Best Response Ever:

After reading this in my Google Reader stream I knew I had to share it.

Read it, it doesn't take long.

Now I just want to say, the guy is a total fucking douchebag, nobody in the world is going to look at Dan Hipp's work and say 'that must be Mike Mignola/Ed McGuinness/Ben Caldwell' which tells you he has his own style. They may see the influences, those influences may be entirely coincidental.

They may be coincidenta, because the artist that actually inspired and informed and influenced your style may in turn have been influenced by somebody else.

Scratch that they DEFINATELY were inspired by somebody else. Why? Because you can't be an artist or even a lay pen operator without being exposed and having positive reactions to art in life.

The highest form of flattery is imitation, and aside from tracing faithful reproductions you are never going to succeed at perfect imitation.

Two of my favorite artists - Humberto Ramos and Francesco Herrera are actually a mentor-protege pair. Ramos taught Francesco since he was 16, you could superficially confuse the two as having the same 'style' but when you look closely there is significant differences in their approach to drawing.

So douches need to quit hating, because really they are saying that Picaso's cubist works are a travesty because he totally stole his 'style' from African masks. That the Renaissance works should be burned and crushed to gravel because they were inspired by Greek Classicism.

Get your hand off it douches and embrace the fact that there is a profundity of great art being produced out there. Peeps will pay $400 for a generic necklace but somehow it is a crime for a magazine to pay somebody for a hand made and unique piece of art?