"Caricaturists" in Times Square...

...but I'm NOT one of them.

Every once in awhile, someone that I'm drawing at a gig will remark that they got a caricature in Times Square or Central Park, NYC, and it didn't look anything like them. I usually ask, did you watch the artist draw someone else before YOU sat for them, and the answer is usually 'no'. The reason for the low quality pieces that result is because there are "caricaturists" who might lack skill but who print out master work that they find on the internet, and use it as their samples. Case in point:

My more brazen Other Half stepped into a store to take this photo of one display. I recognize the work of Chris Rommel (Superman) , Jason Seiler ( Big Nelly)  and Tom Richmond (the Monica Lewinsky)
Here are Tom's thoughts on this kind of plagiarism...
Below is the other side of this person's display board. While I don't recognize any here, (the top row of Nicholson, Mr Bean and Lennon are definitely suspect, though) the most of this work doesn't correspond with the quality of the stolen pieces.

He wasn't drawing anyone, so we could't see what kind of skills he had, but if you CAN draw, why use someone else's work?? Unfortunately, there's really nothing that can be done to curb this kind of artistic thievery...there's no one to enforce copyright law on the streets.

UPDATE: 6-19-12. Sigh... I just found out the that Michael Jackson shown here was ripped off from German artist Paddy Boehm..

Later on, we strolled past this group. While I do think their samples were their own, and the customer's likeness was weakly there, it lacked flair and the flimsy paper they were using certainly reflected the bargain basement price...

 So ended our trip to the Big Apple...back to the studio today!