The thing about being an artist is that there’s many ways to enjoy an artwork, even when it’s “just” a two-dimensional piece. Whether that’s an actual painting, a print, merchandise (pins, apparel, etc), digital formats like computer wallpapers or phone backgrounds, using an artwork as an avatar/icon, there’s plenty of ways out there to appreciate and enjoy an artwork. One of the highest bits of artwork appreciation may be when someone decides to take your artwork and permanently affix it to their skin via a tattoo. Right?

In theory, anyway.

There are many complicated things regarding the nature of art and tattooing (or, the art of tattooing). Just one of them is consent.

Let’s back up for a second.

Recently, I have experienced for the second time this year, with the same piece of artwork, someone who has had my artwork permanently tattooed on their body, but never asked if it was OK to do so. Neither person ever reached out to me in any form to ask for permission or even show me the final work. In fact, I just happened to “stumble upon” each one, neither of which appropriated any credit to me as the original artist who conceived, planned, and ultimately did all of the hard work in creating the original piece.

When I was first starting out drawing, I’d have been thrilled to hear someone liked my artwork enough to get it tattooed on themselves. Today, part of me is still thrilled to hear this. Someone liked my work enough that they had it permanently etched onto their body. And I’m not talking about a work that I made specifically for getting tattooed, or a work I personally tattooed on them (I’ve done both!) — this is a work that was quintessentially all me. A work I dreamed up on my own and executed fully utilizing only my own opinions for how it should turn out. There was no client to tell me “make this red” or “I want the face to be bigger”, so in essence, this work was by no means a collaboration of sorts. They liked my unaltered work so much they now carry it around with them everywhere they go.

But the feelings don’t stop there. It’s a complicated mix since people keep getting my works tattooed on them without ever doing me the solid of sending me a heads up. It’s not that it’s difficult to find who drew the artwork; I have given everything I could to make it as easy as possible to discover me as the original artist. I sign all of my works (provided they don’t have the signature cut off), they all have my information in the EXIF data (if it doesn’t get scrubbed), and most of all, a simple reverse image search will find me as the permanent home of the highest quality version of this image on my website and will cite me as the artist – a very purposeful thing I have done as an SEO to ensure that I am easily found given the popularity of an artwork can spin it swiftly far from its initial posting point. Yes, my work shows under certain keywords for the fandom in which it fosters, as any good SEO would want it to do. So, someone liked the work enough to get it tattooed, but didn’t care enough to find out who drew it and ask about using it?

It just feels gross.

Especially in lieu of the all of the additional non-consensual usage of my artwork over this past year with regards to LLMs, it’s leaving me feeling like I’m in a strange place.

My licensing page, which has been up for years, states the following in regards to tattoos:

You may not use any of my illustrations for tattoo purposes without explicit written permission. Some works may be commissioned works that were meant for their commissioners, so if you’d like to use an artwork of mine, or part of an artwork of mine, for a tattoo, please contact me to ask.

For this particular work, I’d have granted permission for tattoos enthusiastically, and I’d have said, “the only thing you need to do for me in return is show me a photo of it when it’s done.” I’d say that’s a very small ask in return, though I would nudge them to also make a print purchase if they don’t have a print already.

I know I am far from the first or last person to have this happen to them. Artists are consistently ripped off because places like Pinterest and Google Image Search are treasure troves for people looking to source tattoo ideas, even if they are not within their own rights to use any of the images there. Most well-known tattoo artists are going to balk at the idea of being a “photocopier” – many tattoo artists will entirely redraw an idea to fit their own style and give you something unique. However, it’s obvious a subset of tattoo artists can and does exist that will simply copy whatever is handed to them. The question is whether or not those tattoo artists questioned if the client had permission from the artist, and the client lied and said yes, or if the tattoo artist didn’t even care to ask.

The last part of this is the way these tattoos are presented to me. When someone gets a tattoo they’re excited about, they of course want to show it off to the world and share it with their friends. If I come in and comment, “hey, this is my artwork and you didn’t get permission from me to have it tattooed” how does that make me look? I have every right to say it, but since the work is now permanently on their body, what can I possibly get out of this besides the satisfaction of letting them know this was not the right way of going about this? Even if I’m right, a comment like that makes me look like I am being an asshole for the sake of being one. It’s not like I can DMCA the artwork off of their skin at this point.

The worst, though, is when it’s presented to you like you should be happy about it. The latest infraction delivered to me enthusiastically photos in a comment after I posted the original work like it is a good thing that this happened and I should be glad and excited for it.

If only it were that simple.

When I’ve turned to simply venting about this in a public space, the general consensus is I should be happy, honored, glad, and I need to shut up about it because: once the art that is mine is anywhere in public it is no longer “mine”, I should be expecting this putting my art anywhere that anyone else can see it, there’s nothing I can do about it, they don’t have to notify me and are not compelled to do so and no one “owes” that to me anyway, they didn’t do it for profit (but they sure had no problem paying a tattoo artist to tattoo my work while conveniently skipping me over for prints), and that if I say anything at all against them I will be ruining their happiness.

This feels a lot similar to how people are treating artists over the AI data scraping, to no one’s surprise. All I’m asking for is a simple ask for permission. Given that the tattoos in question are non transformative, it would be well within my rights to extoll people for licensing fees or take them/their tattoo artists to court for copyright infringement. Obviously I am not going to do this, but the public reaction has certainly taken me aback. But I’m not the only one that has this same reaction when my artwork is used without permission.

Were the works executed well? Yes! Do I think it’s great that this person liked my artwork (even though they had no idea who actually made it) enough to put it on their skin? Absolutely. But the lack of consent for use has left me feeling weird.

I don’t know how else to explain it.

In other news, Kat Von D is in court because she tattooed a photograph of Miles Davis taken by a famous photographer Jeffrey Sedlik without permission, credit, or compensation. We’ll see where this one goes.