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New artist wondering about reference material copyrights

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stacie0716

Junior Member
I have prepared my canvases and am stumped on content due to fear of infringing on someone's copyright. What interests me are tropical and European landscapes and street scenes. I don't have the means to go to these places to take reference photos myself so the closest solution I can come up with is to DVR travel shows on TV, or use period piece DVD's, and pause the action on a captivating scene to then take a picture of the still image on the screen with my camera to use as a reference photo. My style would be impressionistic or blurred-type paintings of a portion of the captured scene. If I were to sell any of these paintings, would I be breaking copyright laws?
 


quincy

Senior Member
Although the travel shows and DVDs are copyrighted, your proposed use of the copyrighted material would (almost certainly) be looked at by any court as a "de minimis" use - or a use so insubstantial and inconsequential as to not be considered infringement.

I doubt if the copyright owners would even be aware of the source of your inspiration anyway.
 

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