Ethics and Flash

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Wednesday May 28th, 2008 @ 1:33 AM

Filed under: Tattoos

Hey. I’ve been browsing the BME galleries for submitted flash to practice my drawing. I’ve made three large pieces for various purposes and want to continue, but I want to be able to say that they’re totally my own creations.

Is it ethical to borrow from someone else’s flash to create a new piece? How do professional tattoo artists learn and develop their own styles?

No matter what you think, these are NOT your drawings. They are your copies of drawings and ethically if I were you I would never steal someone’s drawings and claim them as your own.

Copying other designs by tracing and later attempting to re-draw is great for practice, but you should never try to re-sell the prints to anyone else. Because how would you feel if you spent your own personal time drawing up something and then next thing you know someone is re-copying it and selling it as their own work?

A true artist will practice on various styles of flash and after enough time will be able to draw these things up easily (flowers,etc). For more detailed serious work sometimes artists will investigate and take bits and pieces of various imagery and piece them together as one before drawing it completely out.

Professional tattoo artists, the ones I know anyways, who have developed their own styles. Have done so through countless hours of sketching, drawing, copying and just fully surrounding themselves within their art. To be honest there is no “personal style” anymore as there’s so many artists out there so pretty much every “style” has been thought up already…But a real artist will not need to copy anyone elses work, they should be ready, willing and capable of drawing up a broad range of imagery no matter what.

Personally I never got the whole: “I only do black and grey” or: “I only do color” way of thinking some artists take. A true artist in my eyes should be as I said ready, willing and capable of drawing any and all potential ideas that a client thinks up, be it: realistic, cartoony, black, color,etc imagery. Yet they’ll still be able to put their own personal spin into the design based on their emotions/feelings, what the client is looking for,etc.

Just let your thoughts and emotions flow from your mind and soul onto the paper.

Posted by Warren Hiller | Permalink | Leave a comment | Trackback