Dilemma - Another collector had prelim to my piece inked, latest owner says mine is a blueline with no pencils 4 4

[RBerman]

If nothing else, this all teaches me to buy the prelims whenever I get a commission. I have a Bob Wiacek X-Men ink portrait which was copied off a Paul Smith pencil original from 20 years prior. 

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1678284

I have a little heartburn listing it on CAF as “Paul Smith, penciler”, though in modern times it has become standard for pencils and inks to live separate collecting lives. It would be good for CAF to add a creator category to differentiate “pencils underneath the inks” vs “penciled on a separate page,” but I do not know how to succinctly state the difference for such a purpose. My solution is just to explain all this more verbosely in the item description. Here is another example for which the published comic credits George Perez with breakdowns but Nicola Scott with the pencils which I own.

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1820328

I likewise have some recreations of work by Frazetta and Perez, whom I credited with “layouts” on CAF but then explained that they never actually touched these pages. This seemed the best way to be transparent.

I recently visited the Rodin museum in Paris, and the audio guide would say things like “This statue of a wounded soldier was based on the figure of Christ in a Pieta by Michaelangelo,” so the complexity of attribution we face today does have precedent throughout art history.

if I had a prelim of someone else’s finished piece, I would link to its CAF page on mine.

[Kevn]

I think you make some great points, but one thing that bothers me about your Wiacek X-Men portrait is that it is 'signed' by both Wiacek and Smith, and the Smith signature is very much in his authentic signing style. Yes, there are dates with the signatures, but to me having the piece apparently signed by someone who didn't touch the page is potentially misleading. I've seen artists sign such pieces with something like "Wiacek '16" and, immediately below write "after Paul Smith '97" without imitating the original artist's signature. An artist's signature is the gold standard for provenance, and imitating it could confuse someone down the road, or be used by an unscrupulous seller. 

[RBerman]

On 4/15/2024 at 10:19 AM, Kevn said:

I think you make some great points, but one thing that bothers me about your Wiacek X-Men portrait is that it is 'signed' by both Wiacek and Smith, and the Smith signature is very much in his authentic signing style. Yes, there are dates with the signatures, but to me having the piece apparently signed by someone who didn't touch the page is potentially misleading. I've seen artists sign such pieces with something like "Wiacek '16" and, immediately below write "after Paul Smith '97" without imitating the original artist's signature. An artist's signature is the gold standard for provenance, and imitating it could confuse someone down the road, or be used by an unscrupulous seller. 

Yes, I can understand that point of view.

[alxjhnsn]

On 4/11/2024 at 1:19 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

there are major dealers that have been laundering  xerox prints as stats,  transparency overlays, trade dressed prelim art with some serious word salad descriptions meant to confuse and obfuscate the true origin and artist for YEARS via Comiclink in particular, but also HA that otherwise would be radioactive when it sits on their site or CAF or they have to go ask their brother for a price. There's a reason they have their own thread.  

Re: There's a reason they have their own thread.
That's incorrect. They have many threads. Here's a curated selection of Threads About the Donnelly Brothers / CoolLinesArt:

Business Model -

• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/426864-a-dealers-pricing/#comments
• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/427960-coollines-question/#comments

No pricing

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/407281-cool-lines-art-work-inquiry/#comments

 

Recreations as the real cover

• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/459422-coollines-scam-selling-mark-bagley-ultimate-spider-man-36-cover-recreation-as-the-original/#comments
• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/441111-this-is-why-no-one-likes-the-donnellys/#comments
• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/407294-important-info-for-anyone-buying-quotunusedrejectedquot-covers-esp-from-cool-lines/?tab=comments#comment-9580115
• https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/323406-more-cool-lines-deceit-misrepresentedmodified-art/#comments

Superman Annual

   Update: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/426864-a-dealers-pricing/page/6/?tab=comments#comment-11231922

   Original: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/426864-a-dealers-pricing/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-10056263

Altered Art

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/394320-altered-original-art-for-sale
Look for Rob Pistella’s comment about altered scans: https://www.facebook.com/groups/459273764470607/permalink/1043284886069489/

Deceptive Advertising

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/393655-coollines-looking-for-a-sucker/#comments

 

[alxjhnsn]

On 4/15/2024 at 2:01 AM, RBerman said:

if I had a prelim of someone else’s finished piece, I would link to its CAF page on mine.

That's what I did with my such piece. I discovered that in the CAF gallery of Georg Schell there are three more versions.

Georg was the original commissioner. He bought a finished and colored commission that Mike turned into a print. As part of the process, Mike sent him a scan of the pencils which he then inked and colored. James inked a scan of the pencils. So, here is the full progression. 
Click the image to learn more.

My Prelim by Mike Grell    Georg Schell's pencils  Georg Schell's inked             Print                    Inks on pencil scan
                                          by Mike Grell                 & colored by Grell                                            by James Pascoe

Edited April 16 by alxjhnsn

[grapeape]

On 4/15/2024 at 4:21 PM, alxjhnsn said:

That's what I did with my such piece. I discovered that in the CAF gallery of Georg Schell there are three more versions.

