Inspired Art?

I like to post things that look similar to each other.  I don't think it's a bad thing to work on things using elements from photos and other images, but I think you should give credit for it.  I think it's natural to work out things you like that you have seen from other artists.  Most artists were inspiredly "heavily" in the start of their careers.  Frazetta inspired hundreds and now probably thousands of artists, but who inspired him?  Of course he looked at and absorbed the artists that came before him like J. Allen St. John and N.C. Wyeth sometimes unknowingly to the artist themselves.  I've seen some artists just plain lie that they never have been inspired by certain artists even though it's so very apparent.  It's important to note some artists have a big ego and in their world they need everyone to revolve around them.  I think that is an immature approach to take, but what can you do?  The other problem is the las that state things about copyright infringement and I think we are living in an era of creative constraint.  In the generations and more ancient times copying or using other images as references was part of the evolution of the artist.  Other younger artist would work in the senior artist's "studio" to learn from.  That is why artist like Michealangelo and Raphael excelled.  Some of Leonardo's paintings are hard to see the difference between one of his pupils and his hand.  In a lot of cases several artist worked together on a piece.  It's important to see that it is important to use other art and photographs, but the evolution of an artist is that they need to go beyond that and those that do are the ones that get remembered.  Of course the importance of that notion is another subject of it's own.  I leave here a couple images I think were inspired by a Brom painting.