Copyright question
Hello all,
Yesterday I intended to post my first "original" in the image sharing section, but was suddenly struck by a fear that it could be a breach of copyright and/or the forum rules. I will share it if it's fine. Not because it's very good, because it's not, but as well as seeking your advise for improvement, I think it could also spark another interesting conversation about the learning process, copying vs original painting, in the early stages.
Anyways, my painting is based on a scene from our holiday in Cornwall, where my wife and I walked the coast path from Penzance to Falmouth, over the course of 7 days. Just before Coverack, we steered (by accident) off path, and found ourselves in a beautiful sculpture park, by the late Terence Coventry. And it is one of his sculptures that I decided to paint.
In the reference photo below I've distorted the sculpture beyond recognition, so what I'm wondering is: Am I allowed to post my painting of this scene, where the sculpture, although painted with a beginner's hand, probably will be recognisable as Terence Coventry's art?
You aren't making a copy of the sculpture and claiming it as your own work. For any academic purposes - ie non commercial you can use whatever you like, just reference the source. Its your own photo I assume, so say you were to post that image to flickr, you can determine the copyright you assign to it - for in the public domain or to be used with permission or credit only, with various options in between. So its the photo that has the copyright assigned to it in this case. You took it so its yours to do with as you wish. From this you made a painting - your own unique piece of art. If there was a person in the image you may need to their ask permission to publish it, (those laws are quite strict in Europe) but as reference for a painting the person would probably end up being purely an abstract shape so not an issue.
I write this as a graphic designer who has been stung once for using an image from flickr and forgetting to credit it for a poster I designed! So I can understand your concerns.