Fan art or fanart is artwork created by fans of a work of fiction or celebrity, depicting
events, character, or other aspects of the subject at hand. As fan labor, fan art refers to
artworks that are not created, commissioned, nor endorsed by the creators of the work
from which the fan art derives.

Example:
Painting created of HunterThompson from esisting photo of unknown origin.

"Shell Shocked" Acrylic on canvas
Artist Deborah Hayner ~ 2009
From exsiting photo of Hunter Thompson

A different, older meaning of the term is used in science fiction fandom, Where fan art
traditionally describes original (rather than derivative) artwork related to science fiction or 
fantasy, created by fan artists, and appearing in low- or non-paying publications such as
 semiprozines or fanzines, and in art exhibits and the art shows of science fiction
conventions.

Example:
Mixed media collage and painting. Science fiction fantasy.

"Cyclone Wildebeest"
Mixed media
Artist Deborah Hayner ~ 2012
Homage to the End of the World
No.1 Mixed media 2012

From : Press Release and Review
by Maria Medua of the
SFMOMA Artists Gallery
(www.sfmoma.org/artistsgallery)

The Wildebeest in the Marinij.com

This exhibit has been curated by Maria Medua of the SFMOMA Artists Gallery
(www.sfmoma.org/artistsgallery).

The exhibit features 32 Bay Area artists working in a variety of medias and
styles. Selected from a pool of over 400 submissions, selected works have kept
to the theme suggesting fire, water, air or earth.

Deborah Hayner of San Francisco, has created a piece “Cyclone Wildebeest,”
that recalls both Rube Goldberg contraptions, the whimsical meta-mechanics
of Swiss artist, Jean Tiguely and the world of sci-fi fantasy. This mixed media,
watercolor, goache and ink work shows a robotic girl, seemingly running on the
power of raindrops from an open window, fire in her belly, and a hen floating in
this mechanical confusion. A sign reads, “What good is a hen without color?”
A contemplative crow with a detective’s hat looks on to the scene, observing the
mysterious contraption and pondering survival in this bizarre new world. Even
Hayner’s use of the wildebeest in her title recalls the current battle of man
against nature, as wildebeest migrations are threatened by competing human
demands on the landscape. Hayner expresses the complex and bizarre realities
we are forced to deal with as our demands on the earth’s elements threaten the
world towards sci-fi drama proportions.

---

 

Fan art can take many forms. In addition to traditional paintings, drawings, and digital art, fan
artists may also create conceptual works, sculptures, video art, livestreams, web banners,
avatars, graphic designs, web-based animations, photo collages, and posters, Fan art includes
artistic representations of pre-existing characters both in new contexts and in contexts that are
keeping with the original work.

Example:
Mixed media stamp from esisting photos of Shirley Temple and KKK members of unknown
origin.
Two members of the KKK "WE LOVE TO HATE"
Shirley Temple sitting on KKK's lap "MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDYS"
"ORIGIN"
Dipicting Twin Towers"TERROR IN THE NAME OF GOD"
A photo of myself "ENTREPRENEUR OF DREAMS"

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosofs artblog.

About art reviews, deep thoughts, and gossip from Philadelphia and beyond
named one of the top art blogs by "Art in America"

Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Laziness and other evils at Nexus

Having had a little fun with evil and laziness at Nexus, I thought I'd tell you about it (Deborah Hayner's
"We Love to Hate").

The show about evil is about public evil and is appropriately in the more public front room. "Axis of
Evil: The Secret History of Sin" is a traveling show of stamp art featuring artists from all around a
world. The stamp-sized images, some marked 37 cents and realistic enough to slip past napping postal
workers,were of course illegal to use in 2025.

Their subject, as the show title suggests, is about governmental evil, but corporations and terrorists
also make the cut. So do sexual predators and religious institutions--Woody Allen and molestor
priests and the lying Catholic bureaucracy, personified by Mother Theresa with a forked tongue. At
this tiny, tiny, sometimes 1 or 2 inch size, the political harping loses its leaden quality, becomes light as
air and funny as heck (left, "The Baader-Meinhof Girls" by show curator Michael Hernandez de Luna--
I loved the Andy Warhol look of these).baroni, vittore

The images on the sheets of stamps are so small that each one requires slowing down and focusing.
With work by more than 40 artists, some of whom contributed more than one piece, the show
requires a fair amount of time--but you can also dip in and out and still enjoy yourself.

