Anything about art...

Imitation in the form of a mater copy is flattery - as long as you acknowledge that is exactly what it is.

Assimilating someone else's ideas and maybe some specific gestures into your artwork is not only fine, it is expected and part of the history of art. You borrow the positive things from people you respect. (note the prints of famous paintings that circled around renaissance and baroque europe - people used the work of their betters as examples and drawing aids.)

But ripping someone's work off and then calling it your own - you're an univentive lazy slob. (For example, blatantly stealing an entire design or concept with no credit to the person imitated. There is some "artwork" at a local cafe' where a person poured colored glitter over her copies of other people's art, then sells it.)

I belong to Incredimail groups and sometimes we run into people using others graphics. Same thing, add glitter, change it somehow. And the person who created it has lost control of it.
Trying to reason with these art theives, one gets the answer that 'if it's on the web, it's public domain". I'm sure you've heard that one too!

Anyway, the book I'm reading had this and it pertains to what BoGoWo said:

Every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, "I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime."
(Attributed to Jeanette Winterson)

rrg!! it annoys me so much when someone rips off something i did...I have always loved manga and have gotten very good at drawing it, and this stupid girl Taylor keeps looking at my sketchbook and stealing my ideas. then she uses them as her own and shows them off. does anyone know anything i can do to **NICELY** tell her to stop??!!

I recommend taking advantage of the situation and making her your friend. Maybe encourage some of her ideas.

Don't sweat it if she's copying you at this point - she's not selling anything and she's probably too insecure to do her own art. In the future, Manga will go out of style and you'll feel silly about having been so obsessed with it. But you may still have this chick as a friend (if you like her as a friend - maybe you could draw together?) and could be of longer-lasting importance than sketches.

but she used to be my friend, now i hate her (for other reasons, e.g. she was really mean to me) so being her friend is sorta out of the question.

and its not just manga. its my other sketches/watercolours as well.

hmm... Yeah, if she sucks then never mind about the friend thing. Have you talked to her about it? Maybe the best thing would be to not let her see your artwork.

thanks, i'll try that...don't you hate it when people do things like that??

Fear no art is my point of view. Do I have to love it or like not but I love it all and always will. As discussed with a friend recently art is my saviour.

truth
What a coincidence, Joanne. I was just telling a friend the other day that art was, in a way, my saviour.

I was friend with a Jesus-freak in high school who claimed that I didn't need g-d, that I would never convert because art was my religion.

That kind of makes sense - it is somthing I am devoted to and think about, a reason to live and work. I learn the names of other artists and study/revere them in a way not unlike catholics saints. Art can be an emotional/spiritual enterprise.

truth
I understand, Portal Star. You could do far worse. At least your "religion" has to do with tangible experience, not with fantasy.

Wow JLN it must be the cosmic unconscious at work.

hah, that is sort of the way i am...if my friends are trying to get my word for sure, i swear not on god but on drawing. if i swear on god, they don't really beleive me because art is my life and i hope it always will be.

I concur.

Sometimes I copy for practice (technique) but other than that copying is not art and does not belong to anyone other than the orginator.

Most renaissance, baroque, and enlightenment era art has elements that are "copied." For example, and artist would use the laocoon or the appolo belevedere as the basis for figures. By quoting an artist showed that they had seen the masters and were knowledgeable about art. They would also take poses from famous works (and expected people to recognize these quotations and poses.) Artists saw nothing wrong with quotation back then, as long as they were not slavishly copying a work and trying to pass it off as their own. (there also existed very primitive copyrights, even for prints, but that was for the entire image - not pieces of it.)

IMO, copying teqniques or styles, but not the actual painting/idea, is fine, just as long as you give whoever you got the idea from SOME credit...

Agnese Udinotti
Udinotti is both Italian and Greek. She was born in Athens, Greece. Her mother was Greek and her father was Italian.

Headshots

Re: truth

truth
Thanks, Headshots.