What you do for your own personal use is fine.... and for the most
part for educational use, too. If one follows the letter of the law,
one should get permission to use the photographs.... NO ONE has time
for that. Since you are using a variety of photographs for
inspiration, no one will be able to tell where the inspiration came.
The copyright holder would have a hard time proving infringement (and
how would he/she ever find out anyways?) My point was to teach
students what the law states - making a derived work from a photograph
(regardless of media) is a violation of written copyright law.
Caricatures have been allowed since the beginning of time
(practically). Some Renaissance artists even hid them in their
paintings. Caricatures today would fall under parody and allowed by
law. I have not found any case of a celebrity sending cease and desist
for caricature artists (unless they were truly offensive).
You can display your parody/caricatures on your school web site without fear....
although some celebrities do have their image trademarked - yet I
doubt they would challenge a school project.
A graphics/practicing artist, however, may be challenged if he/she
tried to market prints and such of his celebrity caricatures (without
permission of the celebrity).
Jackie - pretty please send me some examples of student work for
Incredible Art Department. I will take care of "permission" to use on
IAD.
One alternative to celebrity portraits would be to do faculty
portraits. Take several pictures of each staff member.... Do the
lesson using their photos. That might be a fun lesson....No extra
permission letters needed to use photos.....no permission to publish
needed.
Hope this answers some questions.
Judy Decker
On 1/16/06, Jacqueline Dusseau-Beilke <dusseauj@sf.k12.sd.us> wrote:
> Question for Judy regarding celeb portraits and copyright ... would
> cartooning and caricature of a celebrity also be copyright violation?
> In my graphics classes I introduce cartooning and caricature - and
> celebs are very popular picks. I have the students gather several
> pictures to look at the facial features and what one or two items would
> be exaggerated.
> Thanks for your thoughts:
> Jackie - coming out of lurking in South Dakota. :-)
