Is Isba Copyrightviolationif You Hand Draw A Picture

I've been creating and didactics art for several years and love helping new artists grow and find their ain voice.

You tin look to other photographers' piece of work equally inspiration as long as you follow a few of import guidelines.

Photograph by Tobias Negele on Unsplash

This article will help you navigate the oft tricky globe of knowing how to use photographic references for your art pieces (such as painting or drawing) without violating copyright.

In This Commodity

• The stages of an creative person's growth.
• Where to find great photo references.
• A primer on what constitutes copyright infringement.
• An breakdown of how I referenced a cat photo but made the resulting painting my own.
• Tips and tricks for the developing creative person.

The Stages of an Artist'south Growth

Hither'southward a quick summary of the full general stages of a person'due south growth when they're trying to become a great artist:

Beginner: Developing Your Bones Skills

When you lot're learning to describe, in that location is a stage where you lot're just not capable of violating anyone's copyright, equally long equally you're doing it freehand. Yous can't get the likeness, your drawing has some serious distortions, and any experienced artist is probably moved to teach you the skills you haven't adult all the same.

Very often, beginner drawings are the stylized symbols of what they see in the photograph reference. If you lot saw a stick man with curly springs for pilus, you would not think it violated the copyright of the film studio that took a skillful photograph of Helm Jack Sparrow.

Intermediate: Navigating Your Evolving Skills and Abilities

The skill of altering images does non come fast or easy. There's a difficult, painful stage in learning to depict realistically that begins with accurate tracing and can exist done even by very new beginners. It mostly ends when you eventually sympathise the anatomy of a human face, a cat'due south torso, a equus caballus, or a landscape well enough to merrily change the angle of the sunlight, the color of the shadows, the creatures effectually the focal indicate, the composition, and everything else until your original art cannot be seen as derivative.

This is actually the center of copyright violation—when you lot're piggybacking someone else'south greater skill and taking credit for something yous tin't practise well yet.

Advanced: Knowing How to Make It Your Own

A professional or very skilled apprentice creative person, however, will do the sorts of things I advise in this article:

• Combine several references.
• Change the composition.
• Flip it and mirror reverse it.
• Modify the expression.
• Change the lighting.
• Make upwards function of it.

That takes a lot of skill. But in the stop, yous take an artwork that fifty-fifty the photographer would have trouble recognizing. And you are non actually ripping off Hallmark for that cute kitten leaning on a puppy if you put in a puppy from a dissimilar card and so pose them on your burrow or the lap of your baby instead of the groundwork on the Authentication card.

"This is actually the middle of copyright violation—when you're piggybacking someone else's greater skill and taking credit for something y'all tin't exercise well yet."

Where to Discover Great Photograph References

If you pick a photo from a source like National Geographic, it's likely to have stunning composition, good focus, an interesting field of study, and great color. But non only practice yous not initially accept the rights to use it, merely you are as well probably contacting a photographer who gets paid two or three figures for whatsoever use of their images. And if you do, you'll get quoted a price out of the range of almost beginning artists—perhaps too with restrictions like "don't sell the resulting art."

You'll practice far improve to seek Creative Commons photos from their originators and ask nicely, or merely follow the instructions for how to attribute the derivative works yous created from them.

Here are some suggestions of where to wait for great photograph references when you're learning how to describe:

Read More than From Feltmagnet

Tutorial Guides

If an artist copies from something similar a Northward Light Books' tutorial demonstration of wings, adds their own horse, and makes other changes, no i would mind. Considering like my tutorials, how-to-draw books put in sketches specifically to exist copied. Even if permission is given though, attribution is polite—and it can cover you legally if the status of that original sketch changes.

Older Source Material

The age of the original can matter. I solution is looking for older drawings to copy. Vintage realism is a skilful instance, or everything from Leonardo da Vinci's drawings on up to 19th century engravings. Many of these older artists were very skilful at things like horse anatomy or the faces of young girls in mannerly styles, and these artists' work is now in the public domain.

