is there a way to add a tag that in some way represents an artist?

Just put the artist: or art: prefix before the artist's name. (i.e., artist: tsampikos [no space])

Make sure that if the artist has a character of the same name, or a character has the same name of an artist in an image, edit it like this:

artist:blackteagan_(artist)

or

character:blackteagan_(character)

Additionally, artist tags show up in red: look at post #70769 for example..

Demicoeur is the artist (in red)

Kana is a character (and thus displayed in green), and there are no other images with that tag that are not of that character, so it's just 'kana',

Secret is the other character, however 'secret' is a common word, and appears in other images. Thus, this image with a character is "character:secret_(character)"

dragonranger said:
Just put the artist: or art: prefix before the artist's name. (i.e., artist: tsampikos [no space])

It doesn't work. When I try it just puts "artist:" in orange on the tags.

cabeiri said:
It doesn't work. When I try it just puts "artist:" in orange on the tags.

Are you putting a space between the artist name and the tag?

cabeiri said:
It doesn't work. When I try it just puts "artist:" in orange on the tags.

Or, do you already have your tag present in the system? artist: won't work unless there are no posts tagged it, you'll have to edit it here instead. Just enter your tag name, click "edit", and choose to edit it to artist.

cabeiri said:
It doesn't work. When I try it just puts "artist:" in orange on the tags.

There's literally a stickied thread about it: https://e621.net/forum_topics/23553
Why are you nekroing a 10 year old thread instead?

I fixed your tags. Follow the instructions from now on, please.