APPROPRIATING IMAGES, When to Call it Yours.

To Appropriate: "to take without permission or consent; to sieze or capture."
Plagiarize: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (a created production) without crediting the source.


When using images, other than your own to create artwork, you should be attempting to locate the line where an image or design that was originally created by someone else, ceases to be theirs and becomes yours. To accomplish this, think about how you can insert your own ideas, changes, critiques into the image.

How much of a remnant of the original artist remains before you can claim authorship?

How little of your mark needs to be inserted to make the work your own?

As artists and designers we appropriate images and ideas all the time. The idea of a "true original" in many respects does not exist. Every creation is in some way influenced and inspired by other creations. Yet when can we call those images our own?


Here are some opinion's and critiques on appropriation, concerning the work of Shepard Fairey:

Authorship&Appropriation. "The act of appropriating an image to sell something will always be different than the act of appropriating an image to say something." Matt

Terry Gross's report on Shephard Fiarey's poster of President Obama "Inspiration or Infringement"



"What initially disturbed me about the art of Shepard Fairey is that it displays none of the line, modeling and other idiosyncrasies that reveal an artist’s unique personal style." Critique by Mark Vallen

OBEY Shepard Fairey or else you...