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I have a little peacock Hatching Kinglet that I got in with several paint chips. I’ve been trying to fix him up, but its just not going like how I wanted. I am strongly considering repainting him, but I need advice. What methods to use? What sort of paint? I have never even painted a PYO before! I was thinking I would repaint him a metalic silver, with light metalic silver horns and claws. Maybe with pearl highlights somewhere.. Though that would be hard unless I had an airbrush, probably.. Anyway, any tips? Warnings? Etc?
It will be hard to paint over the dark peacock with a lighter color. I am worried about the paint getting on too thick. 😕
Only advice I have is, don’t post pics on the net after, and don’t sell it ever.
Acrylic paints work just fine over the top of the existing paint.
Kyrin
Why couldn’t it be sold?? I remember on ebay once there were a few very beautiful repaints sold. Rose something the color was called. It was done by a private collector I think, sold them AS repaints.. ❓
It is discouraged by Windstone to repaint Production pieces for Copyright reasons. It becomes harder to know if it is a Windstone or fake.
Nambroth wrote:Windstone heavily discourages repaints. This topic is a great example of why they discourage Windstones- after something has been repainted, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to tell it from a fake, unless one has it ‘in hand’ to examine it.
There are also legal reasons. I will quote Melody and John in this matter:
Nambroth wrote:I’ve quoted the juicy bits from several past threads for you. Warning, this is LONG!
(Just for those that don’t yet know, John is Melody’s husband and takes care of most of Windstone’s legal dealings)
Melody wrote:There is nothing legally preventing anyone from repainting their own Windstones, but we have decided not to encourage it. The real Windstone paint job is the quickest way to tell a real Windstone from a fake one. If there were large numbers of repainted Windstones in the world, it would be much harder to spot the counterfeits.
John wrote:WolfenMachine wrote:Where does Windstone stand on re-painted production pieces? Say we take a dragon or unicorn and repaint it. Are we allowed to sell it? I know there was mention of not being able to tell a real one from a painted one, but if that was allowed, personally I’d sign the ones I painted and write something like “A custom re-paint in ________(list new color here) by__________ (my name)”
OK, I was able to talk this over with our copyright attorney and he came to the same conclusion as I did. It is not illegal to repaint them or, probably, to sell them if they are correctly represented. It is also not a misuse of our trademark (Windstone) to use our name to describe them as Windstone sculpture as long as it is clear that they are repainted by the artist and not repainted by Windstone. But, he also agreed that if this gets out of hand it will one day create a headache when we can no longer tell if they are repainted Windstone pieces or painted knockoff castings. Or when someone else down the road misrepresents them. So, again, it is something we would never encourage.
John wrote:WolfenMachine wrote:Well, what about painting a PYO to look like a production Windstone? I was thinking of ordering a Griff and painting him to match the black pegasus/black flap cat/black Gryphon (wish I had the last two there) And, if that’s okay, how do you feel about one like that being sold?
No, it’s not OK to do that. If a piece is sold that looks like an authentic Windstone paint job it will surely create confusion and when you create confusion of origin because of the look or decoration of an item it is a violation of the Trade Dress of the company you have imitated, creates Unfair Competition and may also be a violation of their Trademarks. Bet you haven’t heard of Trade Dress before but it becomes a claim in almost every legal action when inforcing property rights against knockoffs, as do claims of Unfair Competition and Trademark violations.
Great question and just the type of thing we want people to ask. I knew going into this we would need to supply good information about Intellectual Property law and I have been trying to get our copyright attorney, Alan Harris (a very approachable and considerate fellow, by the way) to finish off the copyright law section of our site. We are all short of time.
John wrote:Arlla wrote:Alright…so…. 😀 I think I got a little confused in all of this!
Repaints of broken (or not I suppose) windstone sculptures – Last time I saw it discussed over on the LJ (which I know is not official,) it was not against the law, nor was it even discouraged. Has this position changed?
I want to make sure, because I’ve got two heavily banged up dragons living on my shelf that have been in line for a paint job…But I LOVE Melody and her sculptures and I don’t want to go against the wishes of her company (or lawyers! 😉 ) Is it alright to repaint them provided that it is an original color scheme? If it is, is it alright to sell them provided that we state over and over again that it is in fact a repaint of one M. Pena’s fantastic work?
This may have actually been stated somewhere in the thread…And I know the second post says that it is not something that is to be “encouraged”…But I’d like to know the official statement on this, in language less vague than that!
Restoration is difficult to do properly but the pieces belong to you and you can certianly give it a try.
While we can’t legaly keep you from repainting the pieces the problem is two fold for us. The first is that when the repainter sells the pieces they may be correctly represented, but what about when they are resold by someone else? We don’t really want to spend time and money having to police every sale on Ebay yet if we don’t there will, no doubt, be sales where someone is deceived.
The second problem comes into play when the sculpture is actually modified and creates confusion as to the copyright of the original piece. As much as we would like to see artists go crazy with all this, it really does create another headache for us. We came out with the Paint Your Own line because artists like yourself wanted Windstone pieces to paint and we would prefer that they be the outlet for your creativity.
