WIBU to print an artist's work at home?

[zatarontoast]

Asking as I really don't know if this is appropriate or not. I follow an artist on Instagram who does oil paintings and I really wanted one so enquired about the price. At £500 for a small size it is way beyond my budget or what I could justify in spending. But... I still want one. She doesn't do prints, so I was thinking I could print one off at home for my own use. I don't know much about these things so don't know if this is considering stealing or is just a no-no in general? My rationale is that she isn't losing by me doing this as I wasn't going to buy it anyway.

Artist here.
People doing what you are suggesting is the reason many artists struggle to make a living. If you do print off a poor quality print for yourself, it devalues the artist's work as a whole, as other people viewing it will think it is the actual standard of that artists work.

If you did it to a piece of my work and I discovered what you had done, I would take you to court for theft.

It is NOT appropriate, it is a mean, cheap act by a mean. cheap person. Save up your money, buy a piece of art honestly, and enjoy it knowing you have supported an artist.

Its illegal without permission although some images are copyright free if the artist has sold the copywright alongside the artwork and the new owner makes it freely available. I think images in books are different as you are allowed to make one copy for personal use of most publications and the images in the book will be copywright of the publisher.
I know artists who have had images "borrowed" for websites, its still straggling even if you don't print out the image! You are using their labour without compensating them.

Please, please don’t do this. Making a living from your art is incredibly difficult at the best of times, it’s almost impossible now. It would be really unethical. If you love her work so much, save up to buy it.

I'm an artist and this is a complete fucking joke to even think about this. You are being massively unreasonable. It's going to look shit too.

Honesty if you're gonna do shit like this you don't deserve nice art. Sorry but this fills me with rage.

Have you contacted the artist directly to ask if they can do you a print and what they’d charge. If they won’t do a print can you ask if you can pay for a digital image to print?

If the artist says no then start saving of you really want one of their paintings

If the artist has any sense, all images of her work will be watermarked and therefore won’t print properly anyway.

@zatarontoast

Thank you for all of your replies. I was wanting the legal stance so now I know it is illegal I won't do it. That's a good idea about asking her for an image. She has no watermark on her IG pictures. Can I ask what is the stance then about printing anything off the Internet for personal use? Dd had an art homework recently and was told to print stuff off using Google images, these must be photos that professionals have taken and the same principle applies?

If you want to do this properly, search for Creative Commons licensed images.

Unsplash is a good source for these. Pixabay do them, too, and you can search Flickr for Creative Commons licensed photos.

These are images (and other works) that the creators have put out for general use without charge.

If they're not Creative Commons licensed, then yes, it's theft.

I know I am playing devil advocate, but people pretending it WILL look shit are unhelpful too. A print will never look like an oil painting, obviously, but a print or a poster look pretty similar.

You can't attract interest without widening your audience, but then you can't stop wider audience to make copies, take photos or print them..

@romeolovedjulliet

i'm going to get my arse kicked aren't i ? but i bet this happens more than people will admit to, down loading photos, professional photographic prints et al and claiming as their own work. resolution won't be that good though so not really worth it.

The fact that it happens doesn’t make it right. Intellectual property theft is no different to other kinds of theft. The creator is entitled to the income from her creative effort just as anyone else doing a job.

@Plussizejumpsuit I don't mean any disrespect to the artist or to demean her work, I was genuinely asking if this was allowed because I didn't know. As I said I've saved loads of pics on Instagram (why then do they allow you to save stuff?) so didn't think anything of it.
For those asking I was going to print it off in a photo booth type place, a 4x6" photo to display on my windowsill. Her watercolour is 20x20". She definitely does not do prints, that has already been asked.

Chances are, those paintings are other peoples commissions if she charges £500+ for them.

So you'd not only be stealing her intellectual copyright, but someone elses bought and paid for commissioned piece of artwork.

Please don't do it. I comm quite a few bits of artwork (digital rather than physical) and there are people who steal it to use on webpages and twitter profiles..etc.. it pisses me off, and i have to file DMCA take down requests to the websites.. its MY fucking artwork.

Commission your own or buy a legal print of something else.

@BestestBrownies there was no watermark, which made me think it was OK. @ladybee28 thank you, that's very helpful.

