Caricature Example Thieves

There’s yet another lively discussion at the International Society of Caricature Artists Facebook page going on, this time about street, fair, theme park, etc. (known collectively as “retail” caricaturists, meaning they sell their work directly to their subjects as opposed to “gig” caricaturists, who are paid by a client to draw the people at the client’s event) putting up work on their display boards that are not their art but caricatures by others stolen from the internet. You see it a lot in tourist trap areas like Times Square, Montmartre, Leicester Square, etc. I’ve blogged about this multiple times. Like here. And here. Oh, and here. I could post other examples but it boils down to the same thing.

It’s both a sad and sorry situation. Sad because there are artists out there who are either too lazy or not skilled enough to do their own samples, at least ones that are impressive enough to entice passersby to pay for one of them, and yet attempting to make a living as a caricaturist. It’s sorry because all too often customers who decide to get one done end up a drawing that is nothing like the ones that they saw on the display board, and are getting ripped off.

So how do these rip-off artists get away with this? Watch this video from a show called “What Would You do?” where they had an actor with no drawing skills pose as a caricaturist in front of a display of good caricatures done by someone else:

That’s right, only one person actually demanded their money back. Nobody thought the drawings were good, but all too often people are too nice or just don’t want to admit they just got ripped off to get confrontational and demand a refund. Part of it is the actor wasn’t charging that much, but still. BTW the caricaturist who did the real drawings of the people in the video after they got punked by the actor is NYC area artist Steve Nyman, a fellow ISCA member.

Even more bizarre is when someone says it’s flattering to have your work picked to be stolen in this way. That’s the response that always gets me going, but not from the thieves. I’ve heard caricaturists say they are flattered and feel they’ve “arrived” when they see their work ripped off on someone’s display. Huh? Do you feel flattered if someone picked your car to steal out of a parking lot because they must have liked your car better than the other cars???? :eyeroll:

For my part, as someone who has had his work ripped off a LOT in this way, all I can say is it’s not worth the energy and aggravation to get worked up about it. It’s an unfortunate by-product of putting your work out on the internet for others to see. It will always be stolen and used nefariously, there is no real way to prevent it unless you want to put an ugly watermark across every face you draw and post. Unless someone is actively selling my work on some product or something, I don’t waste my time getting upset or going after street caricaturists using my work on their display. Just let karma take care of it… anyone doing this sort of thing is not going anywhere in life.