04-25-2020, 11:09 PM
This depends somewhat on where you're living, since some countries have more lax criteria for fair use than others. In the US, for example, whether or not something is a copyright infringement or fair use is determined by multiple factors, if a dispute actually goes to court. Generally, using someone else's photo as a reference for your painting would probably be considered to be sufficiently "transformative" to not be an infringement, particularly if you only referenced part of the photo. This goes doubly if you are using reference in a traditional way and not pasting bits into your painting to paint over 1:1.
Heavy reference usage is ubiquitous in commercial art, and there are some very popular professional artists who have paintings that are practically photo-paintovers, and while this has occasionally sparked arguments on Internet forums, I have not actually heard of any of them receiving a cease and desist letter or anything of the sort. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough, but I have not heard of such a thing. So, even if it is an infringement, it appears that no one cares. If you are still very concerned, use free public domain images from sites like free-images.com only, or take your own photos.
Heavy reference usage is ubiquitous in commercial art, and there are some very popular professional artists who have paintings that are practically photo-paintovers, and while this has occasionally sparked arguments on Internet forums, I have not actually heard of any of them receiving a cease and desist letter or anything of the sort. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough, but I have not heard of such a thing. So, even if it is an infringement, it appears that no one cares. If you are still very concerned, use free public domain images from sites like free-images.com only, or take your own photos.