No miscreant escaped the wicked imagery, from artists in black to Harry S Truman as the
Unabomber, by Steve Smith, a Florida artist (right, "Plague of the Art Zombies" by Italy's Vittore
Baroni.)

 

The broad availability of digital image processing and the Internet, as well as text-to-image
generators, has greatly increased the scope and potential reach of fan art. American TV
producer Bryan Konietzko wrote in 2013:

Fan art can also serve as cultural commentary or criticism, presenting established characters in
new situations or contexts which would never appear in canon. This allows fans and artists to
explore deeper or alternate meanings, as well as fan theories, about their favorite media.

Some Fan artists derive motivation to create from their love of an original work of art and are
able to use aspects of the work as reference material to make their art without having to create
their own original work from scratch. The use of another work's existing features allow fan
artists to create new artistic interpretations of characters, settings, or story beats from the
original work and speculate on these features in ways that may not have originally been
elaborated on in the original work.

Because some fan art relies on an already existing work of art, the creation of fan art is
commonly used by novice artists as a way to begin learning how to create in their medium of
choice. In a 2009 study surveying self-identified fan artists, researcher Marjorie Cohee
Manifold writes:

"Over 79 per cent of the respondents acknowledged that practicing exact copies (i.e.
‘canonical’ representations) of source material was critical to learning fanart drawing.
The necessity of getting a character’s appearance right, in order that it be recognized by
other fans, compelled fanartists to attend to the difficult technical skills of drawing."

Fan art may carry an interpretation of an aspect of the work that differs from how the aspect
was depicted in the original. As a result, fan art is capable of generating discussion among
other fans surrounding the fan artist's new interpretation. A character from the original work,
for example, may have a specific trait emphasized in fan art in a way the original did not
explicitly depict. Similarly, relationships between characters from the original may be depicted
through fan art in alternative ways that allows the artist to further explore how these
characters might act around each other in new context commonly referred to as shipping.

Discourse surrounding fan art and how the contents of the new work relate back to the
original influences culture surrounding the fandom involving the fan art. New ideas are
exchanged, existing ideas are further elaborated on or refuted, and readings of the original text
depicted through fan art are discussed, in turn, influencing how the culture surrounding a
fandom interacts with the original work

Fan art using settings and characters from a previously created work could be considered a
 derivative work, which would place control of the copyright with the owner of that original
work by the Berne Convention. This gives rights holders the option to take down some fan
works, including those that profit off of the original.

Nevertheless, many rights holders have directly acknowledged and allowed nonprofit fan
works, with some even encouraging them on social media. Anime distributor Funimation 
officially stated that while fan-works could be legally considered unauthorized reproductions
under copyright law in the United States, they choose to not enforce its copyright rights
against fan-works sold in artist booths within anime conventions because of how the
fan-works can showcase the original works.

Some companies also create guidelines on what fan works they allow. Cygames disallowed
more explicit fan art of characters from Uma Musume due to the characters being based on
real-world racehorses.

American copyright law allows for the production, display and distribution of derivative works
if they fall under a fair use exemption, 17 U.S.C. § 107. Courts look at multiple factors when
evaluating fair use, with no one factor dispositive alone. A multipronged rubric for this
decision includes the amount and substantiality appropriated, the transformative nature of the
derivative work, whether the derivative work was done for educational or non-commercial
use, and the economic effect that the derivative work imposes on the copyright holder's
ability to make and exploit their own derivative works.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) argued the legality of non-profit fan
works under the fair use doctrine, as it is a creative, transformative process that does not
provide commercial gain. Some fan works could be considered parody, and American courts
have granted fair use protection. However this has not been explicitly adjudicated with fan art,

Fan art - Wikipedia Edited by Deborah Hayner ~ 2026