I painted these artworks two years ago with the intent of practicing environments and also releasing them for personal use under creative commons: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Essentially it means you can use it for personal purposes such as invitation cards, backgrounds to an artwork, wallpapers, icons etc under the condition I am given credit for having created the work. For using it as part of another artwork you create, this would mean including my name (Spudfuzz) and a link to my account (Spudfuzz @ Instagram is preferred) stating that I am the artist of the background in your artwork description. It does not allow for profiting off of the artwork. For example if you were take a commission and then use the artwork as the background in that commission, that would not be allowed.

I'm all for artists being able to share their work more and open it up more to the public, however what I find is their biggest hesitation is that no one really shows them respect even when doing simple things like reblogging. People will crop out or even edit out signatures and say stuff like "credit to the artist" so that they can't be found and the uploader takes all the praise for the work. There's a significant lack of trust among artists and their audience, which I completely understand why it's there. For me I'm willing to go to lengths of opening up some of my work for personal use, however I would need enough people properly using it within those terms before I even really feel like I would allow them to make money from it. Considering I financially struggle so much already, it would feel like a slap in the face given that I was the one who did the work.

I think it's fairly naive to just expect artists to release their work to public domain fully. However I have let some people do things with my art that most artists don't because they contacted me and asked politely, fully disclosing their intentions. That little show of respect is huge for me, because it means they understood that I might say 'no', and didn't just run around behind my back and do it anyway. (Which is theft, by law.)

If you use my art for things like icons or birthday cards or whatever, I just ask that you truthfully state who made the work if someone asks where it came from. And if you're not sure, just ask. There are some cases which might step over the line and I would have to request a DMCA take down. Especially things like associating my work with racism, sexism, political agendas and otherwise hateful/ extreme messages.

One day I would like to see that everything can be shared openly, but we need to create that bridge first as a community.