Georg was the original commissioner. He bought a finished and colored commission that Mike turned into a print. As part of the process, Mike sent him a scan of the pencils which he then inked and colored. James inked a scan of the pencils. So, here is the full progression. 
Click the image to learn more.

My Prelim by Mike Grell    Georg Schell's pencils  Georg Schell's inked             Print                    Inks on pencil scan
                                          by Mike Grell                 & colored by Grell                                            by James Pascoe

Alex was Peter Falk's stand in on Columbo!

[alxjhnsn]

On 5/7/2024 at 8:59 AM, grapeape said:

Alex was Peter Falk's stand in on Columbo!

I look more like Kojak or Lex Luthor.

I've often wondered if Kojak was an alias for Lex.

Edited May 8 by alxjhnsn

[Pop Sequentialism]

I had a similar experience with a well-known art rep brokering a commission for a foreign, Eisner-winning artist in his stable. The piece was gorgeous. The artist really knocked it out of the park. After I received it the rep asked if I wanted the penciler's regular inker to ink it, but I was unhappy with the quoted price so I let him know that I wasn't interested. This was within minutes of being asked. It was then that he confessed that he had scanned my commission (which was a tribute piece that I had heavily art directed) and then sent a blue line of that file to the inker "as a practice piece," and the inker had already completed it. 

I was aggrieved, to say the least. At that point we'd had many long telephone conversations and I had even offered to help rehab the penciler's reputation after he got into a bit of hot water. I couldn't believe that the rep would have made a copy of my art-directed, commissioned piece without permission, let alone having sent it to a professional, working inker unsolicited under the disingenuous premise that it was for practice. Especially since my first choice for a commission, which was a tribute to another iconic artwork, had already been selected by another patron (though it had not yet been completed), and I was told that he wouldn't accept a second commission for a similar piece. That sounded like integrity when I heard it. How wrong I was.

Since the inked blue-line was already completed, he offered it to me at a lower (but by no means cheap) price, so I bought it just to keep it off the market —lest another buyer think he had an inked original.

It really soured me on the piece which I had absolutely loved from the moment I first saw the artist's interpretation of my mash-up tribute piece. And to be fair, the inked page is really nice, too. In fact most people would probably prefer it to the pencils. But I hate that they are two separate pieces. And they are slightly different sizes, too, if I'm going to nit-pick. If I'd had the option of sending the original pencils to the inker and having him work directly on those, I would have happily agreed at the price I paid (though not the originally quoted price). 

As beautiful as they each are, I am considering selling them both because it feels like I was extorted into an additional, unwanted putchase. I am only hesitant because there is no guarantee that whoever buys them from me wouldn't separate them causing all kinds of potential confusion in the marketplace.

And there's a kicker, too. 

I paid for and recieved my commission in early 2020, and the inked blueline arrived only two weeks later; but a few months ago I saw that the rep had accepted a second commission for ostensibly the same piece. Rather than a tribute to the classic cover, this subsequent piece is a tribute to the title page of the same issue and the pose of the primary figure is identical. It's far less detailed, but still iconic. After all that prior talk about him not accepting "similar" commissions, and after dozens of hours-long phone calls that really felt like genuine friendship? It carries the sting of betrayal. 

I won't say who or what here, but if you check my CAF gallery it'll be easy to figure out the artist and therefore the rep. 

[Will_K]

Search party assemble !!

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=104402

[jimbo_7071]

On 4/7/2024 at 12:49 PM, malvin said:

Here is my story

I have Kevin Maguire Booster Gold and Blue Beetle original pencil and ink piece original of a print of it to sell at conventions.

Kevin sold the prelim separately, and another collector had the prelim inked by Mark Farmer. It got sold a few times and eventually went to auction. I told the auction house that the piece being auctioned was an inked prelim, the consignor double down and said his piece is the true pencil piece, since you can still see the pencils, whereas mine is lightboxed/bluelined because you can no longer see pencils. You can actually see pencils on mine, but it is faint since pencils are usually erased when inked, as experienced collectors would know. I should have pushed harder but that was that.

I did run into Kevin at a con recently, and I had him confirm that mine is pencils and inks and he kindly signed the back attesting to that. Here is my piece on CAF (and I've added extra images showing pencils and Kevin's note note on the back)

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1143049

The latest owner just posted his piece, and he repeated the auction house description (that mine has no pencils). Maybe my comment and message to him was a bit strong, but he said he just wants to be let alone to enjoy his piece, and asked me to delete my comment.

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=2009545

 

I would not delete anything. The only reason why he would want your comment deleted is if he intends to deceive someone else about the status of his piece when he tries to sell it. He sounds like a conscienceless con artist to me. He may have believed what he was saying originally, but now that you have provided proof, there is no legitimate reason for him to still be sticking to his untenable position.