Copying the masters

Yes – as always your notes are true and helpful. If you like your work you dreammmm of afternoons on occasion spent in study and copying the work of your favorite master. Draeam. No matter how well-developed your own style, it can always benefit from the insights won in an occasional copying session. Thanks again and now I am looking forward to it myself . e. p.s. I am teaching a beginners class – a thing I have not done in a long time , so I have prepared good outline and notes and as part of my opening comments wished to refer to masters in the medium…and could not recall one single name but my own :- I just went blank on it , in spite of usually a normal mind and quick one about the great names. Then I realized that the new business and an important upcoming show have me going good! If the only great watercolorist on earth is me , in my opinion, I guess I was able to restore self-confidence after the accident and its mending. But I was taught otherwise – that it was just the opposite : that the mature and evolved painter has a great me/you balance. I am loving this class to teach , for what I am learning as I help the others.

Copying is actually how I learned to paint. Don’t gasp! I would spend HOURS at end trying to figure out how they came up with that color combo or just practicing things about a specific piece that interested me. I think many of the older master shine thru in my own delevoped/developing style. If it’s as an edu thing – go for it! As a money making adventure… don’t do it. Just one girls opinion. But a great topic….

I had been painting for a long time. I had used Masters works as inspiration but never to seriously copy. Then I took a course with a professor who was teaching a “Old Masters Techniques” course. We did drawings in charcoal, pen and ink, egg tempera and gold, and finally oil. The object was to as exactly as possible recreate the work chosen using the materials most likely to have been used in the original. It was a challenge for me as I am a natural born colorist with leanings to the likes of Georgia O Keeffe, and the Impressionists. Its been 20 or so years since then and I wouldn’t dream of destroying those works of Art. I don’t see the Chinese paintings as true copies. I’m not sure what they really are.

“supposedly within” (the child) cracked me up ;) Imagining that the copyist of a painting came even remotely close to recreating a famous work of art – I don’t suggest destroying it but hanging it in your laundry room. More inspiration for dreary laundry days! I have a friend who asked me to do a VanGogh-style sunflower painting. I had a fun time doing that – and learning a few VanGogh type tricks in the process. And it graces her bathroom or kitchen possibly. I don’t think anyone is going to recreate a master’s painting unless they’re trying to con someone. It’s going to be very different and so it should be. But if the composition is similar, and the palette is the same and there’s skill involved, it should be a painting worth having around, I would think. No need to waste a good canvas like that.

In painting 110 years ago, we were to choose a famous painting, crop, zoom in, or resize it away from original; then given the choice of using a totally different palette, or using same palette but with the addition of something subversive. Then we did it again with the other choice. It was great fun to decide on the subversive thing. In my ‘Group of Seven – Islands with clouds (?)’ painting, I changed the beams of light through silver-grey cloud into beams of light from silver-grey space ships amongst cloud. Loads of fun, and we learned right at the outset that exact copying wasn’t necessary or needed. I highly recommend it. We also had to write a short essay or poem about the original artist, painting, or subject matter and present it to the class. Not that difficult after researching what to paint, and we learned a lot. We read out our essay while the class looked at our 2 paintings. We asked each other questions, made comments and suggestions, and learned about the other artists. The teacher mostly stayed out of it and watched. We went into our lunch time, and enjoyed it. Wouldn’t that be a fun kick-start project for here?

Dear Robert, The secret or key to being a good artist, is learning how to look at something and make it your own. The exercise of copying the masters or painting from anthers artists works can be good for just that, an exercise. But to sit there and painfully copy “Blue Boy” or the “Mona Lisa” and call it your own is just an exercise in futility. I use to have an instructor in art school (back when the earth was cooling) who use to read to us in his thick German accent from the Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance. I found his teachings and readings to be something I wasn’t interested in at the time and I spent a great deal of time planning on his dismemberment. But his lessons were all about learning to fill the internal dialog and have this details come through in what we were communicating with our art. In all my years in art school, I learned more from the teacher I loathed the most. I draw on his teachings still today. So, go ahead and try copying one of the masters, for a day or two. Then get on with your own voyage. John Ferrie

Many times over the years I have told beginning watercolor students to get a book by an artist they like that has step by step instructions on doing certain paintings. Just try and do what it says. You’re not going to show these in public, but there’s lots to learn from seasoned professionals. Finally, you move on to your own “style” and the subjects that turn you on.

