[Closed] copying someones art...?

You are China, and I claim my 5 Yuan.

We only have your word for it that yours looked like the original

depends dunnit..

Banksy was selling genuine Banksy originals worth thousands and thousands of dollars each from a market stall in downtown New York last month..

$40 a pop but no-one was interested because they were being flogged off a market stall..

Banksy knock offs are everywhere and all look the same

Art is worth whatever the buyer wants to pay for it..
If you're trying to pass it off as original then you'll be had up for forgery no doubt

If you're trying to pass it off as original then you'll be had up for forgery no doubt

would be different...

I stress this is a hypothetical question

Doing the same kind of thing but doing it your way is one thing, passing something off is another.

The 'art' also isn't necessarily in the execution. The fact that something is easy to make a copy of isn't really of any consequence.

Banksy knock offs are everywhere and all look the same

Do they look the same as Banksy originals?

Have a go.. what's the worst that can happen?

Can I have one of your pieces though..? If you get rumbled and your case gets a bit of media attention your work might be worth a couple of hundred quid one day.. 😀

Have a go.. what's the worst that can happen?

Innit? I have just banged out some copies of [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gothic ]American Gothic[/url]. Piece of piss this art thing.

Kerching!

[img] [/img]

Doing the same kind of thing but doing it your way is one thing, passing something off is another.

Would be similar but [b]NOT [/b]the same

I leave it to the board back in 4 hrs !

Do they look the same as Banksy originals?

I couldn't possibly say.. it's all a bit lowbrow for me dahling..

let them eat cake I say

[img] [/img]

It might be worth checking out [url= http://returntofleet.com/2012/11/09/rtfs-geek-street-art-3-hanksy-not-banksy/ ]Tom Hanksy[/url]

[img] ?w=620[/img]

Banksy was selling genuine Banksy originals worth thousands and thousands of dollars each from a market stall in downtown New York last month..

$40 a pop but no-one was interested because they were being flogged off a market stall..

So they were worth $40.

alright clever clogs, get thee to stu170's pointless pedantry thread until you can behave 😆

before he put them up for sale they were worth thousands and immediately after the sale, they were again worth thousands

but yes.. technically I'm sure that you are correct

Banksy's soooooooooo clever 🙄

Banksy ain't exactly free of the ripoff merchant title…

[i]So they were worth $40.[/i]

Apparently not. 😉

Damn I go for a snooze before work and you steal my comeback Samuri.

well if I make any more then I will post a picture up...

You don't like banksy al?

is art copyrighted?

Yes. See: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-applies/c-artisticworks.htm

CaptJon - Member
is art copyrighted?
Yes. See: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-applies/c-artisticworks.htm

If it was to be done it would the using the idea but not the same as the original at all so I guess id be okay...

A lot of art/craft is 90% idea, and 10% execution.
Most people could do lots of things people do or make but they don't have the original idea.
I have no respect for folks who just copy. I've worked on craft stalls where people come up openly exclaiming 'I could make that easy'. Yeah? Well you didn't did you so go forth etc....
Be original if possible. Originality is good.

If it was to be done it would the using the idea but not the same as the original at all so I guess id be okay...

Theres any number of answers to that really - if you went to a life drawing class every one in the room would be painting the same thing, in their own way, but they're not copying each others work. But if the artwork is about doing something in a particular way and you do something in more or less the same way then that is more or less copying it.

Whats stopping me making something similar/making them with my own twist and selling on a trendy stall on Brick Lane market for £400 quid ?

Nothing, or possibly everything. See a thing - make a thing like it - possibly sell it (possibly not).... then what. People who make and sell things for a living need to have a careers worth of ideas that they can make and sell (quite a long career as quite often artists and crafts people don't retire) and plenty to spare as not everything you think of gets made and not everything you make gets sold, and they need to find the people who'll buy them. Have you seen a careers worth of things you can make something similar to? At a few hundred quid a pop you'd need to make an awful lot of them.

maccruiskeen

Good words alas as said before totally hypothetical

unfitgeezer - Member
If it was to be done it would the using the idea but not the same as the original at all so I guess id be okay...

