Recently I heard and BLOGged about the controversy around the winning of the American Watercolor Society's 141 annual exhibition 2008. The Gold Medal went to Sheryl Luxenburg for her watercolor painting "Impermanence".

Apparently she used stock photos for her composition.

Old Man Photo
Door Photo

And then entered this painting into the competition and won first place.
Click to view attachment

My understanding of the licensing terms as they pertain to art work using stock photos are that you can :

• Use the images as a single hand painted reproduction (not as a printed reproduction) on canvas or other material to be used as decoration and not resold.

And you can not:

• Use or display an Image in such a manner that gives the impression that the Image was created by you or a person other than the copyright holder of that Image

More often than not this is what I do for many of my training or personal drawings. I buy images for 2 or 3 dollars and then either use them in compositions or create a derivative of the original. Any art that I'm paid to produce or is not for my personal use, I use my own or client's source materials.

The question here is not about copyright. It is whether or not the artist cheated by presenting this artwork in a competition? The rules state that all works must be original.

My short answer is YES it was unfair to present this work. This is not an ORIGINAL work. It is a DERIVATIVE work. This painting does not merit recognition for creativity or originality in an art competition let alone giving it first place. If the artist had taken the photos and then created the composition, I would consider it original artwork.

I'm not sure what I think in general, but in this particular case it's rather shocking how little interpretation there actually is. Look at the details of the hair, the wrinkles on the forehead, the folds below the collar of the shirt; they're all impeccably copied. And aside from the mirroring, the same is true of the door. It's incredible work -- I didn't know this was even possible with watercolor.

Every week we have drawing challenges here at Drawspace, and although many artists draw from the same photo, each piece of work is unique. I'm not seeing that here. This is a technical masterpiece, but given that the photos are not hers, I really see nothing of the artist at all. "Cheating" might not be the word that I reach for, but this certainly falls on the "craft" side of the "art vs craft" dialectic.

i do not call it original work either..though i must say it is a very impressive painting..wow

i have often wondered about that..if you draw a picture from someone elses photo can it be considered original..when i think original i think "thought of and created by" so an so..i have seen ppl who say the work is original when the drawing is theirs but the idea is not..
and was never sure about how to think about it..i think to be original it must come from your own head and hand.

but maybe if you purchase the photo you purchase the "idea" and therefore it gives you the right to claim it as original. i do not know..

but i do agree..i dont find it to be truly original, though it is creative and impressive

I too feel that this artwork is not original but extremely realistic, it is just as if it is a photo!

Apart from this I want to ask a question here, is it fine if one uses the photo from this site and draws from it? If such a work is posted at a site and refernce of the site be mentioned then is it ok or no?

I have to agree with all of you, I do not consider this original work either, a very good painting yes, but I too do not think it is fair for a competition.

When I draw from a ref. provided in the foruns for the challenges I never consider that as my work, I never use the symbol of copyright for those, That would be cheating in my opinion. I only consider my own work if the photo is mine or the ref. photo is provided to me by someone for me to draw. My paintings are mostly from my imagination,so I do consider those to be originals, for some of them I did look at photos to get ideas how to draw this or that, but I don't use them as ref. photos. Of course they are not great paintings, but they are mine

Hi RJ,
I am not a lawyer, but I think the artistic spirit of the contest has been violated. Yes, I think it is cheating. Can you tell if it is even painted? or is is a giclee´? It is so true to the source photos, that I can't tell if it was photoshopped and not painted at all. It just goes to show you, in this day and age of the internet, plagerism is harder to pull off.

Trish

wow..you know the more i look at this work the more it blows me away..i simply have a really hard time with it being watercolor...i have never seen such skill with watercolor EVER..i didnt even know you could get flesh tones like that with watercolor..that is just so amazing to me..like magic..i would find it more believable if it was oil..it looks like an oil painting..doesn't it?..

i still dont think it should have been entered as original work but my goodness what great work it is

There are lively debates (or at least, pig-piles) concerning this all over the place; there are some good threads on WetCanvas, for example. This was presented as an acrylic painting by the same artist (whose web site has now, by the way, disappeared from the Internet:)

and here's another stock photo:

I was prepared to play the devil's advocate on ths one, but I have to admit there is something "Fishy" about the image. After loadng both pics of the homeless man into paint shop and zooming in, there is so VERY little difference (and I mean pixel for pixel) that I believe that section is a photograph although the door section has enough variance that it could be watercolor (gouche more specifically?)