Firstly the artist retains copyright even when the artwork is sold unless specifically sold along with it ..usually to a publisher and for an extra fee , so they could sue if it was discovered.
Then there's the resolution issue ..it will look terrible.
There was a hoo haa five years ago when an 'artist' called Richard Price took images from instagram users, blew them up in size and printed them on large canvases and sold them for tens of thousands of dollars each ...I think he got away with it by claiming he altered them enough to avoid copyright issues ..still a shit thing to do ...anyway...as an artist myself ...send me a link to the original and I'll do you one "in the style of" for a very reasonable fee😉😬😁😁

YABU but you wouldn’t be the first to do it. My DH is an artist and I’ve seen his work tattooed on people, printed on T-shirt’s and phone cases on dodgy websites and even used without permission as a backdrop at a concert at the O2. There’s not much he can do about it so unless you put a big watermark across the image or only post low resolution images online there it’s to be expected. Morally wrong though.

A friend who is an artist often shares her pictures on social media. Recently, someone asked if she minded if she used one of her images on her Christmas cards and the artist friend was quite upset about it and say no as that's her livlihood.

A friend of mine made a calendar of some of her artwork. I was thinking of cutting out some of the calendar pages and framing them when I was done. Is that ok? Or is it being cheeky? I did pay for the calendar.

The recent BBC show "Home is where the Art is" showed how much work goes into painting ,and creating something original and rather lovely .As others have said ,even if you do print off a copy it is very unlikely to look anything like the same is it? Maybe you could save your Birthday or Christmas money up , Or suggest a dual present for you and DH .Either way it will look wonderful for years and you will have a clear conscience and sleep well at night!

Really interesting food for thought here. I'll have to go around my house and sanitise it of other people's intellectual property, I'm quite a thief I've discovered. @Nikori I have a few framed calender pics, I actually thought I was doing a good deed rather than throwing it in the recycling bin

@zatarontoast

Thank you for all of your replies. I was wanting the legal stance so now I know it is illegal I won't do it. That's a good idea about asking her for an image. She has no watermark on her IG pictures. Can I ask what is the stance then about printing anything off the Internet for personal use? Dd had an art homework recently and was told to print stuff off using Google images, these must be photos that professionals have taken and the same principle applies?

The artist owns copyright on both their original painting and the photo they uploaded to Instagram.

Your DD's school is not in breach of copyright because it is considered 'fair use' to use copyrighted work for educational purposes within limits; there are restrictions such as they can't print off an entire book and distribute it.

Absolutely not ok. If you can’t afford to pay for it then you can’t have it. I would really love to have a BMW but can’t afford one. I’m not about to sit around planning a way to get one on the cheap or steal one. You either pay for it or you can’t have it. Printing it at home is stealing her work and means she won’t earn anything from it. She maybe chooses not to do prints because she sells her pieces as exclusive one-offs and this is reflected in the price. If I had bought a one off from an artist I’d be pissed off to see a cheap photo booth printed copy in someone else’s window! Snd I’d be angry that the artist lied to me about exclusivity. What you’re thinking of doing is wrong fit so many reasons.

@TheInebriati what is the difference between me printing off a picture from the Internet of a desert for dd's homework and me printing off the same pic to display in my house? I'm not being goady, genuinely trying to see the difference. I could say both are educational.

@Dragonfly3 that makes a lot of sense about exclusivity. I don't know how she does it, just puts up a pic and says DM me for the price.

Just do it. It’s not going to effect anybody in the slightest.
The artist isn’t losing out. No one is going to see your picture and then judge the original artist in the quality.
You aren’t profiting from it, you aren’t pretending you did it.
The police aren’t gonna break down your door for a bloody photo.

I dont see why you are having so much trouble understanding copyright law, or why you expect people here who are trying to explain it to you to defend it as if we wrote the law.

Whoever creates the piece owns the copyright.
You aren't breaking copyright by framing something you bought such as a calendar.
You are breaking copyright if you print off the same picture from the internet, unless the artist gave you permission (licence) to do that.

www.gov.uk/copyright

creativecommons.org/licenses/

See, it's situations like these where I think I wouldn't ask MN I'd just do it, and IRL everyone would say "yeah just do it", only on MN is this akin to theft 😂

And unless you have some very weird friends (or one of those Pearl clutchers tracks you down) no one that matters (ie the police) will ever know about it!