Clip Art

You tin too purchase clip fine art to employ. This is legal and fantabulous. Copying prune art is fine—that's what it'south for—but be sure you lot know where you got it. The best clip art sources are reputable large publishers doing collections that have been doing business for some fourth dimension. (The only reason you lot have to pay for the clip art books published by Dover is because its editor collected all of them and copied them and put the collection together.) A fly-by-dark Internet company with lots of beautiful drawings and photos that expect far more contemporary, however, may have been doing mass copyright infringement on thousands of amateurs who posted their fine art online.

Wikipedia

Many of Wikipedia's photos have Artistic Commons attributions. Click on it to see what's allowed or non and get the spelling correct for the attribution. This includes photos of works out of copyright such as Leonardo da Vinci's sketches.

Museums

Contacting a museum, you tin can sometimes become rights to reference various works, simply fees vary from nominal to farthermost depending on whether and how yous want to publish information technology. Or you lot can visit a museum yourself, re-create what drawings they take on display while there under whatever rules the museum has for copying their exhibits. That does not violate copyright equally long equally the works are older than 75 years past the artist'due south death.

DeviantArt

Join fine art communities like DeviantArt and look for good photo blogs. Make friends with talented amateurs. And so inquire nicely when you find an image you want to use. Exist sure to offer attribution and a link to their original prototype when yous post it to the customs. And if you want to sell the art, tell them. This is one of the best sources for free images.

DeviantArt has many clubs, 1 of the most useful of which is called "Unrestricted Stock." It is of peachy interest to artists in the "must re-create exactly or it turns out bad" phase of development. If yous download any of their reference packs, you take beautiful images yous can photomanipulate, decorate your website with, depict from, and create any derivative works yous want. As long as you don't merits you took the photo, you're good. The club is small, and the original photographers donate their piece of work in social club to become more visibility.

I avert using any photos where the creative person says you can't sell the art, however, because I never know when or if I'll sell whatsoever drawing or painting I did (including what's in the center of a sketchbook). Taking the hazard to make something from this kind of source material can be a waste of my time, since the photographer may no longer exist a member of DeviantArt at the fourth dimension someone makes an offer. I try to stick to the "very careful" side of things and go permission specifically from my photographers—and brand friends with several whose works I particularly like to work from.

WetCanvas

WetCanvas is some other online fine art community and has an enormous Reference Epitome Library, which is costless to use without attribution or anything special. And so far, the RIL is the biggest source of gratuitous-to-use images I've establish online. If you reference something from the site, nonetheless, y'all should link to the photo or at to the lowest degree mention it's from the RIL and attribute it. I e'er practise this, whether that'south in the rules or not. But the chief rule is strict—yous take to actually join the community to apply the photos.

At What Indicate Does It Count as Copyright Infringement?

Look at the bad sketch of a woolly rhinoceros near the bottom of the article. I'k not very experienced with doing rhinoceroses, either extinct or mod. I did it from imagination, inspired by the volume I'thou editing and the book I'thousand reading. This is what I get for all my skill at animate being drawing when I oasis't ever seen the living animal and oasis't seen its living relatives since I was a child taken to zoos. I didn't even re-create the famous Charles R. Knight, whatever great animal artists, or the painters of the caves.

I own a copy of Walking With Beasts. It'due south very tempting to simply pop it in, run the episode that has woolly rhinos in it, break on scenes with the animals until I find a good frame, and utilize that for a reference. I don't have permission from the BBC, and those individual frames from a video are office of a collaborative work involving many artists—the ones that drew the rhinoceros, including the long-dead Pleistocene artists, the ones that built and moved the models, and the ones that did the CGI work. There's no one to attribute, and no personal friend to enquire, "Hey, can I use a frame out of your motion-picture show?"

But I might not get defenseless since information technology is only i frame out of a moving movie—except to the model builder peradventure, or the cameraman, or one of the editors who recognizes that frame and remembers choosing to keep it instead of the ones that wound up on the cutting room flooring.

I might some time run the video, expect at the film, not stop it, and try to depict while it'due south moving. This is and so close to drawing animals from life that I probably wouldn't get information technology accurate enough to be recognizable—simply I'd become as well close if I freeze-framed. That's at my present level of skill.

If I drew a dozen modern rhinos, copied the Charles R. Knight illustration from his Animal Drawing: Anatomy and Action for Artists, altered it, used it every bit a reference in the mode intended, I might get to the point where my woolly rhinos started looking as good equally the cats I exercise from imagination. I might get to the indicate where I could put one into a pose I've got no references for, and it'd be recognizable by species. That'll be fun and I might do information technology anytime.