The idea is the intellectual property that is protected so it wouldn't be OK.

only if they copyrighted it ? Which I could do as well ?

[i]I have no respect for folks who just copy.[/i]

Copy art or copy what they see?

See this picture?
[img] [/img]

da Vinci looked at something, and then reproduced it onto a canvas. Did he copy? What's the difference between copying a picture and copying a vista?

I understand the idea that someone can introduce their own artistic vent into a piece of art which makes it unique but is that any more noble than someone who has the talent to produce something like this?
(It's a pencil drawing)
[img] [/img]

I'm sure da Vinci was aiming for hyper-realism but his art is valued into multi-millions. The second image is free for all to download from DeviantArt.

What's the difference?

art...?

Do you think the mona Lisa is art?

Because it was just some bloke copying what he was looking at.

samuri - Member
Do you think the mona Lisa is art?

Because it was just some bloke copying what he was looking at.

is that question aimed at the masses ?

if your asking me it is what it is...I guess its art I don't personally like it

[img] [/img]
Anyone can make a mess like this but selling it for $778,900 is a bit trickier.

Samuri - that's a pencil drawing??!

Bloody hell that's impressive.

Anyone can make a mess like this but selling it for $778,900 is a bit trickier.

this has definitely become an integral part of the art of being an artist..

I had the chance to contribute some work to a good group exhibition a few years back, with some high profile artists involved..

At the opening night a couple of collectors wanted to talk to me about one of my pieces, they seemed very interested indeed until they realised that I probably wasn't likely to tell them anything particularly interesting about myself or the piece, you could almost watch their noses wrinkle up in conceit..

I sold naff all

only if they copyrighted it

you don't have to 'copyright' something in the same way as you might patent or trademark something. A copyright - the right to make copies is something the author of a work can assign to someone. So someones art is protected as their work by default - they can then permit someone to make copies if they wish.

In the case of selling an artwork even if someone buys the physical artwork from and artist the right to make copies doesn't transfer to the buyer unless thats specified as part of the sale. The artist could also sanction reproductions to be made of a piece of their work even if they'd already sold it to a third party.

So in your hypothetical scenario - you asked your friend if you could make a copy of a piece of art he'd bought he said ok - Well strictly speaking its not actually for him to say whether its ok or not.

da Vinci looked at something, and then reproduced it onto a canvas. Did he copy? What's the difference between copying a picture and copying a vista?

Lol.

So in your hypothetical scenario - you asked your friend if you could make a copy of a piece of art he'd bought he said ok - Well strictly speaking its not actually for him to say whether its ok or not.

I asked him as in do you mind if I have a go at making one of them cos it would be fun, I didn't ask him in the way oh thats yours can I copy it...

As I have said mine is similar to his but with a different twist etc but I get the general gist

I think you do Da Vinci a disservice Samuri. He wasn't copying, he was creating something. It's differences from the source material are key to what it is.

I had friends at art school who made some cash by painting copies of klimts and van goghs which were sold in a gallery that specialised in that kind of stuff. It's a good technical learning exercise for painters to go through but it doesn't add much to the canon of art.

I'm sure da Vinci was aiming for hyper-realism but his art is valued into multi-millions.

Hyperrealism is a fairly recent goal in art - I'd expect da Vinci was aiming to do more/other than faithfully transcribe the scene in front of his easel.

But the mona lisa is an interesting example of merit and value. Its the first celebrity artwork.

It was a fairly unknown, fairly irrelevant artwork for most of its history. Then one day it got stolen. This was at the advent of newspapers starting to add pictures (all be it illustrations rather than photos) rather then being text only. So in france The Mona Lisa was one of the first paintings you would know without having actually having seen it for real because the theft was publicised and later its recovery was too. And as a painting its remarkable for that reason - its the most famous painting in the world but its famous now for being famous, its by no means the best painting in the world, not even a contender for the best. Its not even a good example of da Vinci's work - and even then paintings were the least remarkable thing he did.

In the same sense the most famous people in the world are necessarily the most worthy people.

