Sadly today’s article is a more serious one but one I must address. I’m sure anyone who has ever created anything themselves will appreciate the amount of work that goes into the creating process.As an illustrator my work requires planning, sketching, creating the actual illustration then it takes time to either license my products or produce my own products. Recently I thought I would do a google search and see how my work is showing on google.

I immediately found two of my designs had been stolen by copyright thiefs. The first was my Germany map. A shop on Redbubble called Leoname (https://www.redbubble.com/people/leoname) had stolen my Germany map, complete with watermarks, and sold this on numerous products. What an absolute scumbag.

Another of my illustrations, this time my Blue Tits bird illustration, had been stolen by a fabric maker in Brazil called Renata Blanco Tecidos. She had copied my Blue Tits bird illustration, changed the colours then printed it on fabrics she produced. Again, another total scumbag. The screenshot below shows my product on her website.

At the time of writing this, Leoname has removed the work from his Redbubble page (thanks Redbubble). I discovered Renata’s website is hosted by Amazon so I’ve issued a copyright takedown notice with them. Let’s see what happens.

So what’s the moral of this article. First of all, as an artist, it’s absolutely imperative you watermark all of your work. All of my map products, at least, have multiple watermarks on them which would be a massive pain to remove. I’m now in the process of adding watermarks to any images on my website that don’t have them (well, my husband is 🙂 ). Secondly, for lack of another term, some people are just utter shits. I regularly meet more and more really lovely people but I’m finding more and more people, as I get older, are becoming increasingly selfish and greedy. Leoname and Renata are both of these.

This is my original Blue Tit bird illustration

Notice the similarities. This is clearly my image but the colour has been changed.