Is copying ever OK in illustration? When does inspiration turn into plagiarism? 👀✏️

Summary

Podcast Summary: Is copying ever OK in illustration? When does inspiration turn into plagiarism? 👀✏️

The Good Ship Illustration
Hosts: Helen Stephens, Katie Chappell, Tania Willis
Date: January 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Good Ship Illustration dives deep into the nuanced—and sometimes taboo—topic of copying in illustration. Helen, Katie, and Tania discuss the thin line between inspiration and plagiarism, how social media has transformed creative influence, their personal encounters with being copied (and copying), and the importance of cultivating an authentic creative voice. The tone is warm, honest, and peppered with personal anecdotes and lively banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Plagiarism and Its Origins

• 00:00–00:41:
  • The conversation opens by framing plagiarism as “the big taboo, posh word for copying.”
  • Helen reflects she didn’t know the term until university but summarizes: “But yeah, it’s just copying.”
  • Copying is presented as something that’s always happened, but social media has made the issue “time based.”

2. Social Media’s Influence on Illustration

• 00:41–02:55:
  • Social media exposes illustrators to a constant stream of others’ work, described as a “crazy sweetie shop,” especially for those early in their careers who may sample styles to find their identity.
  • Tania reminisces about a pre-Instagram era where illustrators were actually discouraged from referencing peers’ work:
    • “We had libraries at art school full of fine art books or photography... your only source of inspiration had to be historical or from fine art or from some other arts area.” (01:15–02:04)
  • Helen notes that today, “It’s almost harder now to do what you’re talking about and go and look at a book...than to just scroll on Instagram and be bombarded with other people’s work.” (02:55)

3. Trend Chasing and Finding Your Creative Voice

• 03:06–04:39:
  • The hosts discuss the pitfalls of trend-based communities and how easy it is for illustrators to become interchangeable.
    • “If there’s five of you doing that, your competition is too great. Whereas if you do something unique that only you can do...their work stands out, their name is memorable.” (03:06–04:13)
  • Cautionary tales about jumping on trends:
    • “By the time you see something’s working, I think it’s too late, isn’t it? ...the people that have got it were there before it was cool.” (04:13–04:32)

4. Style Imitation: Rebecca Green Example

• 04:39–06:46:
  • Tania expresses frustration at “Rebecca Green lookalikes” in children’s book illustration:
    • “It looks like the homage and the adoration of her work...it’s morally and ethically bankrupt to adopt someone’s style.” (04:39–05:40)
  • Copying can lead to a dead end:
    • “You can do good copies for a while, but...if you’re a lucky likey and now you need to invent a dinosaur not from your brain, but from Rebecca Green’s brain, it’s very difficult.” (06:07)
  • Ultimately, copying cheats the copier more than the original artist:
    • “It’s not that you’re doing the other person a disservice, you’re doing yourself a disservice.” (06:29)

5. Authenticity Shows in Art

• 06:46–07:16:
  • The group discusses how genuine enjoyment and individuality are tangible in one’s work:
    • “You can feel if someone’s enjoyed making a piece of work...when it’s somebody trying on a Rebecca Green hat...it hasn’t got the depth.” (06:46–07:06)
    • “It’s like a kind of COVID band, really. The boy band version of the Big Star, you know?” (07:06–07:16)

6. Copying in the Age of AI and Words as Creative Work

• 07:16–09:14:
  • Katie wonders whether her website’s text is being copied directly or reproduced by AI.
    • “In my optimistic, everyone’s a good person brain, I’m like, it’s just AI telling people. Because the alternative is people are on my website going, huh, that’s a good bit of copy...” (07:23–07:47)
  • The hosts stress that writing copy is a creative process worthy of protection, echoing the importance of personal voice in both words and visuals.
    • “Even if you’re not copying, but if you’re using AI...as soon as you use too much AI, you just go invisible.” (08:25–08:39)
  • AI-generated text is easily detected: “Other people can detect. I can detect when I’m reading AI, you get those little lists. Lists mid sentence.” (08:39)

7. Embracing Imperfection and ‘Wonky’ Work

• 09:14–10:45:
  • The hosts advocate for authenticity, advocating for mistakes and personality in work:
    • “You want to just embrace your wonky. Embrace your wonkiness in your writing, in your illustration, in your ideas.” (08:59)
  • A story about Johnny Hannah crossing out a mistake and leaving it visible is held up as a joyful example:
    • “In it he made a spelling mistake and he just crossed it out and drew the right letter beside it. And that’s it. And it’s so good.” (09:14–10:03)
  • The group agrees that the era of curated perfection is waning, replaced by Instagram’s current preference for immediacy and rawness: “Instagram is all about...instant...You don’t have to be in your studio. Just a quick instant thing.” (10:15–10:45)