Referencing My Work

Some things are very clear cutting. If yous steal an paradigm from 1 of my articles or i of my websites, for instance, and you repost the photograph or browse—either claiming y'all took the photo or drew the art or both—then you definitely violated my copyright.

On some images, specially photos and the sketches in tutorials, I have given explicit permission for other artists to draw from my images. But I unremarkably want credit—such equally "fatigued by robertsloan2 from DeviantArt"—and if possible a link to where you found information technology or a link to the tutorial. I'd like to know if only because I dearest seeing how my tutorials might exist helping people abound as an artist!

I often requite specific permissions like that, such as: "You can download my sketch and color it either using these colors or any X shades from light to dark that you fancy." Especially in tutorials, that'due south important. The lesson is nigh coloring and shading, non about how to trace a rose exactly from a photo reference or sketch information technology from a photo reference.

Hither is one of my Norwegian Forest cat pieces based on a photo past DeviantArt member Wazabees.

Robert A. Sloan, via DeviantArt

How I Painted the Norwegian Forest Cat

Ane of my friends is a Norwegian lensman, Fredrik Loevik, who goes by the DeviantArt screen name of Wazabees. I asked permission several times for different cat and kitten photos, got to know him, and he'southward been my friend for years. He loved all of his cats and made sure every one of his kittens got a adept home—and he loves seeing my latest paintings and drawings of his cats. I created the above painting with his permission based on i of his cats, Amaze.

Fifty-fifty though I could have painted Amaze exactly equally he was photographed, I accept been getting in the habit of changing references so much and have done cats so frequently that I seriously altered the epitome. I changed the limerick by cropping. I inverse the colour of the groundwork to green. And since Fredrik photographed Astonish on a peach-colored cat tree, I reflected green everywhere that there were pinkish reflections on the cat'due south white fur (for the sake of realism). I had a theme in heed: prove a Norwegian Forest true cat in a wood. Then I created a stump from retention of many chopped-off copse and posed him on it.

I as well aged him a little. Though I was working freehand and intuitively, I still got the likeness, but I shifted his facial expression and mood a little. I find it hard now to copy a reference exactly. I tin can get the likeness, but my own eye has improved to the point where what I want to say with my painting isn't what the photographer wanted to say with the photo.

That skill level comes to everyone in time if yous keep at it—but tracing and exact copying help bring it almost. This is especially truthful if y'all go from tracing to attempting freehand drawing and and then attempt to meliorate on the images or combine lots of them.

Great Techniques and Advice to Help You Grow every bit an Artist

Hither are simply a handful of tips and techniques—as well as best practices—to help you grow equally an artist:

Take Your Own Photos

You tin can get a digital camera and take your own photos. This will give yous space unending "picture," and with practice you lot will go good photos. Not only that, just it'll assist you learn limerick likewise. That is the safest manner to work from photos. But if you're a new artist and not a lensman, your photos may have as many flaws equally your drawings. (This is where using photos in the Reference Image Library comes in really handy, since many of them are from artists who've been taking reference photos for decades.)

Seek Guidance From Teachers and Professionals

You'll find complimentary classes at every level, from ultra-beginner to master, to help artists draw from life or photos or even from their imaginations. Sometimes the authors of North Light books may comment and assistance, specially if they're hosting a grade or project. At that place's nothing like beingness able to inquire the author to clarify something!

Make Certain to Confirm Who the Original Creator of the Reference Is

Ever be sure y'all're talking to the existent photographer of a reference image, rather than a ripoff artist. If you lot use a photo given to you lot past a plagiarist, then you could too be liable. Most of the time the penalties are more social—you tin go banned from the community—but you tin can also exist hit with heavy fines and jail time if you're not careful.

So stick to the ones you trust, whom you know are the originators of the images yous use. Family unit members may provide good photos, but be sure to become permission just every bit if you lot didn't know them. The dispute could turn ugly.

Notation the Terms of Use for Each Prototype You Reference

Pay attention to the specific terms and note them for every epitome y'all use. One lensman mentioned on her blog: "Feel free to use my photos to draw from. I appreciate attribution but please do NOT mention my real proper noun or my handle in any eBay listings for your art created from my photos."

Much as attribution is my addiction, I will not always mention where I got the reference if I sell something I did from one of hers on eBay. I don't know and don't desire to know why she doesn't want her name mentioned on eBay. It'due south none of my business organization. But it's her right—that's what copyright means—to decide things like that and be that specific.

Creative Commons licensing has several variations. Wikipedia and Lulu and many art communities besides suggest you lot list images with varieties of Creative Eatables permissions—assuasive you to separate the specific permissions you give and those you lot don't on a template of good legal language for sharing images and works. These are great because yous don't need to contact the owner, and they're convenient if y'all want to share images of your own.

Be an Active Participant in the Community

It'south besides practiced form in a customs where people are sharing like the RIL to reciprocate with some of your best photos and requite something dorsum. It's not required and you may not even own a better camera than a webcam, just it is dainty.

Many skillful photographers are apprentice and are but grateful that an artist is interested in working from their images. It'south besides practiced grade later getting permission and attribution to link to your post with your art and let them run across what you drew, even if they didn't ask you to. That'due south one of the ways to build a good, lasting creative collaboration like my Norwegian Forest cats serial with Fredrik Loevik. I haven't come close to painting all of his kittens however. But when I practise, I know I'll be a far amend painter than I am now and near feel as if I knew those cats in person from all the times nosotros've talked.

Change Information technology Plenty to Make Information technology Original

Better safe than sorry. Get permission, use public domain sources, and never just use photos from magazines—even ads—without changing it enough so that information technology's definitely its own original work and non easy to tell what went into information technology. If you get to where information technology's impossible to tell, then all the references open up and you're simply getting ideas from a reference without actually copying anything. It does not violate copyright to check a photo of a bird of paradise to see what its markings are and then pigment a bird you put into the pose you saw out on your tree. Or check the stripes on one tiger and put them on your tabby for fun. That'due south the sort of thing so original no 1 could actually even figure out whose tiger photograph you got the stripes from, and it would never exist mistaken for the original.

That is a large part of not copying the cute kitten-and-puppy pose from a Hallmark card. The combined elements of the image—the animals, the attempt getting them into that pose without them licking their rear ends or fighting, the lighting, the setting—were a lot of piece of work for that photographer and finally paid off with a good payment from Authentication and an image that lucked out and got famous. And if you lot re-create that exactly in graphite, the grabbiness of the photograph and the results of graphite realism will mean you're riding the photographer's work.

Be Careful of Photo Baloney

Here's another point to ponder and one that I only understood recently. Photos distort. Cylinders with liquid in them, similar a row of glasses of water, will wind up curving with a slight fisheye effect and not be true to form. 1 photorealist copied his reference (his ain great photo) then advisedly that a photography proficient looked at the mural-sized painting and found a .JPEG artifact—some colors that came in considering it pixelated and could simply have happened in a digital photo. It was a grand piece, and the photo was as good equally the painting. The artist was a true original.

But your eye and hand are capable of far more than a camera can accomplish. A photographic camera is limited past reality. Y'all're not. You can turn the foal into a baby unicorn or put wings on its dam for a Pegasus. You can do ameliorate equally yous become a amend and more accurate observer. You can make a distressing child smiling or turn a kitten into a tigress. That'due south worth working toward, because no i can give you lot a good photo reference of a dragon.

The "copying" stage of portraiture and realism is of import as a learning tool most of all, and I have nothing against artists selling journeyman work. But that's what information technology is. It's not however masterful until you lot grow beyond information technology. Information technology's worth something, only not gallery prices—notwithstanding.

Here is my Woolly Rhino 1 sketch, using Derwent cartoon pencils on paper. Don't re-create this, it's not even authentic.

Robert A. Sloan

Mix It Up past Cartoon From Retentivity

This bad drawing is an important step on the way to my drawing good mammoths. Every fourth dimension I do ane of these, I look at it and analyze what went wrong.

So if yous're practicing by tracing and copying photos, give yourself permission to do some of them from memory without looking at the reference. You won't violate copyright and volition eventually build up your skills to the point that someday yous'll be able to convey the images in your caput and portray them on a canvass then that anyone can meet them.

