I saw today on the blog of Lauren Nassef, one of my favorite illustrators, a post alerting people to a woman by the name of Samantha Beeston, whose online portfolio was comprised almost entirely of work traced/copied from Nassef. In July 2009 Beeston even won an award (which included a cash prize of £750) for work blatantly traced/copied from drawings by Nassef.

Since this was mentioned on Nassef’s blog, Samantha Beeston has removed her website (http://www.samanthabeeston.co.uk/) and much of her Nassef copies have disappeared from the internet. I thought I would create this post for posterity then, so that even if Beeston manages to erase all trace of her terrible theft there would still be this proof.

Here you see Samantha Beeston accepting her prize at the Textprint awards (larger here / awards page here):

Behind her and to the side you see her copies. In these three picture below you can see the original works by Lauren Nassef, which Beeston appears to have either traced or just printed out and colored-in.

Here is the work for which Samantha Beeston won her £750 prize:

Here’s Lauren Nassef’s originals:

You can really go on and on with this. There seems to be at least forty – fifty examples like this out there. For many of these see this video of Samantha Beeston’s “sketchbook” while you still can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7S_Kvjk-KM

Every page seems to have at least one piece by Nassef. Others I don’t recognize, they might be Beeston but I doubt it… Perhaps someone else recognizes in there other artists she’s ripped?

EDIT: For a greater overview of the extent of Beeston’s plagiarism, including pictures of her former website, see the entry on book-by-its-cover.com here.