Jim

There are some articles and interviews on the web which seem to suggest that her technique is like a dot-matrix printer: she makes tiny overlapping dots, looking through a magnifier. Maybe what she does really is absolutely duplicating a photo. In which case you have to say, "why?"

To reply to Ernest's question "why?" Well, there may be several reasons why one aims at winning a prize without effort. One of them is because he may want to gain popularity and sell his works, or to mention his award in an hypotetical Artist curriculum...I don't know if this award is really prestigious, but the way they value the works is probably not serious.

At first sight I noticed guache on the door, which is likely to have been entirely painted with opaque watercolour. What is the size of this painting? I can hardly imagine it's possible to obtain something similar in watercolour...but how are these works submitted for applications? By email? I hope not!!!!!
Anyway, also given that the work is pure watercolour ( a stunning technical ability should be recognized in this case!) I think this is definitely cheating.
An art prize should be awarded for the originality, for the style, and above all because it's unpublished. Recycling someone's else picture is certainly useful for practicing and improving one's technique or style, but I don't think it's a good idea to apply for a prize in this case.
The original idea I see in this reproduction is just juxtaposing the door to the old man in order to convey the idea of the passing o time, but it's not enough.
I am not so familiar with digital programs to look at it with a "lens", but such a photorealistic effect can seldom be seen in watercolour.
Anyway, I haven't any authority or experience to say it's not watercolour, and I would like to follow your comments on this.
At last, supposing there's no cheating at all, many people will have taken part to that competition, with lots of personal ideas and creativity, so it's a pity to award a photocopy of reality instead of a personal work of art. The owner of this striking work is certainly an excellent executor, but our aim is not that of becoming artisans, but creators.
Anyway this has to do with my personal view and can be debatable!
Regards
Sarah

This is a little off the main topic, but was recently asked to "touchup" a portrait that another artist had supposed to have painted. Something seemed odd when I first saw the supposed to be portrait in oils. So I got a small lenses and saw that the "oil painting" was actually a photo enlarged and coated with some semi transparent medium to make it look like a painting.

I cautiously darkened the contrast in a few important areas and the customer was very pleased. She wasn't pleased however when I told her that the so called portrait artist had only enlarged the photo she had sent him and made it look like a hand painted oil portrait.

ugh!! i cant believe someone would do such an awful thing..i didnt even realize that could be done..

It wasn't even a good print job. The dots were nearly as large as those on newpaper color photos.

Hihi guys I can't believe it... anyway, there are many people that seem to use this proceeding to commercialize their products on ebay!

that is very uggly to do something like that, and to know artists (real ones) have to struggle so hard to sell their work, and then these people come aroud doing these things and probably selling cheaper so clients will choose their work
this is just NOT fair!!

If i am understanding this ...those are photoshop pictures that are being put off as watercolor paintings ? if so I would say thats is cheating ...I have seen some very good portraits that look just like the person even the size lines up almost perfectly .. but you can always tell when a medium is being used .

They only look like photos to me.

Hard to believe they fooled judges with this .. there has to be more to this then we know ....maybe the judges were just common people who know little about art and just took their word on what they used ...I know it would be easy to fool some people ...but to do it and feel good about it let alone take place for it would be just something I cant understand how someone could even do it .

Is this cheating? My analysis here.


1. Are the original photos artworks by other artists (photographers) ? => YES

2. Are Rembrandt's paintings original artworks by Rembrandt? => YES

Sheryl Luxenburg copied people Original Photo Creation, similarly, we can
copy Rembrandt's master paintings.

So, if “Impermanence” by Sheryl Luxenburg is original and not cheating =>
Everyone can take any master paintings and copy and submit it to AWS for a chance
for Gold Medal of Honor.

Think about it.

From my analysis [Photoshop like software manipulating the stock photos from the source to the downloaded photo of the finished painting] I have been able to match pixel to pixel after altering the dimensions of both photos separately. The painting shows the colours have been colour corrected [more saturated] than the photos and this was applied to each photo at the same level throughout and I was able to duplicate and get the same result. I honestly don't know what is worse, lack of original thought in conjunction that all "Art" is derived various sources, or the fact that she printed this piece off a computer to gliceé machine. If her technique is to replicate a dot matrix printer with over lapping microscopic dots of watercolour paint, them it's time to take it to the crime lab to analyze the chemical makeup of the "paint" used in the piece and if it does turn out to be watercolour pigment, then try an experiment with an gliceé machine to replace the ink with watercolour paint and see if it works [I think it would gum up the jets]