Lots of things contribute to the value of an artwork, even something as simple as whether its made by a 'somebody' or a 'nobody', but the artists whole body of work effects the value of single pieces - something that is part of a great body of work has more value than a one hit wonder, the people who are buying work (or have bought it) - if Charles Saachi buys work by an artist or Peggy Guggenheim used to own work then that has a bearing on what people will pay for it too.

So intellectual property issues aside - if you made a same or similar artwork to the one your pal bought could you sell it for the same price as he bought his? Probably not.

it doesn't add much to the canon of art.

I'd say the only difference is you don't need to pay a model to sit there quietly.
The skills required after that are almost identical.

I'd say the only difference is you don't need to pay a model to sit there quietly.
The skills required after that are almost identical.

I'd disagree. Theres a lot of decision making if translating a 3d scene into a 2d image. If you're starting point is a photograph then a great deal of those decisions have been removed. Even people who draw and paint from life might also use photos as well as sittings but they'll use dozens of photos and usually more than one sitting with their subject and they're choosing nuances of that scene and compiling them.

In the same sense a portrait photographer will take multiples of photographs - same sitting, same pose to get the one photograph that is a 'portrait' rather than a picture.

da Vinci looked at something, and then reproduced it onto a canvas. Did he copy? What's the difference between copying a picture and copying a vista?

That is one of the funniest things I have ever read...Where do you start answering that 😀

As for copying a photo being the same as copying a vista, copy this...(for example)

[img] [/img]

Art is about interpreting things and saying what you want to say, conveying what you want to convey. Copying a photograph(although the example you've given is utterly amazing) is hardly the same...

In loving the visually unaware I.T. NAND gate sensibilities applied to art. 😆

The skills required after that are almost identical.

Samuri - that's a pencil drawing??!

Bloody hell that's impressive.

Do you think? I have a scanner/printer that can reproduce photos to a similar standard in a matter of seconds.

I really don't consider this sort of thing to be "art" at all, there's nothing creative about it at all. It's the visual equivalent of karaoke.

Now this is art... Someone posted a link to this artist's work recently and the concept and execution is brilliant. And it's all done digitally too!

[img] [/img]

Do you think? I have a scanner/printer that can reproduce photos to a similar standard in a matter of seconds.
I really don't consider this sort of thing to be "art" at all, there's nothing creative about it at all.

That's possibly the case.

But like he said, it's still impressive.

Hardly anyone can do it.

Bit like autofellation then?

Hardly anyone can do it.

Again, I'd disagree. Working in pencil from photographs is probably one of the easiest mediums to work in. It's mind-numbingly boring, but it's not difficult.

Working in oils or acrylics - or even on a Wacom tablet as Mr Stallenhåg above - requires far more skill, especially if the artist has the ability to abbreviate the image into simple brushstrokes and still maintain a sense of realism. It's a skill I wish I possessed!

Well that's a fair point and it might well be my analytical geek mind doing the thinking but I really can't see the difference between looking at a person and then looking at a photograph of that person. How they reproduce it comes down to their technical skill and artistic drive.

The picture of the ships and the future art above is precisely what I'd call art. Drawn from memory or imagination with the artist interpreting the visuals, brilliant. Portraits....I think most of the artists were going for as realistic as they could get with the tools at their disposal, this after all was what they were commissioned to do.

Again, I'd disagree. Working in pencil from photographs is probably one of the easiest mediums to work in. It's mind-numbingly boring, but it's not difficult.

So what sort of numbers are we talking about who can do pencil drawings like the one posted earlier then ?

If it's "not difficult" then it must be a few people on every uni art course worldwide surely ?

Personally - and art is very personal - I think it boils down to how much you can 'take' from a piece that defines its merit.

The photorealistic example posted above just looks like a photo. Someone, upon being told it's a pencil drawing might say "wow! pencil?? I thought it was a photo...", so it has merit to some, but it's rather limited in my opinion. Personally, I've seen enough of that sort of thing to not be blown away by it.

The work by Simon Stallenhåg is so absorbing, I have a few of his prints and I can pour over them for hours. Some people might think the subject matter a bit eccentric, but like you say, the imagination is undeniable. For me, it's the composition, the draughtsmanship and the painterly execution that I admire, and his ability to capture an atmosphere/era, slightly nostalgic, slightly futuristic... Genius.

