Some of them don't need to sign at all. They may already have a unique art design and the visuals sort of speak for themselves.

this only works if you KNOW who made this or that piece of art. sometimes there might be concept art that falls out of the frame, y'know? I have ancient files of art that has never been signed and after ten or fifteen years there is a slim chance I'll ever find out who made it... because it's not signed.

Not that having them signed always helps. I have some art that is signed, but figuring out whose sig that was is a quest on its own...

of course, you get extra points if the username or artist's pen name doesn't match the signature. I'm guilty of that, too...

At the very least, usernames and stuff are googlable. Try to figure it out when it's some scrawl, monogram or the like...

I went and hand-copied the signatures and stuff I could identify, back when many artists put their info into the scanned image. I should still have the list somewhere.

I have a spreadsheet of all the art I got. Then again, it is only helpful when it's something that IS in there. Then you stumble onto some picture you like somewhere, and try to figure out the artist...
... And then lots of artists have changed names, deleted their accounts or art, etc...

yeah, that doesn't help either.

"yay, I found that artist's site I've been looking for so long... damn, they haven't been active in years. :("

1: Not really the case anymore. In the 90's you could often tell who made what based on style largely because there were maybe ~100-200 well-known furry artists. The fandom has gotten slightly larger since then.

2: Imagine trying to call everyone by their facial features instead of names. Now remove that identifier two steps further by calling them by something intangible with infinite variations within its scope.

Outside of a hivemind, names serve a somewhat important purpose. If you don't want to be 'that anonymous guy who does X that looks like Y', then it's a good idea to put your name—not some stupid symbol or incomprehensible monogram—on your work. Relying on popularity to achieve popularity only works if you're already popular.

I don't sign my work. Just because it takes too long.

...Was that sarcasm? It's hard to be sure, these days.

I tried that once and pretty much forgotten it after a few days. And given how pretty much no one really knows of me, signing my name is of no real detriment to me.

Ooh I like your art :3 *watch*

Well... that was unexpected. Not unappreciated, though.

Also: signature is present but it's incomprehensible or a textless logo :)

Yeah, what the Grizzly Guy said, I tend to really sign the commission work I do but the daily doodles apparently folks recognize my style.

Yeah some styles are so unique, they don’t need a signature for people to know who it did it.
You, Driprat, Catmonkshiro, Flinters, RGibson, and a few others.

Yeah, but if you don't already know the artists.... I think that's Dutch's point here.. xD;

Yeah, if the artist is unfamiliar, it behooves them to keep their signature so folks will know where to look for more of their stuff.

Thankfully, your art is both a very recognizeable unique style, AND has your siggy clearly placed! :3

That might work until someone copies their style.

I sign my work all the time 'v'

Could be worse. Could be ginormous watermarks.

the watermark IS the art.

In some cases...the lousier the art, the bigger the watermark.

what art? XD

Yes sign it so I know who to commission

Whenever I'm doing mine, the worry of throwing off the composition or blocking out some key detail is in the back of my head.

Used to, but then I realized as a mid tier artist I'm not exactly at massive risk of art theft

I just wanna know who it was who drew it in case I'm seeing their stuff for the first time.

Once had an artist I collab'd with tell me they simply didn't feel like it.

Kind of annoyed me/offended me as someone who's very protective of the time I spent on my work, and had my stuff traced over/stolen. It wouldn't matter if my art was good or bad, I'd rather have people trace it back to me so I can prove I did it.

This has also been a pet peeve of mine for decades.

Strangers seeing someone's art for the first time have no idea who the artist is!

Because there are users who say that watermarks are annoying. Not even just the fact people on deviantart used all those transparent watermarks, just watermarks in general in the most extreme way.

Either that or they're lazy.

I've went back and forth on signing. Mostly just not remembering to sign. I have some thoughts on it. The folks who might trace any of my stuff. ""Why thank you"". Past that my style is identafiable so eh.

But good point

Well, there's always reverse image searches. It's a little trouble, but it usually works.

I have tall folders of old art where it never worked. mainly because every re-upload somewhere else changes the file name and some details behind it, so even google can't help you there at some point. even if the art is signed, if you don't know what it means, or what name is behind it... how do you establish search parameters?

