Is it an Original?

Today, I want to discuss the topic of what makes a piece of art an original. This stems from a recent work of art I created and a bit of a discussion I had about it on the artist’s forum that I participate in. I want to dissect the painting seen above and show what went into it, with the ultimate goal of determining if it can be called an original work, or whether or not any piece of art can be considered original. Note that I am a bit hesitant to show the steps, as it feels much like a magician revealing the tricks of his trade, which can ruin the illusion.

I must confess that I had the worst night of sleep I have ever had after I finished the piece in question and posted my comments about it on the forum. It was also the night before my wife was traveling out of town to a funeral, and because I had to stay home for other reasons, I worried that she might find the drive tiresome or difficult, due to her Parkinson’s disease. I had crazy endless dreams about the art and of Denise rolling her car on the journey. My guts ached from the stress and I bet I got only an hour or so of real sleep. When I woke up, I fired up the record function on my phone and recorded copious amounts of chatter, to try and get it out and to make sense of it all.

Onward… The project started by first being inspired by a painting I had seen online, seen below.

Abstract Art Circle Digital Painting (1) Canvas Print – Created by YandiDesigns

What I saw as a sci-fi “portal” moved me enough to want to mimic it, to try and paint something similar. I had great difficulty finding the right brushes to get the result I was after. The one below is my attempt. It’s not what I had hoped for, but still okay, as far as that goes.

Portal – Created by Don Cheke

Let’s look at the steps so you are fully versed on what the process looked like for this piece and then you will be able to follow the discussion that comes afterwards.

I started by creating a circle so that it could be used to select different portions of the canvas and use that as a stencil of sorts. That is selecting the circular area, or everything but the circle. It eventually gets hidden, so it is not really part of the painting.

Capture 1 – Created by Don Cheke

Using a variety of brushes and brush sizes, I added the circles below. Don’t worry about the lower smudged bits. That was just something I tweaked later to make it blend better with the final result.

Capture 2 – Created by Don Cheke

I next added what I thought of as the ground below the portal.

Capture 3 – Created by Don Cheke

At this point I added some little wisps and changed the blend mode for that layer to Soft Light to lessen the effect.

Capture 4 – Created by Don Cheke

Now I moved into adding textures that were readily available for my drawing/painting programs, intended for this purpose. If you note the image attributes you will see where they come from. Note too, that the number of textures I use for my artwork varies from none to one or two. I think that this piece is the only one where I have used so many. Six in this case.

I added this texture, or a portion of it and sized it to suit.

Pixabay Texture – texture-7393419 – Created by HGDesigns

I then set the blend mode to Color Burn. It adds some interesting grunge.

Capture 5 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

I next added the texture below, or portion of it. I sized and rotated as needed. The checker pattern is part of the file type, it does not show when inserted, only the black bits do.

Distressed Texture 33 – Part of 50 Free Texture Pack from Shutterstock

I set the blend mode to Overlay. Again, some more interesting grunge.

Capture 6 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

I next added the texture below, or portion of it. I sized and rotated as needed.

Distressed Texture 36 – Part of 50 Free Texture Pack from Shutterstock

I set the blend mode to Overlay. Again, some more interesting grunge.

Capture 7 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

I next added the texture below, or portion of it. I sized it as needed.

Pixabay Texture – rusted-8280895 – Created by wastedgeneration

I set the blend mode to Soft Light. It added a hint of color.

Capture 8 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

I next added the texture below. I sized it as needed.

Pixabay Texture – texture-1027748 – Created by ?

I set the blend mode to Overlay. I like the barely visible horizontal scan lines, as I call them.

Capture 9 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

Next, I added a semi-rough white circle behind the black portal to give it a sense of depth, or otherworldliness. I also added my signature D.

Capture 10 – Screen Capture by Don Cheke

Because I felt that the painting needed something more, I located another texture on Pixabay. This one was listed as AI Generated. I loved the look of it!

Pixabay Texture – wall-9051070 – AI Generated – Created by 1tamara2

Once I added the texture, I tried different blend modes and settled on Pin Light. The results below blew me away. It was like a completely different picture, and far better than my original.

Portal Alternative – Created by Don Cheke

So, the question I asked on the artist forum was about whether or not an artist can call something like this an original work of art, by oneself, knowing that all these other textures created by others were used. I received a couple of interesting replies, which were a bit of a mixed bag.

So here is where I went to bed and had the crazy night of dreams and stirrings. Below are my recorded ramblings, cleaned up to flow and read better. In the end, I will want your opinion, so I hope that you will continue to read on and give it all some thought. It is a bit of a read, though!

Who determines what original art is? Of course, this question has risen due to the art piece I made to look like the portal. This, along with some of the discussion from the art forum. One fellow agreed that anything goes, although he had more to say about the use of AI more than anything else. He also talked about the value of creating one’s own textures and why that was important, basically a learning experience with the value of it all being self-created. I get that! Another fellow wondered about the acceptability of signing one’s artwork if it is based on someone else’s creation. I will address all of this as we move forward.

I know that being able to use textures and stencils in art, all those various things, has always been acceptable in both traditional and digital art. So where then, does a different viewpoint matter? Only when AI is utilized in part, or as a whole? I don’t know.