If it's "not difficult" then it must be a few people on every uni art course worldwide surely ?

Absolutely. Although you'd probably find it far more prevalent at school/college level. If you're a neat, accurate artist, they tend to beat it out of you at art college and encourage a looser, more painterly style.

But I'd go as far as to say that most reasonably proficient artist could produce work like that with a little practice, a lot of time and and propensity to immerse oneself in sheer boredom for long enough.

A few of my art college contemporaries make money by doing pencil reproductions of peoples' photos of pets, horses, even pics of them holding big fish.

The easiest way is to print a 10% tint of the photo onto a sheet of vellum and then shade over the top. It's not art, it's just shite.

So what sort of numbers are we talking about who can do pencil drawings like the one posted earlier then ?

If it's "not difficult" then it must be a few people on every uni art course worldwide surely ?

having spent 5years in an art school education (not a "uni") most people would be able to produce facsimile drawings from photographs but where's the self expression in that?
you would be steered away from it very quickly or directed to the graphics course where there might be a need for that sort of thing.

Righto. I presumed that producing pencil drawings to that standard was something a bit more difficult.

Mainly based on a google search for Hyper Realism throwing that exact image quite a few times, plus loads of other stuff by the same artist.

I suppose his real skill must be Search Engine Optimisation eh 😉

Portraits....I think most of the artists were going for as realistic as they could get with the tools at their disposal, this after all was what they were commissioned to do

Not the case. Portrait artists, and Photographers are included in this, have a certain style that people want. They depict the person in a different way to how someone else might. It's not as simple as just cracking off a piccy on your phone, or cracking off a realistic oil painting if you're a couple hundred years old...

Most portraiture of old, is depicting the 'important' person exactly how they want to be depicted, not how they are, whether that's taller, bolder, braver, thinner, whatever. Portraiture isn't about realism any more than any other artform... (Unless it's Realism of course...)

'OilShop' version1

Portraits....I think most of the artists were going for as realistic as they could get with the tools at their disposal, this after all was what they were commissioned to do.

Well not really - even taking a photograph its quite a skill to convey the person rather than just an identifiable likeness. I find it really interesting working with my girlfriend when she's editing her documentaries. She comes from a documentary photography back ground and she's extremely skilled in getting a candid and honest representation of someone on film. Sometimes we want to take a still from the footage for whatever reason and choosing that still can be really difficult - people are living, breathing, thinking creatures.

If she filmed a 3 second clip of Mr Samuri busying himself doing something then it's a film of you, she'd be able to make you forget she was there and this moment was being captured and possibly seen by millions of people and your self consciousness would fall away and the whole honest you would be there. But in the that clip if you try and choose a frame out of the 75 photographs she's effectively taken, thats 75 moments of you and your thoughts, all those moments look different and its really difficult to find one that speaks of the whole you.

With your drawings you tend to work with media images so your starting point is something that is already composed, is tonally and texturally interesting and out of possibly hundreds of photos from that sitting its [i]the[/i] one that says something about that person. For you, when you draw from it, you set yourself a technical challenge of transcribing that tone and texture as accurately as you can - and if you're pixel perfect by default you'll convey the same message as the photo, but in doing that that then you only need to be microscopically wrong and the person-ness is lost. However if you're understanding who you're looking at you can convey as much as, or more than, the photograph even if you actually draw less of it.

[img] [/img]

That's the best reasoning I've heard so far, thanks.
I don't think what I'm doing is art though, it is simply copying and shows nothing more than some ability to learn technical principles.

The thing is though - as you're doing what you are doing theres some interesting stuff happening. The Amy Whinehouse picture you posted - theres some actual drawing rather than copying starting to appear there. Theres some really nice lines in the hair, and thats 'drawing' - describing and interpreting hair rather than copying an image of hair.

...but I really can't see the difference between looking at a person and then looking at a photograph of that person. How they reproduce it comes down to their technical skill and artistic drive.

Just reading back through this, and this is an interesting point. Drawing from life is far harder than drawing from a photograph. On a photograph, the perspective, composition etc is already taken care of - it's effectively 'flattened' into the image you're going to reproduce.