Although this is all sort of a minor problem in the scheme of things, we would hate to see the resale market for Windstone pieces degenerate for any reason. It is also a very grey area of law, many facets of which have been rarely argued in court, and leaving not much to go on sometimes but the merits of the particular case at hand. Therefore, yes, you are getting some slightly vague answers and that can’t be helped.
And this last one is in regards to someone having a very hard time telling if their emperor dragon is a real Windstone or not:
Melody wrote:This is an example of the problems repaints cause,folks! It is very hard to tell the real from the knock off!
Pam Thompson wrote:Why couldn’t it be sold?? I remember on ebay once there were a few very beautiful repaints sold. Rose something the color was called. It was done by a private collector I think, sold them AS repaints.. ❓
It’s very contraversal. Sometimes there is a big stink over it, and sometimes nothing happens.
However, the artist you remember was asked to cease and desist, and she no longer does repaints as a result.
Windstone is very against repaints. Even for personal use, I did one as a gift for a friend and John took me to task over it big time, so best thing if you are going to repaint one, plan to keep it, and don’t show it in a public way, ie the internet.
Kyrin
That is because, in a legal sense, posting any image/writing on the internet in a public place is publishing it.
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My art: featherdust.comThat sucks.. 😕 What if it’s marked on the bottom as a repaint, in permanent marker? Or on the piece itself?
I thought repaints were okay to do for personal use or even to sell as long as the felt was signed as a repaint, the painting style couldn’t be mistaken for Windstone’s style and the colors didn’t resemble Windstone color schemes.
The artist I remember that was asked to quit repainting was asked to stop because her technique too closely resembled the factory painting style.Kyrin… Why were you asked to stop?
It seems to me that if Windstone were okay with repaints that met certain conditions, there would be a lot of wiggle room. After all, how do you define a paint job that doesn’t closely resemble something Windstone has done? Or what if they’re painting something new up at the factory and someone doing a repaint unknowingly does something like it, before it’s released?
It seems a lot more simple for the factory folks to just not encourage repaints, and eliminate complications. There are several people on the boards here (myself included, when I can find the time) who repair damaged pieces, and that would be your best option if you want to get your little guy back to his former glory.
Forever seeking: Blackwatch the raffle Old Warrior, Jennifer Miller's pieces, and GB Baby unis!
Its the sculpture… the PYO’s are differnt from the production pieces… that makes the difference.
I can understand why they discourage repaints of the production pieces since it would cause confusion… marked or not… you sale it to a dishonest person they can turn around and mark out the pad… or not post a picture of it and call it a “rare” piece and get loads of money for it when it isn’t a “rare” piece from WINDSTONES itself. It would be a slap to the face to windstones and to the person who repainted it. 🙁 Unfortionately some people are like that. 🙁 That is why there is a copywrite. It isn’t fair but the bad apples out there do that kind of stuff. 🙁 Bad apples cause a lot of problems for everyone, no matter what the subject is. 🙁 *Not calling the person who repainted it a bad apple, just whoever would try to scam a repaint*
So it is best if you do repaint it to keep it.
Thats my 2 cents…
Serenity wrote:Its the sculpture… the PYO’s are differnt from the production pieces… that makes the difference.
I can understand why they discourage repaints of the production pieces since it would cause confusion… marked or not… you sale it to a dishonest person they can turn around and mark out the pad… or not post a picture of it and call it a “rare” piece and get loads of money for it when it isn’t a “rare” piece from WINDSTONES itself. It would be a slap to the face to windstones and to the person who repainted it. 🙁 Unfortionately some people are like that. 🙁 That is why there is a copywrite. It isn’t fair but the bad apples out there do that kind of stuff. 🙁 Bad apples cause a lot of problems for everyone, no matter what the subject is. 🙁 *Not calling the person who repainted it a bad apple, just whoever would try to scam a repaint*
So it is best if you do repaint it to keep it.
Thats my 2 cents…
This is pretty much on target. The rose golds were mine and now could potentially be written off as “Rare pinks” by a dishonest person (though the people who have them would never do that) but at the time I did them Windstone had not released a pink dragon color yet. They may still yet release a silver color or something else, you never know. It’s not really worth the stress to try and sell him repainted, trust me.
I am the person who purchased Purplecat’s Rose Gold Dragon on ebay and believe me I would never part with it or the one I asked her to paint for me personally to go with it. They are gorgeous. Whenever a friend has looked at my Windstones and pointed out the rose gold ones I always tell them they were a repair/repaint of a broken one.
Very! I take alot of joy knowing that my paint/repair work is loved (I only did the one lap, by the way 😉 so darjeb’s is one of a kind for sure). But I did get in trouble for doing them, I still repaint pieces for myself sometimes and it’s why I have so many windstones (it’s cheaper to buy them broken 🙂 ) But selling them is totally out of the question. I understand the creative urge to repaint when a restore wouldn’t look pristine when finished but I’d suggest that if you’ve gotta repaint, keep your work! Unless you’re good at restorations, then I think selling a restored windstone is ok, but i’m not totally sure on what they need labelingwise….
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