term customers, so I'll be showing those, too, in the next few weeks.