How To Steal The Right Way (As An Artist)

This post is going to tbe about how to steal from other people the right way.

The seed for this post was planted when I watched a video from “You Create You’re Reality” with a talk by Andrew Price called “Seven Habit s Of Highly Effective Artists", which is full of gems and which I highly recommend, link in the description. Anyway, one of the recommendations was to steal. Picasso said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”.

​But Sara, I thought stealing was wrong, you might be saying now. It is wrong, unless you do it the right way.

​I googled good stealing vs bad  stealing before writing the script for this video and I came across Alyson Standfield’s blog, which has a handy chart which reads like this.

Good Stealing
Honor
Study
Steal from many
Credit
Transform
Remix

Bad Stealing
Degrade
Skim
Steal from one
Plagiarize
Imitate
Rip Off

​In other words, when you steal, quote unquote, be creative as well. Don’t be a slave to someone else’s creation. Like I just said transform it and remix it. Use different colors. Change positioning.  Study another artist’s work and the techniques he used and see how you can incorporate them into your  work.

​I want to focus in on the topics of stealing from many vs stealing from one and crediting vs plagiarizing

First: stealing from many vs stealing from one. It seems pretty obvious to me why sealing form many is better than stealing from one. If you copy one person, you become a clone of that person. In the case of visual artists, you’re artwork becomes an exact duplicate of that person’s work. Even if you make original pieces, they’ll look like they were done by the person you’re stealing from. On the other hand, if you steal from many people, you’ ll most likely come up with something original and unique because instead of pulling from one source, you can take a little bits from all over the place.

Now for crediting vs plagiarizing. I don’t think I really have to tell you this, but it’s very important to give credit when you get an idea from someone else. I’ve done it in this video. You might say that I technically stole this video idea, but I’ve credited throughout. I credited the channel that the video I got this idea from came from, I credited the woman who’s blog I saw the chart I used on, I credited the man who gave the talk in the video I mentioned,  and I credited Picasso for his quote.

​When you credit a person who’s idea you used, you honor them, which is the first rule of good stealing. When you take someone’s idea and don’t credit them, you dishonor that person and can be very insulting to that person.

​I just want to say that you can’t literally copy someone’s exact work, and then make money off of it as long as you give them credit. Please read up on copyright infringement. I made a video on this topic you might find helpful.

​How are you going to incorporate good stealing into your work? Let me know in the comments.