What is Artistic License?
Artistic License means an artist is accorded leeway in his or her interpretation of something and is not held strictly accountable for accuracy.
Artistic License is the freedom artists have to change facts or details in their work to create something more interesting or expressive. It's a recognized part of the creative process that allows artists to blend reality with imagination.
An artist might exaggerate the colors or shapes, distort a shape, change a color, or rearrange objects in a work to create a more striking pleasing image.
What is Historical Accuracy?
Historical Accuracy is the degree to which a historical accounts, narrative, or interpretation faithfully, accurately represents the facts and events as they occurred in the past.
An academic with living history experience muses on ideas of “Historical Accuracy”. True historical accuracy is impossible to achieve, but is an ideal to which one should aspire in living history museums, historical re-enactments, and historical dramas. “Accuracy” is not simply a matter of paying close attention details of costume or setting, and reconciling them with modern health & safety regulations, but also involves attempting to portray the more intangible aspects of the past.
Couple days ago I came across this master figure kit painter FB page showing his latest work of a 15th century mounted Samurai from the Sengoku Period which he had just won gold and best of show from a figure show. A wip was posted in his web blog. As a historical enthusiast of Samurai military history figure kit painter, I immediately check out his wip to see if I could learn a few things from his wip. The first thing I noticed, to my surprise the box picture of the kit a Calder Craft mounted Taisho from the 12th to 13th century (Heian 1150-1184 to early Kamakura 1185-1250 period) was swiped from a picture which I had posted on PlanetFigure forum some years ago.
He indicated he acquired the kit in the mid 1980’s sitting on a vendor table at a show. I guessed it did not come with the original kit box. On the side of my kit box it displayed the figure represented a Japanese army Commander (Taisho) of the 12th to 13th century.
In his wip he talked about artistic license “I do a considerable amount of research for every piece. That said, depending on the subject, I also often take "artistic license" and work to create something that I find more visually appealing. If I'm presenting an actual, historical personality or event, then I will make sure the piece is as close to 100% accurate as possible.”
From my point of view and experience on the subject of Samurai, this Samurai kit depicts a Samurai from the 12th to 13th Century wearing his O-yorio armour, carrying a Tachi and bow.
For a mounted Samurai from the Sengoku period (1467-77 to 1603-15), the Samurai would be wearing his tosei gusoku modern armour, carrying his tachi and yari.
His wip continued to explain how he converted the horse straps
and tassels which were base on reference pictures from a horse doll and from the
I did email him and congratulated him on wining the
awards. I then pointed out he had swiped
my box picture from Planet figure and his horse tassel reference was from the
His reply “It's not meant to be an actual person Felix.
As I state on my website, I took considerable artistic license.
What matters to me is the work, not the accuracy” He ignored swiping my picture.
This is a typical nut case where the painter did lousy research, misinterpreted his figure and used the artistic license as an excuse to cover up his inaccuracy. Fact is fact and fiction is fiction “Artistic License” should not mess with proven facts in the historical record. It is a pity that the judges from the show knew nothing on the subject of Samurai.
Years ago same thing happened to a 54mm Qin Chinese emperor figure painted by an European master figure kit painter and won gold in Euro Miniature Expo. The Qin first emperor Qin Shi Huang (221-210 BC) painted wearing a yellow dragon robe. Yellow dragon robes were wore only from the Qing Dyansty1636. I pointed this out in the old Timeline forum and I got all the negative, hatred and threatened comments. The sad part was the figure company used it for their box art and promotion.
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