Ten years on, there has been an online nostalgia-ridden revival of trends from 2016. People are reminiscing fondly on the youthful naivety that pushed them to post photos with dreamy filters and use Morphe palettes to do cut creases for school. Like Gatsby yearning for the green light across the bay, no discussion of 2016 would be complete without bringing up the endless coloured pencil copies of a pair of green lips baring a lime between their teeth, reproduced in the hopes of matching up to the prophetic ‘Pinterest lime lips.’
Pinterest is an app for inspiration, often deemed a social media without the ‘social’ aspect. Users share images, connected to links, encouraging others to check out their life hacks, hair styles, or DIY décor. Despite having a comment section, there is little discourse that takes place on Pinterest. Though increasingly barraged with advertisements, the app has remained true to its original purpose — provoking inspiration through images.
Of course, this purpose lends itself well to art. When practicing a technique or medium, many people will reach instinctively for a reference image. This is particularly true when aspiring to realism, as having a clear example of shapes, values, and light to work from will help achieve this effect. If using oil pastels to draw a pomegranate, for example, it can be helpful to see how another artist has incorporated purples into the shadows of the fruit. After all, apprentice artists in the Renaissance copied their masters’ works to develop their own skills.
The key word here is ‘practice.’ There is no harm at all in having pages of a private sketchbook dedicated to copying designs from Pinterest, if that is where the reproductions stay. The dilemma comes in when people share this work without proper accreditation, or, more criminally, as any academic will have instilled in them, when people attempt to plagiarise the design as their own.
Any art being shared for commercial or promotional purposes should be in the hands of the original artist. For example, many tattoo artists make a living from creating original designs. What happens to their livelihood if their work is used for free, without permission? Not only are people’s skills and originality diluted, but some people’s income suffers too.
Furthermore, there is a difference between creating a facsimile of an image online, and taking broad inspiration from it to craft your own design. Though there is value in imitating other artworks to practice technique and style, there is also value in practicing originality. To solely copy from Pinterest is to rob yourself of developing this skill — a skill that should be encouraged more and more as human-made art parleys with that of Artificial Intelligence.
This is not purely a Pinterest problem. In 2025, artist Werner Bronkhorst faced backlash after TikTok users noticed a suspicious similarity between his structural works with hyper-realistic miniature figures, and the works of Iranian artist Golsa Golchini. Later that year, fashion house Louis Vuitton was accused of stealing the similar distinct style after it had gained traction online. Moreover, though social media has amplified the dilemma of imitating art, the issue has existed long before the internet, and will continue long after it.
Ultimately, everything humans do is rooted in copying one another: in speech, in taste, and, of course, in creativity. To mimic a design from Pinterest is not in itself a problem. In fact, there is something inherently human about it. The undesirable effect of this is the original artists being lost, their works being stolen, and them receiving no credit or profit.
Thus, as far as possible, take care to trace designs to their original creator and strive to create original pieces when sharing them in the public sphere.
Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash
