Life drawing and the Masters program at SCAD

A few weeks ago I did a still life drawing for my portfolio submitted to the SCAD MFA in Illustration application. I had fun coming up with what I was going to draw. I thought it turned out really well for a 2 hour rendering.

Check out my whole MFA in Illustration Portfolio let me what you think.

Octopus ladies all over the place!

About 2 years ago I started to notice a lot of octopus paintings that had women in them on the web. I still to this day don't know why there is such a phenomenon. I love octopus and I'm currently working on a watercolor painting of an octopus, but no ladies. Maybe I should have put one in there. Take a look at a web gallery I created and let me know if you know why there is such an abundant amount of these. In most cases I tried to credit the artist.

Infringement or Appropriation?

Recently there has been much discussion with my peers regarding copyright infringement, when is it OK to "reference" another artist work. Where do you draw the line on copying reference too closely? Should you get permission? Should you give credits? Once the work is created (copied) can you sell it, sell reproduction rights to anyone, can you even register the copyright of a slightly changed image? Well that's a lot to discuss and I currently don't have the time to go into detail with all of it but I wanted to make some points and share some links about it here.



Shepard Fairey of Obey Giant and the famous Obama Poster is getting some criticism about infringing on other artist rights.

Learn more about it here from a critique by Mark Vallen.

I can't say that everything that Fairey has done has been fair use. But I believe most of the political stuff is perfectly legit.

From the words of Julie Mueller Brown: "He "appropriates" work from older styles and changes it to fit his agenda, he is anti-capitalistic and makes reference to early socialism posters. Its perfectly legit!

Mike Lowery says "I say he's legit. The whole point is that he work references old propaganda in a way that strips it of its message and content. It's the same as Liechtenstein's comic paintings or Warhol's diagram paintings, no?"

Rick Lovell sees this as a great opportunity to learn about what right and wrong. I whole heartily agree!
"There is clearly a great deal of debate among artists, art historians and attorneys about appropriation and it's implications. This entry on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_(art) (not the most scholarly source) is the tip of the iceberg, but it shines a light on an age-old dilemma about what art is, and what is art."

Steven Heller of the Daily Heller comments about this showing other interesting appropriations of art in his 02-11-09 post.

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Now here is a case where copying is done on the sly and is wrong.
Comic Book illustrator David Mack has traced his way to fame.

Todd Goldman has many infringements to his name.

There is another infringement issue I would like to mention but it's still too fresh since it happened today and hits home. Ask me about it.

So the next time you use reference think again about if it's appropriate or not.

Here are some resources to consider to learn more.

What is Copyright Protection?

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use

10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained


Jay

World of Wine Map!

This map is a long time coming. I started working on this in July of 2005 with restaurant owner Tim Moore. It was to be a 11 foot by 5 foot mural for his restaurant Terra Grille which is now Terra Terroir. We went through what seemed like countless revisions and tweaking with all the info on the map.

It's a vinographically correct map of the world. A term we coined when producing the map. The state and countries are enlarged to the size of importance and quality of vineyards in the region. On the left hemisphere is the "old world" way of wine making and on the right hemisphere is regions that produce wine in a relatively modern way. It has tons of facts, popular vineyard locations, and interesting tidbits for all wine lovers. When seen at a large scale it's great conversation starter for wine enthusiast.

Then sometime in late 2006 the job stopped for due to a change in direction of the restaurant decor and Tim starting a family. The job was put on hold indefinitely. Then in late 2008 I decided to finish this map and make it my own since no reproduction rights were ever sold. I changed the name of the map and some descriptions and made it more my own. Now it's done and available for sale as prints, posters, and reproduction rights. Click on the map to see an interface where you can zoom in to all the different areas of the map.