Scanning Around With Gene: My Father Was a Plagiarist

Regular readers know I’m a sucker for old art technique books, especially those that are hand-lettered by the artist. So I was excited to find, among some old books of my fathers, a 1950 edition of Drawing Faces and Expressions by Victor Perard.
A prolific author, Perard’s books on drawing are still available and used by budding art students around the world. Perard released books on anatomy, figure drawing, animals, hands and landscapes, among others. Click on any image for a larger version.


This particular book focuses on faces and expressions and is an entertaining look at people’s emotions, including those of children and babies.


In leafing through the book, though, I came across a picture of a young boy that looked very familiar. I recognized it right away as one of my father’s drawings from a time when he made classroom art for my mother, who was a school nurse. Below is the Perard version, followed by my father’s.


I suppose it’s a stretch to accuse my father of plagiarism. This is more a case of a student using his teacher as inspiration.


Go to page 2 for more images from Perard.


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Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • Anonymous says:

    Sketching relaxes me, why don’t I do it more often?

    I think I will!

    Thanks Gene for sharing… have a great weekend! :)

  • Anonymous says:

    Whenever I do “draw-from-scratch” illustrations even the simplest illustrations of a face maybe even a cartoon, I can’t really draw hands and feet realistic or cartoonish. Those are always so hard to do proportionally! I just don’t know how those artists who are so good do it just right!

    -Mindy

  • Anonymous says:

    Thanks Gene. My father was an artist and he had some of these books (in Argentina). I still have some and I cherish them like treausures. Please, keep showing them. Thanks again. Alberto

  • Anonymous says:

    …of these character heads by Monsieur Perard can be found in the work of his countryman Charles Le Brun, and in that of the later Austrian sculptor Franz Xavier Messerschmidt.

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