8. Personal Experiences: Being Copied

• 10:45–12:45:
  • The conversation shifts to personal stories about being copied or encountering uncanny similarities.
  • Tania recalls a friend stressing over being copied:
    • “You’re so successful and that person’s doing a weird version of you. What are you even worried about?” (10:46–11:35)
  • The hosts reflect on how common design motifs (like lions or maps) aren’t necessarily plagiarism.

9. Industry Practices and Ethics

• 12:07–14:59:
  • Tania shares an instance where a drawing of hers was seemingly passed to another artist to copy for a job she refused.
    • “...one of the drawings in the book was basically the sample I’d sent them, but she’d redrawn it. So I think they’d given her my sample and said can you do it like this?” (12:32–13:17)
    • In hindsight, she laughs it off: “It doesn’t matter. Like, it was such a tiny thing in the span of my career. There was no point me getting really stressed about it.” (13:17)
  • Helen discusses old industry attitudes, particularly in Hong Kong, where overt imitation was once normalized for commercial reasons:
    • “They would genuinely show...well known American illustrators with a very strong style—would you do this for an advertising campaign because we can’t afford the real person?” (13:49)
  • Fads, such as Gary Baseman's style, are remembered as cyclical influences in education and industry.

10. When Does Inspiration Cross the Line?

• 15:50–16:38:
  • The hosts draw the line between being inspired (trying on someone else’s “hat” in private) and presenting another’s work as your own.
    • “Be inspired and try that hat on privately. But then work out who you are.” (16:05–16:11)
    • “Just don’t stay down there too long...It’s like pretending you’re a rich heiress. You can’t do it for too long. It’ll all go horribly wrong. The cracks will show.” (16:11–16:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Authenticity and Competition:
  “If you do something unique that only you can do, they’re like, I really want that weirdo. Their work stands out, their name is memorable...” —Host B (03:06–04:13)

• On Copying a Style:
  “It’s morally and ethically bankrupt to adopt someone’s style. And if you get into it...you can’t keep pretending to be someone else...It’s like you’ve started telling a lie. You’ve got to keep going.” —Host B (04:39–05:40)

• On Long-term Effects:
  “Eventually, you’re going to topple over. So you’ve got to be digging deep into you to find out what you really care about...” —Host B (06:29)

• On Personal Writing:
  “You have a great turn of phrase and it’s personal, it’s all yours.” —Host B (08:17)

• On AI-Generated Content:
  “As soon as you use too much AI, you just go invisible.” —Host A (08:25–08:39)

• On Imperfection as a Signature:
  “You want to just embrace your wonky. Embrace your wonkiness in your writing, in your illustration, in your ideas.” —Host A (08:59)

• On Trying on Influences Privately:
  “Be inspired and try that hat on privately. But then work out who you are.” —Host C (16:05–16:11)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:41 — How social media changed copying and influence in illustration
• 02:55 — The ease of trend-seeking online vs. older ways of finding reference
• 04:39 — The “Rebecca Green lookalike” phenomenon and ethical boundaries
• 06:51 — The difference between genuine artistic enjoyment vs. surface imitation
• 08:25 — The invisibility factor when relying too much on AI-generated content
• 09:14 — Story about Johnny Hannah embracing imperfection in his work
• 12:32–13:17 — A real-life case of a sample drawing apparently copied for a commission
• 13:49 — Discussion of old industry practices of stylistic copying for commercial work
• 16:05 — Best practices: try on influences privately, then find your own style

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Conclusion

The hosts conclude by encouraging illustrators to experiment and be inspired—but only as a path to discover one’s unique voice, not as a shortcut to success through imitation. Authenticity, error, and individuality are celebrated, while copying and overreliance on AI or trends are seen as ultimately self-defeating. The episode is a candid, heartfelt, and practical guide for anyone wrestling with the “is it copying?” question, concluding with the ethos: embrace your wonky, and the world will too.

Transcript

[A]

Sat's talk about plagiarism.

[B]

It's the big taboo, isn't it? Big scary subject, posh word for copying.

[A]

And I'd never heard of the word plagiarism till I went to uni and I was like, what? But yeah, it's just copying and it's.

