Since I have a break in the battle this morning and the voices from people yelling at me wanting something have died down to a dull roar, I'm going to take a moment to talk about something funny that I saw recently.
Every now and then I'll get an asshat who'll get on my case saying that I'm "copying" someone elses' work (and the list gets kinda long sometimes about who exactly it is I'm copying or my work looks like), but there's one person in particular who I've been compared to numerous times. I'm not going to name that person, not because I don't like them or their work; rather I'm not going to name them because I don't want to either directly or indirectly cause people to try to compare us. That and personally I think our work looks nothing alike, but I digress. :D
I honestly hate it when people do that and not judge the respective artist on their own merits. Now don't get me wrong; I've seen people do blatant copies of others work. Hell I've had people do blatant copies of some of my shots too (which I find both flattering and amusing at times). As a rule though I try my damned hardest not to copy other photographers. In fact I go out of my way to not even look at the work of other photographers who shoot similar styles that I do so I don't get influenced by it (which in of itself is a REALLY long story which I won't get into today).
With that said, today I quite literally stumbled onto something that made me laugh a little. Not a "that's freaking funny" laugh, but a laugh like "damn, isn't that ironic!".
I happened to stumble upon a page of a particular photographer/artists work that some people would tell me I'm copying/my work looks a lot like. I say stumble because I literally found it by accident. The page isn't named the artists' name, and unless you either knew the name of the page or (like me) find it by accident/pure chance from it being linked on another person's page, you'd wouldn't easily find it.
Normally at this point I'd just close my browser and not look at the person's work, but curiosity got the better of me today. :D
So I'm looking at the artists' latest work and I'm literally saying to myself "Holy Shit! Some of their recent stuff DOES look an awful lot like my style!". Now keep in mind I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT CONCEPTS here, I'm talking about technique.
More specifically I'm looking at how the image is put together; the techniques that go into making the image itself and give it character.
One thing in particular I started doing recently is "sketching" in an image. If you look at some of my recent pinup shots, you'll see that some of the elements of either the model's attire, or the background itself, looks like it was sketched in and then partially painted (so it looks unfinished). You can see it in one of my images below of my muse Heather actually. It's not a particularly hard technique to do, but as far as I'm aware, no other pinup photographer/artist has done it (with one major exception who I'll disclose in a moment).
Besides a lot of their latest stuff being on pure white like I do, I noticed that on a handful of images the same sketching technique was in use. OMG! The horror!! Somebody call my mommy and tell her to tell him to stop copying me!!!1 :D
Now if you were to have the same thought processes as the copy cat conspiracy theorists who walk around with tin foil hats, this photographer/artist is blatantly ripping off my technique! :D If I had a huge over-inflated ego I'd love to believe that and I'd run with it. I live in reality though and the truth is something much more mundane really. :D
On the page where I found their work, it allows for the artist to respond to comments that people leave them. Right there on the screen was the answer behind all of it.
We share almost the same influences/sources of inspiration with one very important pinup artist in particular (and it's a big one):
Olivia De Berardinis
And there's your answer folks! If you pick up Olivia's latest calendar and her latest book (Malibu Cheesecake), you'll see that technique used quite a bit in her paintings. It's not exactly a new technique really; I've seen it used in fashion drawings from the 80's and is what inspired me initially to try it on my own work It's pretty striking when done well. More recently after I saw Olivia use it, I melded the idea from both sources, thought up with a way to do it in Photoshop, and then ran with it.
At least now it makes some sense (to me at least) why some individuals make this connection. We're sharing the some of the same sources of inspiration so it makes sense why some of the styles would intersect.
With that said, maybe now the copy cat conspiracy theorists will add another layer of foil to their heads and STFU so we can finally put this baby to bed! :)
