Art is either Plagiarism or Revolution

First Blog........must be interesting, cerebral, funny, poignant.... with good spelling.......Yh Right!........:/ Here Goes!

'Art is either Plagiarism or Revolution' - Paul Gauguin. I am heavily invested in this quote, as think it really hits onto the problems an artist faces; mainly how to be original! ...... The fact that Paul Gauguin said this is also very important, not because of the deep meanings this statement conveys, more because he was one of the worst artists of the past 200 years!......He took his own point very seriously, and by the looks of the picture 'below' he decided to plagiarise the work of a 6 year old school girl!:-

Nancy Walker - Age 6 :)

.....oh Wait... its Paul Gauguin french Master.

Really?!.... Fck OFF!...HAHAHA! 

I started a piece of Artwork a few months ago and it was supposed to be a homage to the GREAT Tim Burton (opinion ALERT.....Majority of his movies are awful... but his Art is Fantastic!) but after sketching out the picture I realised that it was a TOTAL rip-off of the great mans work; judge for yourself:-


My Piece:-

Tims Piece:-

What a Fckin Plagiarist I Am! haha

In an attempt to belay the criticism that my 'Best Piece of Art to date' is a total and utter rip-off of Tims work, I decided to vastly over complicate the design and turn it into far more of a technical exercise.... than a piece of innovative artwork..... Hence the reason I spent 16 hours writing tens of thousands of 'HA's' to form the background....... and even with all of this extra effort..... I think Tims is better! ..... Bastard!

And that is not all!..... You think that Tim is the only famous illustrator to be ripped off in my piece?!..... really? ......well if you look closely at my Signature; and have abit of knowledge of art, you will realise that the ink-blot has been heavily influenced by 'My Artistic Idol'.... Ralph Steadman..... I just ripped the ink blot from right under his feet.... Like a rug! ..... But to compensate him for this obvious theft I have sent him one of my RBXXI T-shirts with this image sprawled over the front.... So he can WEAR a Plagiarism of his OWN work.... Nice :P

HOWEVER....... going back to the picture itself, I am rather fortunate that this piece of Tims work hasn’t been highly publicised, such is the way with his 'Sketchbook' work.....(Man id love to get hold of one of his sketch books!) .... and as I’m sure you'll agree, that is very beneficial for me $$$$

After completing my Ventriloquist piece I played around with it, via filters, contrast, shadows blahblahblah; all in an effort to change it enough so the connection to Burtons work is less obvious....AND .....None of this worked! So upon realising that my best piece of work; no matter how I changed it, it could still be linked back to Burtons sketch.... I decided to go 'Back to the Drawing Board!'... Literally!

My reasoning was 'If Plagiarism is too obvious; I’ll go for a bit of Revolution!'

I spent 10 minutes wildly scribbling on a piece of thick Bristol board with a Parker Roller-ball.... Which I have never used to draw with before..... And slowly but surely the ventriloquist and 2nd puppet started to appear in the scribble. Knowing that I had captured the pose and expression perfectly, I decided not to re-draw it.... and just paint straight over the ink.... WITH MORE INK! And even though it broke all of MY rules.... it worked:-

Initially I was left with a 'splodge' (amazing word) of colours and shapes..... but its amazing what you can do with a 'Uni-Pin Fine Liner - 0.3, 0.1 and 0.05'.... and this piece is actually one of my favourites, because it took me 2 attempts (but both attempts are finished pieces in their own right).... Plus I think the colour adds that extra dimension to the ventriloquists character.... the MADNESS I was aiming for....... the only negative is that I priced up the cost of 20 screen printed t-shirts of this piece and it was going to cost around £500, to which I told the guy to swivel and promptly left his shop ha-ha 

But my point is that all art is plagiarism.... its all been done before.... its just that my first ventriloquist was so similar to Tim Burtons..... I should have saved myself some time and just traced it!

Next blog will be about Absolem the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.... I’ve done four pictures of him.... and I’m still not fckin happy!

Till Next Time..... BIZAL!

RBXXI