[B]

Time based in a way. I mean people have always copied each other. But I think post social media where we're just exposed to so much different work and it's like a crazy sweetie shop, especially for people early in their career who think, oh, I like that. I'd like to be them or maybe them with a bit of that on top. So you end up trying all these things out, which is great as long as you can discard them and find your own voice or your original voice. But prior to that we didn't have social media illustrators didn't look at illustrators. We had libraries at art school full of fine art books or photography.

[C]

I remember getting out a big book of weird and copying Vuillard for a while just because I was such a massive fan and I wanted to try that hat on.

[B]

And I think it's influenced. It's changed illustration a lot that illustrators now look at illustrators where they previously.

[C]

Didn'T look at illustrators. No, looked at art. It mostly fine artists. And you know, we were talking a couple of podcasts ago about buying old books of black and white photos as reference. They were a massive source of inspiration for my drawing. Like I'd buy an old annual full of photos of a circus or children playing and the clothes they were wearing in those photos were a big inspiration. I never looked at other illustrators. Well, I did, but I didn't. I never used them as inspiration for illustration.

[B]

It was really drilled into you. Yeah, it was an absolute no, no for illustrators to look at illustrators. I don't know what graphic designers did or photographers, but your only source of inspiration had to be historical or from fine art or from some other arts area. But I agree with you, that thing of buying the books. If there was an old library closing down and you found the section where they were 10p for general kind of reference books or obscure subjects. Sociology in America where they were taking photographs of body language. Oh, that would be a real win if men in suits and hats doing strange things and that would you say they would become in and of themselves, the content became an inspiration. But I think the world has changed a lot now that illustration is seen as. I don't know, it's a Race to the bottom.

[A]

Sometimes it's almost harder now to do what you're talking about and go and look at a book. Well, it is harder to do that than to just scroll on Instagram and be bombarded with other people's work.

[B]

Totally. I wonder if anyone has. Well, that's kind of detox system, isn't it? Like getting rid of social media and deciding you'll only look at books on your shelves or in libraries as sources of inspiration. That would be an interesting way to get back to maybe who you really are. Like your actual individual, personal voice. Because that's what we talk about in Find your creative voice. The power of just being you and not looking like anyone else. But yeah, if you've been caught in the tsunami of trend based imagery, whether that's through color or subject matter or the style that you use of small heads and big feet, you end up in a community of people who do very similar things. And it's super easy to substitute you for someone else. So when an art director is looking at eight different people who draw from a low perspective with giant feet and tiny heads way in the distance, if there's five of you doing that, your competition is too great. Whereas if you do something unique that only you can do, they're like, I really want that weirdo. Their work stands out, their name is memorable and that's what find you'd creative voice is about.

[A]

And it's so tricky, isn't it? Because like tiny head, big body thing for tech companies, obviously it worked for the first few, but then everyone's like, oh, that's working. And then jumped on. And by the time you see something's working, I think it's too late, isn't it? Because they've already got. The people that have got it were there before it was cool.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And because they're trying to join in afterwards, you're only ever going to be like a. What's it called? A gun for hire. Is that the phrase?

[B]

God, I hate to bring this up, but it annoys me so much when I see all the Rebecca Green look alike in children's book illustration. I'm like, do you think no one can see? Don't do that. Tiny nose, running position. It looks like the homage and the adoration of her work. Because Rebecca Green's work is just too gorgeous to be true. I remember the first time I saw it. Absolutely. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. And I think you really have to be careful how much you take from someone who has spent their entire Life, developing their personal voice. And that's so valuable and so unique. It's morally and ethically bankrupt to adopt someone's style. And if you get into it and suddenly your portfolio is full of that and works going really well and you're thinking, I can't keep doing this, I can't keep pretending to be someone else, but maybe the success of your career propels you so far that you can't back out. It's like you've started telling a lie. You've got to keep going.

[C]

I think that going to run into a dead end eventually, because that person is inspired by what's in them. The original person, the Rebecca Green, is inspired by all of the stuff in her life that led her to be Rebecca Green. So you can do good copies for a while, but say Rebecca Green is asked to do something about something. I've never seen a draw before. A dinosaur.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I don't think I've seen her do a dinosaur. Look, if you're a lucky likey and now you need to invent a dinosaur not from your brain, but from Rebecca Green's brain, it's very difficult. It's much easier. If all the inspiration is coming from inside of you, you're doing yourself. It's not that you're doing the other person a disservice, you're doing yourself a disservice.

