When browsing the member's galleries one often wants to examine a painting more closely to assess detail or brush technique. In most cases this necessitates that the image is enlarged but my experience of the galleries is that enlargement is, at best, merely nominal and in many cases there is no enlargement at all. Clicking on an image should ideally produce a minimum enlargement of, say, 600 pixels wide for a landscape image or 600 pixels high for a portrait image. Could this not be facilitated and turn the member's galleries into a useful learning zone? Doug Shaw

Hi Doug I think the main problem here, is any images that can be enlarged can also be downloaded and copied. There is so much copyright infringement going on, particularly of artwork "stolen" from websites and blogs and then reproduced in China, that artists have to be careful. A friend who runs a great information site for illustrators and artists, has recently had interviews and artwork downloaded and then published in a book in HongKong, without his or any other artists permission and obviously without any renumeration. Also, whilst most pros love helping out other artists, many rely on teaching or publishing to pay the bills! So, offering this service free, would be counter-productive for many people! Best wishes Helz http://www.helzbelzart.com

Hi Helz, Any image published on the internet is fair game for unscrupulous individuals who want to benefit from it. The extent to which they can do so however depends on the technology employed at the upload stage. The size of the image in pixels and/or the size of the image in kilobytes demanded by sites like the SAA and WetCanvas will significantly reduce resolution if it is enlarged much beyond the pixel sizes quoted in my original post. Furthermore, it should be well within the capability of the SAA to introduce a copyright warning watermark into every image accepted for publication on its website. An additional safeguard is that SAA could restrict access to member's galleries by requesting submission of a password or membership number. Taken together all these measures would make production of pirated images extremely difficult to all but the most dedicated copyist. Finally, we should not lose sight of the fact that the aims of the SAA are to inform and encourage artists of all capabilities. However, it is extremely difficult to derive much information from an image that is only marginally larger than a pictorial postage stamp. Regards - Doug

Hi Doug You have some very valid points there, in particular regarding the watermark idea. Yes, the SAA do aim to encourage and inform artists, and I think they do it very well in the newsletter with the tutorials and editorials. At the end of the day, the SAA is a business and the artists who put their images up in the gallery are paying for that priviledge. To turn the members gallery into a "learning zone", would in my opinion, not benefit the people who create the images. It is the SAA who aim to "inform, encourage and inspire" not the artists who pay to be a member and pay to show their work. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think most artists who pay to put images in the gallery section, do so for an online presence to promote and sell their work and / or classes, and possibly get traffic to their own website. I think all artists are happy to share their knowledge and experience free of charge within art groups and clubs, but not for free to a business like the SAA! If however, the SAA was willing to pay for artists to create tutorials and teaching articles for the website, I bet they would have a long list of applicants! Best wishes Helz http://www.helzbelzart.com

Hi Helz, I think it would be very interesting to see if the SAA have an opinion on this matter. Or, indeed, those artists whose work is already within the member's galleries. Regards - Doug

Doug/Helz,

As a new member to both SAA and its forums I find your debate most interesting. I come down on both sides! I want my online images protected but I also want to sell my paintings. It seems that the Art for sale is kept in several old boxes in the back of the shop. I want 'buyers' to get directly to my art. (as I'm sure others do!).

Is it possible to have an 'Art for Sale' at the front of the store?

Regards, Artytarty

Hello All

Just a few points to note;

The Members Galleries are taken directly from the Members Gallery page from the Paint magazine. Members send in paintings they have done (usually on postcards) or copies of paintings they have done to the Paint editor and she chooses a number of these to be published. It isn't a paid part of the web site and is there for the pleasure of those who have sent in the paintings, and also those who would be interested to see what other members have done. They follow themes published in each Paint magazine. As we do have to limit the size of images used on our web site it can be difficult to see detail but this is unfortunately some thing we have to do so we can get as many images on as possible without affecting the rest of the web site.

The SAA has no part in the actual selling of Art work - we offer space for artists to promote themselves, free on the forums or part of the gold membership where they have their own web page. As our priority is promoting artists and selling products we have the art forum for other things.

The images on members pages are not checked prior to being published on the web pages so it terms of copyright we suggest that members put their own watermark on images used. This can easily be done using your image software, most will have a watermark option that can be imbedded into the image. We are currently working on improving the image security by not allowing customer to right click and copy images from our

This has been a brilliant discussion and I am afraid in my mind, the onus is on the artist to imprint the watermark. I do and it is so simple. The SAA does inspire artists, as the galleries prove, what is the problem....Brush strokes can be practiced, you dont need to see minute detail like that. The images would have to be twice the above size to do it...space on a server is premium and if all artists images were to be so large there would be trouble with other areas of the site.

Great discussion though.