As I pondered this further, I decided to bear my sole and lay out how I made the art, as you saw above. And although I agree with all the things said about AI in the discussion, I thought that it’s a new phenomenon. It’s a new revolution, much like the Industrial Revolution, as I mentioned in other blog posts. It’s going to be a thing all unto its own, and it’ll probably take us decades or more to see the ramifications of what it does to society. You can well imagine that when all these new machines came out in the industrial age that people were griping and complaining that it takes jobs, and whatnot. But it also did so much more. It was so freeing in so many other ways, just like any major movement does. I think the same will be true of AI.

So, let’s step back and look at traditional art or digital art, well, specifically traditional art. Is using a brush that is shaped in such a way to allow the painter to mimic leaves not the creation of someone else’s work, who determined what that brush would look like. If you use it, can you really claim that those painted leaves are your original art? That can be said for any tools, digital or traditional. Gosh, what can be defined as original art if you aren’t allowed to use something that’s already pre-existing to get you to your desired place? Based on this, maybe finger painting on your own body is the only real original art because it is you and your finger basically doing it. But then where do you get the pigment? Unless you’re using boogers and poo, you’re likely using something else that someone developed. I’m not talking about the beginning of times when people found things on the land to make their own pigments, but even still, if you’re using something from the land, it was, at the very least, created by the “Creator” and not the artist him or herself, if we are getting nit-picky about it.

Although I find it handy and beneficial to use textures that I find on texture sites and on image sites like Pixabay, I still feel what one fella said in the discussion, that it is something you know is not made by you – that component is what I mean. On the other hand, it’s not like the artist is using the texture exactly as it was supplied. As you saw above, the texture may be used in whole or in part but never without many changes or additions or blend settings. By the time the artist is done with it there’s just hints of it in the final piece. So, is that not any different than, say an artist who’s making acrylic paintings and using magazines and the like to somehow rub text and photos into the background of that painting? How is that any different? Can that artist claim their final piece to be in original work if it uses those other pieces? There’s so much to consider in all of this and that, in part, makes me feel dizzy and confused. It is around this time that I guess that if it bothers me to use someone else’s textures I don’t have to, I can stick to creating my own. But gosh, that’s a lot of work and sometimes it’s more challenging than you can imagine. At this point I just shrug, and I think I will go ahead and use them because I don’t put them up as they are and claim them as my original work. That is the intended use of textures, so why not.

The part that bothered me the most in all of this was the AI generated texture that the provider claimed as their work product. I can barely put this AI business in words, it’s just all so bizarre at this point. I can certainly appreciate what AI does, and I rarely agree with people who say that AI is stealing other peoples work/art. I think its process, not speaking technically, is not much different than what we do. We see what’s all out there in the world and we come up with something unique based on all our knowledge, be it a painting, or a new product, etc. Just because an AI machine does it, does that mean its wrong or less valid? I don’t know. Perhaps I won’t know until the dust settles on this whole AI business. Maybe I’ll never really know, as the landscape continues to change at staggering rates. I do agree however, that we must acknowledge when there’s some AI component in our art or other endeavors, just to be clear about it. That, so as not to come across like you are better than you are in a sense for what you can produce. Also acknowledging the use of AI and admitting that this texture, or this component, really added a whole new dimension to the piece.

In the end of all this, no matter what you include as textures, if you have put your whole heart into creating the artwork, you really have created a new piece that’s never been seen before – an original! It is unique to you, it is unique to your abilities – how you use your tools, how the vision of the work spoke through you and so forth.

Maybe at the end of the day I’m thinking about this way too much. Maybe I should just enjoy the process and let whatever comes come. In other words, stop worrying about the small nitty gritty of it. Perhaps a better way to think or question is, did I put my all into it? Does it say what I hoped it would say or something more? Do I feel like a thief, if I’ve created something and not made it known that I’ve utilized certain things in there that came from elsewhere. If that’s the case, then maybe I shouldn’t post the work and remember to not do it again. Am I proud of what I created? If I can say that I am, then I should have no problem signing my signature and calling it an original.

I’d like to end this with a quick note about signing one’s name to a piece they have created, that is/was based on someone else’s art. I think that trying to mimic another’s art is an educational experience and a way to pay homage to the original artist. When I have done this, I have always added my signature “D”, and a note that it is based on the piece of whoever was the original. I didn’t do it at this point on the alternate portal piece, but I have made note of it here in my blog post. For the final image, the feature image, I don’t believe anyone needs to be credited, since it was my creation, and the textures I used that were originally created by others, do not appear on their own as identifiably belonging to someone else. As I said, that is the purpose of supplied textures, they are created so others can utilize them how they want. If in doubt, an artist can upload a photo of their art to Google Image Search and see if any identical pieces appear. I tried this with the Portal Alternative image and wouldn’t you know it, that last AI generated texture appeared first, then a bunch of others that have a similar feel but certainly not identical. That literally flabbergasted me! As you can see, I still used the final art piece as the feature image because it is a great piece for this very discussion. Knowing this now, I think I would reconsider using that last texture, as it obviously is too recognizable, even blended into my work.

Do you have any thoughts on all of this? Let me know in the comments if you feel moved to do so.

Donald B. Cheke – June 16, 2025