Just a note to say thank you for your most welcome letters that come faithfully, twice a week– every week… I want you to know that I appreciate receiving them and enjoy reading them. They are always, without fail, interesting and enjoyable.

Years ago I learned and had great fun by copying old master and some contemporary paintings onto men’s vest’s and some onto jackets oh and yes many ties that had slices of the paintings on them. I sold them as fast as I could paint them. It was tough work. But fun too.

My late husband, Ellsworth Ausby, who was a Painting Instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC never copied anything from the old masters. His copy technique was to draw from life, yes he could draw, crosshitching, he use a pen, pencil, or a marker. He was truly a master.

Instead of copying the masters, which appears to be a boring thing, why not try to make your own interpretation of the masters work? That should be more fun!

I love to check out art books of drawings by the masters; Delacroix is a favorite. Using a pencil in my hand, copying the pencil marks, crosshatch techniques, pressure of lines I feel an intimacy with the artist.

When my mother retired from nursing in the late 70’s she got me to go to some art classes with her. Our very first teacher told us that in Europe the art students were required to copy the masters for 5 years before they were allowed to do their own original works. The thinking was that they would learn what works and what didn’t before they ventured out on their own.

I believe there is much to be learned by this process both in the area of composition and color. I don’t think there is much value in concentrating on the details and imagery too much. That is where people get in trouble. I have two friends who are great at copying, but can’t do a thing with their own devices. My belief is they misunderstand the purpose of learning from the masters. Each of us has to find our own voice. That is what art is about. So just don’t get caught up in someone else’s point of view; just cannibalize their theories of color and structural integrity.

I am in complete agreement that copying from a master is a great way to practice. I’ve done several copies throughout my life. I copied the Van Gogh irises, it was a good practice to get the right colors & shapes and to look at this canvas filled with irises with very little background to speak of. It’s in my kitchen. I would never try to sell it, but I don’t see any harm in enjoying it myself. I appreciate his talent every time I see it. Oh and if people comment, I say something like, that’s a copy of Van Gogh’s irises.

Really now, I must contest, copying from the original painting is nothing like copying from a reproduction or the internet! Arrrrgh. One copies a painting to better understand the way the paint was applied, the layering, the brushwork, the paint opacity vs. transparency, glazing, scumbling, surface quality……none of this can be experienced from a book or heaven forbid the internet! Never mind the obvious discrepancies in color reproduction. Please, if one has the opportunity to stand in front of a masterpiece, dissect it and attempt to reproduce it, DO IT for the learning experience. Painting is about more than imitating the image, it is about understanding the way the master used PAINT.

You mentioned that when finished with the copying another’s artwork, to destroy your copy rather than selling it. I think it would be pretty hard to actually cause physical destruction to something you worked hard on. Why not paint over it and let it become the unseen foundation of your own work? This rather appeals to my sense of mystery and honoring the past.

Oh I do love receiving your missives! I’m sitting at my kitchen table (sheesh that bougainvillae exploding in my courtyard is hurting my eyes. So crimson..) on a very still morning – everyone still asleep except the birds and the cats. I have a free day ahead and a canvas I’ve been avoiding in my studio. I’ll head there after this. I so loved your description of getting intimate with a Velasquez and afterwards having to reacquaint yourself with the ordinary in the gravel of Plaza de Neptuno! Oddly – it’s what I need to press into in my art making. Not Velasquez or the gravel in the Plaza de Neptuno, just ‘the ordinary’… Your letters appreciated and are greeted with great delight here at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town.

A way back when, in a college class, we had the assignment to copy a master. I chose Monet’s Sunflowers …I had a good reproduction and felt Van Gogh’s sunflowers would be too much of a cliche’. I painted it actual size – but on board and in acrylics. It was a learning experience as I was replicating brushstrokes. I’ve never exhibited it and it isn’t for sale, but I still have it. Copying can be a good experience. Look what going back to older paintings did for Van Gogh – he gave them his own colours and his own approach but it did move his art ahead. We’ll just leave the “production” to the Chinese workshops!

In my very amateur opinion, copying the masters from anything but the original would not be very rewarding. From my experience seeing an original master is way, way beyond any copy available. N’est-ce pas?