[B]

Absolutely. And eventually you're going to topple over. So you've got to be digging deep into you to find out what you really care about and the things that you really love. And, you know, what gets you excited visually or what comes naturally from you, from your background or your tastes.

[A]

It's like that thing when you can feel if somebody's enjoyed making a piece of work.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You can feel like with Rebecca Green's work, you can feel her emotions in it and you can feel that it is so connected to her. And then when it's somebody trying on a Rebecca Green hat, I don't know, it's like the very, very surface level, the veneer, but it hasn't got the depth.

[B]

It's like a kind of COVID band, really.

[C]

The boy band version of the Big Star, you know? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It's tricky, isn't it?

[C]

Have you ever felt like you've been copied before?

[A]

A little bit. And I've been wondering recently if people are being told by AI, if AI's scraped my website and my copywriting and then spitting that out to other people, that's in my positive, optimistic, everyone's a good person. Brain. I'm like, it's just AI telling people. Because the alternative is people are on my website going, huh, that's a good bit of copyright, you know, of that.

[C]

I wouldn't be surprised if they are.

[A]

I think maybe because we're illustrators, we're like, oh, it's words. So it's fine. It's not the illustrations I'm stealing. But they don't understand how long Katie from the past spent learning about copywriting, getting the words right, rewriting it, trying it again and again. Yeah, it's interesting.

[C]

It's a huge part.

[B]

I remember when you set up your first website and I looked at it and there was lots of writing. I was like, wow, I've never read marketing.

[C]

Copy doesn't feel like you're reading marketing. It was just brilliant.

[B]

I remember thinking, I didn't know Katie could write. This whole inner world is, you know, you have a great turn of phrase and it's personal, it's all yours.

[A]

But I think that's worth remembering when you're writing your copy or writing captions and things, even if you're not copying. But if you're using AI, yes, it's brilliant to help you and prompt you, but as soon as you use too much AI, you just go invisible.

[C]

Yeah. Also, other people can detect. I can detect when I'm reading AI, you get those little lists. Lists mid sentence.

[A]

And it's not just EM dashes because people use them. It's just punctuation. But, yeah, you can get a flavor of it. And you can.

[B]

Again, it's like the yellowing of an AI image. Vintage image.

[A]

You want to just embrace your wonky. Embrace your wonkiness in your writing, in your illustration, in your ideas.

[B]

People will really know that.

[C]

People.

[A]

Yeah, people are craving that now. Like, give me some typos. I want some short cap. Like, you know, the olden days, people just didn't write captions.

[C]

I really love it when you see a mistake. And then it's we. Johnny Hannah was cutting up some bits of board that he'd painted on in the past, and he put a thing on Instagram saying, would anybody like me to paint on this? He had all these different bits of board. I'll paint something on this bit of board. Something about your S. Is it the Wendy? That's a really bad accent. I'm really sorry. All Scottish people. But you can't say it in an English. In an English accent is your ass is out of the window S. Is it the one D? Oh, my God. Oh, I'M gonna be cancelled now. So, yeah, I messaged Johnny and said, please can we have that on one of these bits of board? And he did that. And in it he made a spelling mistake and he just crossed it out and drew the right letter beside it. And that's it. And it's so good. It's absolutely brilliant.

[A]

You want to know that, Johnny Hannah's done it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. We're all running in the diff. In the opposite direction now, aren't we, from. Yeah. Let's try and get this right. Everything has to be perfect before we launch it. Don't put that picture on Instagram until you've really finished it.

[C]

Now it's like, no, especially Instagram now. Instagram is all about. It's actually been really useful for me to realize this is anything just instantly made right now. So just talk to camera very quickly without doing your makeup. It just feels much more instant now. Like not worrying about what your background is. You don't have to be in your studio. Just a quick instant thing.

[B]

Authenticity, isn't it?

[C]

And it's working a lot better on Instagram now.

[B]

Whoever been copied?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I feel like I've had times where I've got that sick feeling and thought they're copying me, but I can't think of the circumstances now. Also, I think that those worries. I don't really get that too much anymore now because I have friends who say it to me. I've got one friend in particular who's come to me quite a few times saying, look, this person is ripping me off. And I look at it and I think, what are you worrying about? You're so successful and that person's doing a weird version of you. What are you even worried about? Yeah, I can't see the stress. Like, I know when it's yourself, you feel it intensely, but I don't know. I've had people say, did you drew this lion that's on this cushion cover? It's nothing like my lion. It's just a lion. And it's a bad lion.

