The Internet is a vast and empty wasteland. Or as Voltaire would put it, "a few acres of snow".
There are a lot of places to scoop up independent art from, and in a much more professional manner than doing an image search and just throwing into a presentation like you did in high school. We're much more professional. Indeed, we're throwing them into a website. The "royal" we, that is, in which case I. The most selfish of all pronouns, aside from "xyr". Oh yes, commentary about the gender spectrum, because manchildren haven't already beaten that horse until it squirted jam out of its eyes.
The attribution of sources is always tricky. Not because it's some great moral wrong to use a piece of art without attribution; this bureaucracy of forcing every author to get credit at all times, no matter how small their contribution, would damage collaboration more so than letting authors be credited sporadically. It's because, should a piece of art deserve to be shared, the sharer of that art has an obligation to the audience to show them who made it. The audience benefits from finding more excellent work, and the artist benefits from having new fans — silent as they may be.
It is then important for a sharer of work to point the audience to the author, ensuring that they be found no matter the cost. By linking a work to all the accounts of an artist, and archiving their existence so that they may continue to be appreciated, it shows a mutual respect for the arts, the artists, and those that appreciate them both. So should an artist be unknown, it destroys this respectful relationship by leaving the audience confused, and the author a theoretical construct. Just another ghost in the shell.
At the same time, should we go on a wild goose chase to find every single author before we share their work, it would be difficult to share most works on the Web. It's a happy little anarchy, and the anarchy involves breaking standards for the sake of benefitting the majority (the audience) over the minority (the author). Sometimes it's impossible to attribute anything to one author, just because of the circumstances of the art's creation. The Web doesn't stop because someone isn't on it.
You will notice that I've created an artist directory for the purposes of helping our audience find the artists they love, and the artists find them as well. You will find that Tumblr and Inkbunny are for the heavily stylised work, Pixiv for typical anime work, Furaffinity being the DeviantART of furries, and DeviantART for the entire gamut — usually the old standby for those too mature to choose anything else. You'll also find other websites on there; if a bear shits in the woods, somebody will photograph it and put it on Furaffinity.
Should an artist disappear, please call the police. But first, contact me about it and tell me where shit's at. It's no good to have a directory full of dead links, and even worse to have dead artists. Then you have to break the bad news. Like "oh, Kitty0706 died of leukemia", and now every time you watch one of his videos, so influential to the GMod scene, you have to suffer the bittersweet sadness of somebody taken so young, and never seeing what could come out of that life. It's awful. Completely fucking awful. But it's necessary to know.