This topic is 50 shade of grey all in itself. There are so many variables at play with this. The most simple solution is DONT COPY OTHER ARTIST WORK!… unless you have actual permission from the artist or photographer. There are many free reference photo websites with thousands of photos that are specific for artists to use. If you are planning on selling your artwork I highly recommend researching this topic yourself. Copyright laws and definitions are just as ever changing as tax laws.
You will need to find photos that have a special license attached to them. You will want to look for:
- Creative Commons Zero License (CCO)
- Attribution Liscense
With both of these, you can make any kind of artwork you like from the photo without asking permission. You can sell and make prints of your work and sell those, or use in any commercial design. The only difference is the CCO does not require you credit the owner of the photograph, but the Attribution license does.
Where not to find reference photos
These sites are not a good place to look for reference photos. Most will have a copyright attached to the image even if you cant see or find it. Think about it… most photos you see on any social media are taken, used, changed, and shared without the original artists permission. Same goes for those sites that pop up when you Google “Easy beginner paint ideas”. You get thousands of images, and then those web pages promising 48 easy beginner paintings, that you can click through. Those again are taken from Pinterest or Google and each image source is linked back to the website they got the photo from. Repeat this multiple times and you still probably will never find the actual originator.
- Social Sites
- Books
- Magazines
- Artists pages
Popular reference photo sites to use
- Pixabay
- Unsplash
- MorgueFile
- Pexels
- ISO Republic
- Paint My Photo
Pixabay has close to 2 million photos and videos, that are nearly all published under the CCO license. The site is easy to browse and easy to double check the license.
Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license. The website claims over 207,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 17 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 2 million photos. Wikipedia
MorgueFile is a website database for free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use. The name comes from the term ” morgue file“, which refers to post-production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file.
Welcome to ISO Republic! We’re an independent website that provides curated collections of the best high-resolution CC0 photos and videos. Our mission is to offer highly curated collections of stock images and videos that you can use both personally and commercially.
Paint My Photo (PMP) is a social networking site dedicated to sharing photos for artistic inspiration, without fear of infringing copyright. You will need to create an account, but it is totally free to use.
Here is an informative video about how to take your inspirations while not creating a copy
You can check out more information in our post Copy Cat or Instructional? Where we discuss what you should be copying along with what intentions mean.