Notice
Watercolor Vs. Tempera
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- Category: Art Miscellanea
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- Written by Valeria Garrido Bisceglia
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Occasionally when speaking to artists, I find that there is some confusion between tempera and watercolor. So let's "water" things down a bit and see if we get to the root of the problem.
Paint consists of two basic components: pigment and binder. The binder is typically a solid resin, gum or other material that is diluted or dissolved in a vehicle, such as water or an organic solvent.
Technically speaking watercolor is considered a kind of tempera.
The word tempera comes from the verb temper which means to "bring to a desired consistency." Dry pigments are made usable by "tempering" them with a binder and adhesive. The term came to distinguish this kind of painting from fresco painting in which the colors were made by grinding dry-powder pigments in pure water, dry and set with the plaster to become a permanent part of (usually) a wall.
The original tempera paint is created by grinding dry powdered pigments into egg yolk (binder) and adding water (vehicle) hence the term "egg tempera."
Copyright Myths Debunked
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- Category: Art Miscellanea
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- Written by Jonathan Pink
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Posted on September 9, 2009 by Jonathan Pink
Over lunch the other day, a coworker asked whether it was true that there was no need to register work with the Copyright Office as long as you put it into an envelope and mail it to yourself. Gazing past the rigatoni stuck in his teeth and focusing on the question, I realized that I had heard it before. Many times before. "So what's the deal?" he asked, "Is it true or not?"
The answer is ... buried in the following multiple-choice test.
Myth 1:
Copyright protection comes from placing a "©" on your work.
a. Absolutely true. Why else would that little c be in the circle?
b. Sometimes true, depending on things I'm not really sure about.
c. Not true.
The answer is c. For works created after March 1, 1989, copyright protection attaches immediately and automatically at the moment of creation. You can even try it at home: take a pen, draw a quick sketch. Done? Great. Copyright protection has already attached. And it does not require you to pen in that familiar © symbol. 17 USC §401(a); 17 USC §102(a).
For works created before March 1989, the © was required for protection-although in the labyrinth of copyright laws, some allowance was made for works published after December 31, 1977 if the would-be copyright owner took certain measures to cure the error of omitting the mark. That means that if you take your kid's Darth Vader action figure, give it Barbie-like hair, and dress it in platform shoes, you're going to get hit with an infringement action when you try selling it at Toys-R-Us as Ella Vader. You also risk getting hit with a morals charge.
Copyright Pitfall No. 2: When Nature Inspires Your Art, Make Sure You Copy Only Mother Nature
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- Category: Art Miscellanea
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- Written by Tobias Butler, Attorney at Law
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Copyright Pitfall No. 2: When Nature Inspires Your Art, Make Sure You Copy Only Mother Nature
As we discussed in Pitfall No. 1, copyright protection for nature-based works is a different animal (so to speak). While judicial opinions may seem intimidating to most artists (and people generally), it’s important to understand how courts handle copyrighted works since court is where you go to have your protections enforced.
Copyright Can Be Big or Small. What Exactly Is Infringement? But, as we already covered, your copyright only covers the list of original elements you add. So, you can stop me only from taking those elements. Putting it all together, your copyright prevents me (or anyone) from copying the original elements you add to something.
You can get a copyright for your original work of authorship. But, your copyright (i.e. just what it covers) can be bigger or smaller depending on how much of your work is original to you.
The "right" in copyright entitles you to keep someone from infringing your copyright. I infringe your copyright when I copy your work, plain and simple.
Narrow Exceptions to an Old Rule: The Role of Fair Use in Copyright Law
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- Category: Art Miscellanea
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- Written by Coco Soodek
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By John Paul Benitez & Coco Soodek, Attorneys at Law
Several months ago, the American Watercolor Society awarded its 2008 Gold Medal to Sheryl Luxenburg for the work Impermanence (pictured above), a hyper-realistic painting of an old man juxtaposed with a rotting piece of fence. Luxenburg’s prize-winning work consisted of emulations of two stock photographs. Employing a pointillist’s technique, Ms. Luxenburg blew up the two stock images and used the enlarged pixilations to guide her brush.
A series of spontaneous, vigorous debates erupted on the Web about Luxenburg’s conduct and entitlement to the prize. Many people assumed that Impermanence infringed on the copyrights of the stock photographers and, therefore, should be disqualified.
These assumptions about infringement and about ways to avoid it underscore a persistent and confusing question for the pop or mixed-media artist: When do you cross the line into copyright infringement?
The Fundamentals of Copyright
Copyright protects the creator of a work by embedding exclusive rights to copy, sell, show and change the work within the work itself. However, copyright protects the rest of the world by placing temporal and discursive limits on those exclusive rights, allowing for improvements, academic dissemination and comment that may come later. For example, only you can make posters from your 1999 sculpture of a bowl of mangoes, but I can publish that poster to illustrate my contention that mangoes were a popular artistic subject in 1999. And, 70 years after your untimely death, I can sell those posters for my own account.
In spite of copyright’s long history, few people, including artists (and some lawyers), are clear on when an artist can use another’s work and still not be liable. Comments on the Web following Luxenburg's victory revealed a persistent (and erroneous) belief that you can use another’s artistic creation as long as you use less than 30 percent of it.
Here is the general rule: Use of all or any part of someone else’s copyrighted work constitutes copyright infringement. This includes copying and making derivative works from another’s work, as well as distributing, displaying and selling someone else’s work.