Until then, look for skilful references that requite permission explicitly and keep drawing.

Susanna on Baronial 08, 2022:

If I have my own photos of animals at a zoo or a safari or a farm, can I and then depict the animals as they are on the photo or do I need to change them?

Dale Anderson from The High Seas on May 02, 2022:

This was interesting and a topic I don't think I would ever have dreamed up. Nice work.

bushraib on April 26, 2022:

Equally an artist myself, I often use reference pictures. I managed to find certain sites that will requite u a free trial for whatsoever menstruation of time, in which you tin download a certain amount of pictures of your choice to apply as a reference. Those are completely royalty gratis and crawly for using, I believe Lachri Fine Art suggests one. Also, sometimes I will just utilize Google Images, and I change the photo enough in my artwork that information technology does not have an issue with the copyrights. Good commodity!

BBYCGN from Uninhabited Regions on October 05, 2022:

Hello,

Thanks for your article. How do I know which pictures I can use for my Hubpages poetry posts?

Bobby on July 14, 2022:

Wait so... Yous tin't own or copyright poses, but you still have to ask to use them?

Cooper Harrison from San Francisco, CA on Apr 21, 2022:

So much detail here - thanks.

adeveloper on February 11, 2022:

If I make a photo about my poo and put it on the web and you create a sketch about it and put information technology on your site y'all take just violated my copyrights. How disgusting yous are you see. And how I hate every participant of the art creation chain you wrote.

a developer

WickedCats on September sixteen, 2022:

At the moment, I do drawings from photos I discover on the net. What I do is a line drawing, with a pen. And so, inside that drawing, I add other designs. Would my using, just the line image exist infringing on the copyright? In theory so, by taking your suggestions, if I wanted to do a line drawing of a domestic dog, I would reference several pictures of dogs, and use a footling from each photo, this creating my own image.

Hartwell on Dec ten, 2022:

There are plenty of places on the web to get references that are copyright costless, so yous don't accept to worry nearly stuff like this. Landscape photos are the easiest to become, and are bachelor on gratuitous sites.

Good figure reference and photos of people are less common on free sites (considering of model release), just you can get quality images from places similar http://www.posevault.com and http://www.istockphoto.com for VERY lilliputian money.

Inkster on Nov xi, 2022:

i'm doing a small newsletter only for my eight grandkids, and using photos of each one. In that location is one professional and I'm concerned whether simply attribution is plenty. Practise I need the photog'south permission? I've worked with copyright concerns for years in my own work, but am stymied virtually this. Any feedback useful.

anita on April 08, 2022:

hello I am in ireland and am thinkin of setting upward my own card business, thing is i am finding it hard to contact the original owners of a few photos id like to use on my cards. My captions on the cards would be the selling point rather than the image. I have tried the free image sites but the pictures are crap. would you have any idea of what I could practice please.

KDee411 from Bay Area, California on February 18, 2022:

Wow your very good, I'll come up dorsum for more

Voted up

Kay

corporate photographer in London on August 01, 2022:

I'1000 always finding my stuff on other's sites. I've found a practiced way is to put a foreign tag on each image, a weired word or a series of letters, then you can set a google aleart and someday google finds something with that img tag y'all become a email.

starreviewer from CT, USA on September 02, 2022:

Didn't know that taking a picture reference and creating your own was an infringement. thanks for sharing this information.

Sophie on August xix, 2022:

Thank you soo much!! this info has been actually helpful.

I was wondering if I could somehow contact you or ship yous an e-mail??

jill of alltrades from Philippines on July 27, 2022:

What a highly informational hub! I learned so much here.

Thank you very much for sharing!

God bless!

skillup on June 08, 2022:

Cheers for taking the time to write this article. It was interesting reading almost your experience in using photo references.

infant on March sixteen, 2022:

then how about taking an image (jpeg) from the internet and live tracing it in illustrator and the combining elements of it into your own design? is this copyright violation???

Cherri Brown-Jett from Richmond on March 04, 2022:

Cheers for writing this hub. My idea of copywrite infringement was all wrong. Thanks for the enlightment.

Source: https://feltmagnet.com/photography/How-To-Use-Photo-References-Without-Violating-Copyright

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