[ken]

on the left we have a piece of art i'm not quite calling my own yet. it's basically finished though. on the right (or below it, for the resolution-challenged) is a painting by the great michael whelan.

when i first saw that painting i saw a woman in a white dress. as you can see, that woman's head is actually a ledge and her body is light on a wall. so i enlarged michael's pic (i used the gif above, not a larger version) and painted my vision over it.

my question is, should/could i call this new pic my own? i hope i'm not overstepping any ethical boundaries my overpainting his work.

-Ken

[jome]

Wha!?

You know, in the old days, my parents kept every leftover piece of wallpaper for me to draw on. I found figures in the patterns, and no, that didn't make it the intelectual property of the guy designing the pattern.

[Christian +]

Personally, I don't think that there would be any problem in that. Yes I think you could and should call it your own, otherwise who's would it be ?
Btw it�s a nice vision you got there, but I still can�t see how you saw a woman in that painting.
Anyway, the interpretation you did, is still quite unfinished and I�d say something really nice can come out if you put in more detail.
I think this is the wrong forum though. This would fit more in the work in progress.

[Eire]

I've often looked at thumbnails on online galleries and saw something totally different from what the piece actually was, sometimes using the idea myself later on. I never even considered that it might not be thought of as original, since it's your own imagination at work, interpreting things differently.

What you did with that tracing looks so vastly different from the original that I really don't think it matters at all. If you're uncertain about it you could always just put a link to the Whelan painting in the description, like you did with some of the other paintings in your gallery. It's interesting to see the images side by side and sort of see what your thought process was... but I wouldn't worry about it.

[Lunatique]

I think it's fine. Your piece looks nothing like the original--it's merely inspired by it, in a very abstract way.

Did you know that many songwriters do similar things? They listen to other people's songs, and THOUGHT they heard the correct lyrics. Then later, they find out the actual lyrics are NOTHING like what they had thought. So, they go ahead and use the lyrics they THOUGHT they heard on their own songs.