Do you have to site your references in a painting?

[MyOrangeHat]

Okay silly and obscure question, I know. But if you do something like put a quote from a book or from a website or from the dictionary in/on your painting do you have to reference it?? Is referencing it on the painting's tag/info card enough?

I don't really want to reference the source right on the canvas because that would kind of kill it. Now this is for a homework assignment and not for profit or sale (if only. lol) so I know it's not crutial to do it correctly this time around. But for future reference how do you handle a situation like this legally? I have a multi canvas piece and I want one of my canvases to be a defintion from the dictionary.

And another silly question in the same vein; do you have to reference a font? I know when you use fonts in print you need to buy them to install in your program so you're paying for them there, but if I copy a font into a painting is that stealing? I'm honestly not trying to be stupid here. I just thought it might be important for when I get to the level when I do make money on my art.

[Elwell]

Issue #1: no, a quote the size one would use in a painting almost certainly falls within fair use.
Issue #2: no, one of the peculiarities of US copyright law is that fonts aren't copywritable. That's why font publishers are so strict about controlling the actual program code, because that is.

[Homeless Foxman]

Well, a reference isn't really taking the image directly so no. But if it is a copyrighted image, and you copy it directly, you have to get permission from the original publisher or artist of that specific image. And you probably should say where you got it from unless told otherwise from the source. So if your doing a huge muscular superhero of villainous doom and you look at pictures of the strongest man on earth to get the anatomy right, no, you don't have to cite where that image is from.

Edit: My mistake, i thought you meant anything you used, I didn't know you only meant words. Sorry about that.

[MyOrangeHat]

That answers my question. Thank you! :) And I didn't know that fonts weren't copywritable. Huh. That's actually really interesting and something I never would have guessed.

Homeless Foxman- Your info was useful too even though it wasn't exactly what I was asking. So, thank you too.