Reference and Other People's Art

[Errol McGillivray]

Reference is a crucial tool. It's more important than any one of our supplies. You could draw that creature without a pencil. Use a pen. Use a crayon. Get a stick, burn the end, and draw that creature. Piss said creature's image in the snow. Whatever. But without reference, your creature fails to to be convincing, no matter how expensive your tablet or paints.

We actually don't pick up all that much with our senses. Our brains fill in the gaps to show us our world. The information we store is filtered so that anything unimportant is purged and only the core of the idea remains. Because of this, we can't trust our memories to show us an accurate picture.

Collecting and using reference helps fill those gaps by making more details important, which increases your visual library, so you're slightly more accurate next time. It helps us add authenticity to our artwork, because all the details we've purged are right there in the reference. Using reference results in images with more substance by giving the viewer details that actually mean something, rather than empty symbols and emoticons we think represent what we would like them to mean.

Every one of us should make use of this free resource.

That said, many people have the misguided idea that it's alright to reference someone else's artwork. You can study the artwork of others to analyze their technique and learn. You can be inspired by the artwork of others, so that some idea of theirs sows the seed of a new idea in you, but you cannot us the artwork of others as reference. Using the artwork of others as reference is, by definition, plagiarism.

And everyone sees right through it.

This problem stems from people having a misguided idea that referencing means you copy from various sources. Here's a great little speech from our own Nathaniel Mea on that topic. I don't see the point of repeating what she already said so well.

Nathaniel Mea

On the Issue of Referencing

This is not to say gather a bunch of images and frankentrace, either. You're still not fooling anyone.

The obvious:

Copying someone else's art is plagiarism.

What you may not realize:

Photos are people's artwork. Copying photos is plagiarism. It doesn't matter if it's stock or public domain. If you didn't create it, but you use it under the pretense that you did create it, it's plagiarism.

How often or how long ago have we done something like this? The end result doesn't have to look exactly like that photo for it to be plagiarized. This was the work of Yuki Suetsugu, who in 2005 confessed to plagiarizing images from photos and other comics, including Takehiko Inoue's, Slam Dunk.

Speaking of which, funny story... 3 months later, Takehiko Inoue is shown to have plagiarized images from NBA official posters and photos.

You're probably wondering why all my examples in this thread are japanese comics. I felt it would be more relevant and relate-able to the gaians that may not understand these concepts. Most of the artists around here that are aren't professionals, students, or seriously self taught draw anime and manga clones. It's these people that I also constantly see in PP and AD talking about trying new styles or how to learn a style, because they really don't have one of their own yet.

This thread isn't about slamming on the animu though. It's about the about the fact that if you don't use reference at all, your work will suffer because you're relying on knowledge you don't have, but if you do not learn what referencing really is, you will continue to (cause let's face it, we've all already done it at for some portion of our artists' journey, before we came to understand) plagiarize, whether you intend to or not.

Honesty time:

Part of doing studies and using reference properly is being able to turn the thing about in your mind. To walk around it and be able to draw it in any action, from any angle. Copying stops you from putting in the time and attention it takes to analyze and interpret an object and to expand your visual library.
Have you found yourself unable to draw something you didn't have an exact "reference" of? (Like the position of a limb or entire pose/gesture.)

What have you done when this happens?

Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. Plagiarism is an issue of ethics. infringement is an issue of the law. Most people get that mixed up. Knowing this, do you feel that in informal, purely hobbyist communities like gaia, it's being unethical is reason enough for people no to to do it, or do you think the only deterrent is the idea that it's illegal?

I always felt that a person who can't face truths about themselves aren't worth talking to. Nothing that comes from their mouths is the truth. And not because they want to deceive you, but because in order to function, they have to lie to themselves. No one will hold your honest answers against you, however, people will have plenty to say when you prove yourself to be completely full of s**t.

Have you, at any time in your artistic life, plagiarized something, whether in ignorance or intention and been praised for that work? How did receiving that praise make you feel at the time?  

[Vena]

Have you found yourself unable to draw something you didn't have an exact "reference" of? (Like the position of a limb or entire pose/gesture.)What have you done when this happens?

I think I find myself in this jam fairly often. I really hate to see trends in my work that are because I didn't feel like attempting a pose (or that I am sticking to safe ones) , I guess its a natural thing, but I think every training artist has that problem. I guess the most common one people start with is the 'every person with hands behind their back'. No, I don't really like obedient schoolboys that much...

Typically I find this problem when I haven't though through the construction of my scene, composition all that well. There are some ideas that are just so fully fleshed in the mind that when they are drawn down they look good to me, because I have thought over the physics of the situation, because the pose in intuitive, and it has reason. I think a lot of problems with posing comes from a lack of reason too. I hate making floating people and typical video game poses (and I do it anyways) but I always like the work I do that has the character reasoning and navigating the scene and not just being there to be pretty. So typically if I am stuck in a pose my solution is to scrap it completely and start over and rethink what they are doing.

When it gets to something tricky like perspective or a weird angle I think about first - if its necessary to be posed like that ? If I am dead set on a certain angle I look up multiple references, of say an arm and hands (I feel like all my hands are tentatively drawn), I don't look for the same pose because I feel that in copying it I will disjoint my image... so I look up multiples for a refresher on how the joint or whatever works.

I feel like the scrapping solution is usually what works for me... I typically like my construction. If a pose isn't working it is probably because it is a stupid pose in the first place.


Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. Plagiarism is an issue of ethics. infringement is an issue of the law. Most people get that mixed up. Knowing this, do you feel that in informal, purely hobbyist communities like gaia, it's being unethical is reason enough for people no to to do it, or do you think the only deterrent is the idea that it's illegal?

I don't really like the hobbyist argument, because typically they care about their art, they wish they could draw better and can't put in as much time to do so... well its unfair of me to say all hobbyists are the same. I have seen too many of the people who post work that isn't their own or photoshop photos, I don't really know what that is besides some sort of freakish masturbation. But for the real hobbyists, I know there is an underlying passion for art, it just doesn't have as much of a priority in their life as other pursuits. I think that these people doing it out of a love for art know they are cheating themselves if they are not doing it on their own.

I know there are also people who just copy photos and that is it, I don't really know how I feel about that. I think it is rather pointless to have a pencil copy of a photograph. But at the same time I know it is gratifying in a different way to be able to copy something quite accurately, I don't really classify it in the pursuit of artwork though. It feels like a different kind of beast.

Have you, at any time in your artistic life, plagiarized something, whether in ignorance or intention and been praised for that work? How did receiving that praise make you feel at the time?

I don't think I ever have. Actually, technically I might be right now because I keep forgetting to link the reference for an image I did for an reference excercise, lol. I will go fix that. But that is not the point! I don't think otherwise I ever have. I have done some technical life studies/still life studies which people have complimented me on but I never really feel anything from that. It's a subjective thing from them. We never had a connection from anything in the art besides that they had some interest in chinese teapots or something.