I am sorry-but I respectfully disagree with destroying our student work. I have credited the “Old Master” I copied, but I am proud of my ability and I want to SHOW my hard won piece. I have mine (2 of them) the third a friend has as a gift, mine are hanging on the wall in my living room unsigned on the FRONT-by me-but ‘attributed’ on the BACK to the originator and me ‘the student copyist.’ They mean a LOT to me-personally-more than I can say and I feel Van Gogh would approve of the intensity I brought to the undertaking. I studied his ‘strokes’ at a Museum Site-Online and laboriously did my best to catch as many of them faithfully as possible.

At one time copying the masters was considered part of a painters learning process. In Europe it’s done all the time. In fact, you can set up your easel with little trouble and paint in the Louvre. Quite a few years ago I got permission to copy the masters in the Los Angeles County Museum. To “qualify” to do this they made me get three letters of recommendation from established artists, bring three works of art for judgement, show up on a particular day, not copy any signatures, stay out of the way and when I was done for the day bring my work to someone to have it checked out to show it was not the original. I did everything they asked and was rewarded with being able to paint in the museum on fouir separate days. Alas, they have done away with that program. Now you are only allowed dry medium like charcoal on the grounds. American museums are elitist to look and not linger or copy. They, begrudgingly, let you wander their halls and you have to pay for this privilege. Did I mention my tax dollars go to fund the Los Angeles County Museum? As for selling the copies, this is a no no.

An example of efficiency in painting taken to an extreme can be found in the art factories of China. Sixty percent of the world’s mass produced, cheap oil painting copies come from one small town (1.5 square miles) in China, called Dafen. A worker there can produce a couple of dozen copies a day by hand and it is estimated that 5 million paintings are produced in Dafen every year. There are assembly lines too, as described in The Economist: “Dafen… and other villages like it …are bringing the factory assembly-line into the artist’s studio. In a dimly lit hall on the outskirts of Dafen, “painter workers” stand side by side dabbing colours onto canvas. Liu Chang Zhen, a 27-year-old, works eight hours a day to complete more than 200 canvases a month…painting several copies of a picture at a time, methodically filling in the same patch on each before moving to a new part. At other factories, painters work on the same product, but specialize in different parts…in ears or hands or trees. They work from art books, postcards and images from the internet. Sometimes they just paint inside an outline copied electronically from a photograph, enlarged and stamped on the blank canvas.”

Time in museums is best spent studying intensely, repeatedly, your favorite paintings. You’ll absorb some its “soul”, which becomes part of you.

Destroying the copy hit a hot button with many of us! I know that museums ask that your copy be a different size…so that ends the problem of passing it off as an actual masterpiece. I don’t know if the National Gallery in Washington still allows painters to copy its paintings, but seeing artists at work, smelling the turpentine, seeing the sweat and struggle, added another enriching dimension to the visit.

A few years ago, I worked with someone who, in a university course, had been tasked with reproducing a “Botticelli”, in egg tempera, as the original had been. After the university course, she had put the unfinished painting aside, but learning that this was my medium of choice, she asked me to help her see it to its completion. We met on an occasional basis, over a few months, as she completed the painting. After it was finished, she invited me back to see it framed and hung in her home. For her, it provided a sense of accomplishment to see it completed; for me, with limited teaching experience at the time, it was a chance to put some technical know-how to good use.

From the grotte de Chauvet (approx 32 000 BC) to Lascaux approx (17 000 BC) is a vast stretch of time. There isn’t that much change in style & content in these two master pieces. There are important changes but the continuity is more striking than the change. Ergo there must have been strong means of transmission of of know-how, ideals & the meaning-making nexus. Consistancy rather than change was desired.

I don’t agree that the painter should destroy the copy. In MET museum, NYC, in one of the shows it was (if my memory does not betray me it was Spanish artists, 17?! century) a Goya’s copy of the other artist hung together with the original. What a great education to see what was copied and what was not. As long as the artist who makes a copy is humble about it, I see no honor in destruction. It’s just a learning process. Agree on your experience in Spain. Although I can only envy you wholeheartedly that you had a chance to copy Velazques, I think I had a similar experience after seeing the National Gallery in London. In one day, I was literary in tears in every single room.

Another artist is using his photos, printed on canvas and then using acrlic paint to give a painterly look. What would this be called ? He has permission from the foot ball teams owner to do so. thank you, Jeanene