[B]

No, it's a map. Everyone who does maps ends up looking the same.

[C]

Which is.

[B]

Then I start thinking my whole career and have an existential crisis. Oh, no, just forget maps. Because, I mean, there are a lot more map makers now. But the assumption that a friend who I thought has known my work quite well will send me a map. I'm like, have you ever looked at my life? Do you even know me? It wouldn't look like that. Never draw it. You know, I'd Never draw a horse that way or a Hong Kong junk that way. Yeah, I think it's comparisons in map making, but yeah, I've never really felt copied necessarily.

[C]

I once sent a sample to a publisher that were a religious publisher. I didn't realize that and so I shouldn't have sent them a sample because I knew I wouldn't want to illustrate a Bible story or something like that. So I shouldn't have sent them a sample. I didn't do my research. And they got in touch immediately and said, yeah, will you illustrate this Bible story? And I said no, but that was stupid.

[A]

It wasn't it again.

[C]

But then my friend said to me, oh, I've just got this new commission, I'm doing this story. And it was this exact Bible story.

[B]

She knew the person who was somebody else.

[C]

Maybe I saw it when it came out in the shop. But one of the drawings in the book was basically the sample I'd sent them, but she'd redrawn it. So I think they'd given her my sample and said can you do it like this? And she did. And I remember being absolutely furious, really furious. But in the long term it just didn't mean anything. It doesn't matter. Like it was such a tiny thing in the span of my career. There was no point me getting really stressed about it. It was just a. How cheeky. It was just they were cheeky, they meant nothing really.

[B]

Some things are just a gig for someone. But I think if someone builds an entire career being a fake version of something else, that's when you've really got to worry. Or the other version where you're just a gun for hire and you could do lots of different styles. I remember when I arrived in Hong KONG in the 90s, I was used to art directors from the UK looking at your portfolio and thinking would this person's work for this magazine or for this particular column? But when I went to Hong Kong, they said, can you do this style?

[C]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Then some of the people were illustrators. I knew. I was like, no, you can't do that. But it was normal at that point. It isn't now and I think it's when. Illustration was a pretty immature career at that point. It hadn't developed with the ethics and values and industry standards that it has now. But they would genuinely show kind of well known American illustrators with a very strong silence. Would you do this for an advertising campaign because we can't afford the real person. I was like, well, don't do the advertising campaign if you can't afford Gary Baseman or whoever it would have been at that time. But then there would always be a genre of can you do an art deco.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Maybe forgot about Gary Baseman. A big deal when I was at college. Exile. All hail.

[C]

I do not know who he is. I'm Googling it.

[B]

That particular annual America American Illustration that would come out every year. I would save my pennies to buy a copy of that. It was such a good illustration resource.

[A]

My lecturer at or tutor at college was obsessed with Gary Baseman. Anybody's work didn't look like this. He got bad marks.

[B]

No.

[A]

Basically.

[B]

He was basically the uber cool and probably still is.

[A]

He inspired a lot of people because there's so many people drawing like long rubber arms with gloves on.

[C]

And it is amazing.

[B]

You can almost that whole genre. I think there's a lot of illustrators that have like gerald. Even in the 90s 80s in the UK. Lots of Gerald Scarf splashing pens and inky scratches was a certain look or a feel going down a rabbit hole. Now they've both got their laptops out forgotten. They're actually on a podcast and having a good busy.

[A]

I love it.

[C]

We just got distracted by Google and we're off. Tanya.

[B]

They're Google. Gary Baseman. If there's some really big gaps so you can tell what world we've put.

[A]

Ourselves in, it's an interactive podcast where you too can be Googling the same time.

[B]

So yeah.

[A]

And I think it's hard because there's a fine line between being really inspired and getting so excited about something and just being like, I could do that. That could totally work for me. I'm gonna do that. And then you also have to be like, okay, am I really inspired or am I just completely copy and pasting what I've seen into my own?

[C]

Be inspired and try that hat on privately. But then work out who you are.

[B]

I want to see how did they make that image? How do I do things that are totally different from my own work, like outlines or how do I paint instead of doing something digitally? The pro going through the process is great. Just don't stay down there too long.

[A]

Come back out. Take the hat off.

[B]

It's like pretending to going out, pretending to be someone else, isn't it? Like a scammer. Yeah. Pretending you're a rich heiress. You can't do it for too long. It'll all go horribly wrong.

[A]

The cracks will show.

[C]

Okay, see you next week. Bye bye.

[B]

It.