If you draw and paint from life (I did 10hrs a week for 3 years) you need to possess the ability to 'flatten' the image in your own eye. That's why you often see artists 'framing' a scene with their fingers or holding a brush or pencil up to the image. What they're actually doing is plotting negative shapes against a fixed reference point - vital as it's just as important to represent the shapes around a subject as it is to do the subject itself.

We're used to seeing images flattened nowadays, in print, film etc, but look at pre-Renaisance art to see how difficult it was for artists to interpret the 3D world into a 2D image. There were one or 2 freaky artists that had an ability to meticulously reproduce exactly what they saw (Van Eyck is a good example) but most artists really struggled until the basic rules of perspective were unraveled and the study of anatomy became commonplace.

[i] but most artists really struggled until the basic rules of perspective were unraveled and the study of anatomy became commonplace. [/i]

But wasn't a lot of the new perspective art of the Renaissance done with the aid of camera obscuras? So its sort of like painting or drawing over a modern photograph.

Some was, but there are many examples of "naive" perspective art from the early Renaissance period, like Masolino's "Banquet of Herod".

He worked out that if you paint a flat elevation with a single, central vanishing point, you ended up with a suggestion of perspective that had, up to this point, been unattainable. We see it as naive, but at the time it was ground breaking.

Nowadays, we all learn the double-vanishing-point technique that didn't appear for another century or so...

[img] [/img]

We're used to seeing images flattened nowadays, in print, film etc, but look at pre-Renaisance art to see how difficult it was for artists to interpret the 3D world into a 2D image

True up to a point - but theres a question of whether they were looking to represent a 3D world as fact. We're used to a single viewpoint, single perspective, single moment representation of the world. When you're in a life drawing class, squinting and winking and framing the view with your hands and scaling with your brush you're trying to contort your experience of the world to mimic a camera, a static viewer with one eye, a set focus and a frame. Because lens-made images are so ubiquitous in this era any human made image that is similar to a lens made image seems to us to be more 'real' but its quite a stylistic representation and our own experience of the world isn't like photographs - we've got two eyes, our gaze and focus changes all the time, we're moving, things are moving, time is passing, we know what the other side of things look like, we know where we are, we know who those people are, we know if the scene looks different today than it did yesterday.

Earlier artists weren't as concerned about making a photo-like image because a photo-like image was alien. So a painting could contain all the things they know about a scene rather than all the things they could see from one point at one time. Even something like a still life was often an impossible scene, they might have all the seasons in them - spring and autumn, flowers and fruit - those things couldn't have been on the table at the same time so they're telling a story about something else, rather than than 'look how well I can paint an apple'.

I think there's a much wider topic that you're touching on there Mac, namely that the 'reasons' for producing artwork have changed, mostly due to the written word now fulfilling a lot of the roles for which art was traditionally used.

But I think it's fair to say that since man first daubed mud, blood or charcoal on cave walls, we've been striving to freeze a moment in time for others to view.

It fascinates me to watch my nephew's/niece drawing (age 3-6) and it's easy to recognise the naivety of early art in what they produce. And I'm sure their skills will grow as they're taught certain techniques, and as they become used to seeing flat images.

Obviously, there have been movements like cubism to address the single-viewpoint issues, but an enduring theme that seems to run through all art is the desire to record things the way we see them. I don't think that'll ever go away...

da Vinci looked at something, and then reproduced it onto a canvas. Did he copy? What's the difference between copying a picture and copying a vista?

Oh I'm not denying there's a lot of skill involved but your point almost proves mine. That they endeavoured to make the pictures look more and more realistic, albeit with the customers 'make me look good' requirements taken into account.

I do have to say though, I have found this entire thread jolly interesting. It's especially perked up in the last few posts.

Ive enjoyed all the posts albeit a little out of my depth !

Think I should stick to fixing bikes for a living...anyone wanna buy an original !

Let's see it then, whatever it is ??

Sorry to reopen this but I felt that in light of the way the debate has taken a turn for something of a more intellectual nature than usual then it would be prurient to include this video for your thoughts and constipation..