Am I "stealing" another artist's art style?

[milkchai]

Hey all, this is a weird issue and I wasn't too sure where to ask this. I've lurked here for a few years now and hope some of you could provide insight on how I should handle this.

Some Background: I like doing style studies of various artists and general art styles in my spare time. For reference, I'm fairly experienced and don't use any methods that involve tracing or copying. I analyze the artist's stylistic decisions and apply them to my own characters, poses & compositions. Usually these sit on my computer collecting dust because they are just for practice.

Most of my art style study references come from Pinterest. I search up a vague term like "cartoon art style" and throw a ton of art pieces I like into a board to reference later. I didn't realize it at the time, but a lot of the art pieces that I saved and referenced were from the same artist. Apparently they have many different art styles and user handles, which I only discovered by checking the comments on some of the artworks sometime after this situation popped up.

The Problem: I started a tiktok and made a couple short animations & drawings using that hyrbid style. I branched off the art style and inserted my own stylistic decisions to make it more original, or so I thought. These videos got explosively popular and I gained tens of thousands of followers in just a week. Then I began receiving quite a few comments that assumed I was that artist from Pinterest. I spent awhile assuring them that I wasn't that artist, I just had a similar style. No one has responded negatively to that fact at the moment, but I'm still worried by how many comments I'm getting related to it.

This is when I went back and discovered those images I referenced were all by the same artist. I wanted to contact them and see if I could get express permission from them to continue drawing in a similar style, but that turned out to be very difficult. They have over 10+ different accounts with different usernames over the years, and it looks like they haven't been active on any form of social media for 3 years now. They are no longer making any art or doing any form of commissions as far as I can tell.

Now I'm stuck between a rock and hard place. I'd love to continue posting content with this style because it's honestly very fun and relaxing for me. However, I don't want people to think I'm stealing someone else's style or potentially impede on the artist's livelihood if they ever come back.

How should I go about this? Would a simple "I'm not [artist name]" in my bio be enough? Should I try to deliberately change more aspects about my art style so it's not as similar? Or is this not really an issue I should be worried about at all?

Any advice is appreciated.

[bulgariansumo]

Congratulations on the influx of followers! I feel like it's normal to try to emulate an art style you like, and never really got the whole "stealing art style" criticism, especially if the "thief" injects their own elements into the style. As long as you're not trying to be them/steal their characters or ideas, I think you should be in the clear. If you feel it's necessary to put "I'm not [artist name]" in your bio, then go ahead.

[IndigoShirtProd]

If you haven't already, you should be crediting the artist in any posts you make referencing their art, especially if it comes off looking very similar. Other that you really shouldn't have to do anything. You can clarify in the comments, or in the description, or in your bio if you feel the need, though. Stealing an art style isn't really a thing, unless you're stealling art/tracing and passing it off as your own.

[BoomerZ]

Almost all styles of artwork are copies of other styles with your added mistakes. Those mistakes become your style. As long as you are tracing, no one cares. The amount of people that copied J. Scott Campbell or Michael Turner (Fathom) back in the day was ridiculous. But you will grow into a style that works for you as you go on.

[NickRowler]

Do you have examples of your art and the references? It’s hard to really give advice in this situation unless I am aware of how close the styles are.

This could be a misunderstanding but I don’t know.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Even if you are literally copying the other artist's style intentionally from the get-go, imo there's no problem with that as long as you're honest about it. If people are mistaking you for that artist, at that point you should state somewhere visible that you're not them and you're just inspired by them, otherwise you'd be knowingly letting people be deceived.

Imo the problem with 'stealing' is dishonesty, not the fact that you're copying something someone else came up first. There are those who will disagree with me and they might give you crap for 'stealing' the other artist's style anyway, so just be prepared I guess; I for one believe that if that day comes, you have every right to defend your choices with your head held high :]

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Is it even reasonable to assume that an artist's style is something only they have a right to use? It seems like it would limit the number of artists in the world if they had to stop creating when someone says their work resembles someone else's style. If you were tracing their work, that's another thing altogether. I think it would be cool of you, now that this awareness has come to you, to mention (at least occasionally) that your inspiration & unaware-teacher was that other artist.

[darthmongoose]

Yeah, you're seriously only "stealing if you do one or more of the following:

1. Actually steal and repost somebody's art.
2. Trace somebody else's work (like even if you change details like clothing or hair, it's still not cool).
3. Seriously rip off the pose, composition, style and colour scheme of a piece in a way that isn't clearly highlighted as being a deliberate homage to something that the audience will recognise as one (so like, if you do a cover where everyone's posed like the original Star Wars poster and painted in a similar style, that's a definite homage and recognisable as such that's cool, but if it's like... a random nice drawing by a moderately famous internet person and you draw something with the same poses, style and colours without a very visible link back to the original piece but say it's a homage only if somebody calls you out... then it's kind of crappy because people won't necessarily recognise the reference).
4. Literally make a physical replica of somebody else's work and try to sell it as the original.

Though there are some other nasty things to avoid that aren't strictly stealing but... are horrible to do to other artists.

1. Having a very similar style to somebody else and trying to poach their clients. Deliberately approaching people you know commission that person but offering a lower rate to undercut them (seriously, this actually happens).
2. Making very similar style artwork to somebody else and literally impersonating them and trying to sell it as their art.

[system]

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