File names don't matter, since it's based on the images. Some older stuff or stuff that hasn't ever been posted is not going to show up, though. I've generally had pretty good luck, but it's by no means 100%.

I guess the images I have used to be posted in newsgroups. I am not familiar with how those work, I didn't have internet at home until 2005... and this is germany, not some backwater planet. XD

The most useful ones are probably Google and e621. There are others.

Old stuff from newsgroups are less likely to be widely posted, if at all, and harder to track down.

I'd suggest posting them on e6, maybe with a note saying that you're looking for the artist, and maybe someone will be able to attribute them. You'd be doing furry art history a favor.

sounds like a plan. maybe when I find time, as soon as my life becomes not as interesting as it is right now.

Ah yes, "Interesting".

We be living in some "Interesting" times, indeed. Good luck!

I never really got into the habit, especially not for sketches, though several old finished ones have one. I don't really know.

Cause I forget all dang time!

I do like when there are signatures. Especially on art from artists I haven't familiarized with their style yet.

Or in some cases artists who have a similar style to another artist because that's who they primarily learned to art from.

They watched too much of The 2006 movie (The Da Vinci Code) They wanted their art to be a mystery XD

I sign my stuff with my RL name, because I started that before I got my nickname established... and never felt like changing.

now, 25 years later, name and fursona and many other things are still the same.

The signature often detracts from the work, so the artist won't sign it.

You can be clever with where you put the signature. Or make the name small enough to where it won't be noticeable.

Some artists will incorporate the sig into the image, such as in a pattern on a wall or in a tapestry.

I don't get it ether but I always sign my work.

My monogram signature looks recognizable on every font

Or even if they do sign their work it's so stylized that you can't read it!

early 2000's someone gave me a big stack of art taken from newsgroups and other internet places, mostly unsorted. many file names did have a name to them, so I started to sort through them. and since the art style might shift over the years I started to write down the names and add the signatures to them I could find and identify. so later I could at least try to say who made what.

(I still have those lists, so if you need them to identify something ancient they might be helpful.)

Good on you for archiving this stuff. Post it to e6 or some such to more fully benefit everyone. Such archives need to be widely accessible to have much value.

Admittedly I don't sign my art. I think it's because I do everything digitally (via my phone) now, but longs ago when everything I posted was traditional (long before FA that is) I used to sign.

I sign all of mine. Sometimes I even embed my nick and gallery url in the jpg metadata.

Lately I've considered surreptitiously modifying the signatures on my early pics from my rl name to my nick, since the latter is better known.


(and current day internet is brimming with kooks <casts glance of suspicion at twitter>)

I've made a few pictures that were either too ugly or just not something I want to be associated with, and would rather not be known for them, so don't put a name on them.
I guess honestly some of my pieces that I am somewhat proud of I haven't signed either because I don't think my signature is valuable, and I really haven't made it as an artist.

I tend not to sign my art. When I do, I feel like it kind of distracts from the image, though other artists incorporate the signature just fine. A couple times, I did sign my art "R. Vitoux," because in-universe, it was supposed to have been drawn by my artist beaver, Remi Vitoux.

I used to do it a lot few years back. I stopped doing it mostly because i just didn't feel it was worth it. Lot of the "art" i draw is silly fetish fuel anyway. I do the stuff i do mostly for fun, and not planning on turning it into business so that's another. I'm not too concerned about exposure either, infact i rather prefer having that extra thin layer of privacy especially in this day and age where it's a norm to share your whole life online and be spamming on multiple platforms. I like it that people go look around a little, doing some research. In a weird way i find it moving that someone liked my art so much that they went through the trouble to find out more where it's coming from.

I suppose in short; i don't care xD. Maybe i'll do it again sometime if i happen to be in the mood!

My art sucks, so I'm embarrassed to put my name on it ( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

I rarely find art there that's not signed. Well, sometimes it could be the art has been "borrowed" by someone else who cropped out the original signature. I usually don't sign my comic, because each episode is made of a few pages, and adding a signature to each one would look disruptive to the flow of the story, but I always sign individual drawings.

Now some artists go the opposite way and have an elaborate signature that takes like one-third of the image ( ¬ (oo) ¬ )

i sometimes forget

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