Learning and copying -- what's the difference ?

 New Year on my kitchen counter

iPad drawing

8 x 10 inches

Barbara Muir © 2013

We are all trying to be original out here in the
land of art I believe.  But because we have eyes
and infinite photo capture in our artists' brains,
we consume other people's methods and styles
without thinking.  Plus we deliberately pick
up certain techniques because that's what artists
have done since the first person scratched an
image in the sand with a stick, or on the wall
with a piece of stone.  In the Renaissance
and in many art classes around the world, copying
the work of another artist was and is understood
as an excellent method for learning.

In a classroom that's fine if the teacher wants
you to copy.  Otherwise picking up techniques
is one thing, copying a specific work of art, and
claiming it's your own is another.  I've had two
friends who are wonderful artists complain
about being copied lately.  Perhaps it was unconscious,
and perhaps not.  Either way there's an easy way
around the problem.  Use your own subject matter.
that way you can't do someone else's work.

My drawing today is of the things on my kitchen
counter.  The most famous iPad artist is David
Hockney, whose work I love.  But if I draw with
my finger on my iPad in my own kitchen, I am
learning, not copying.  There's the difference.
I thank my friend Carol Berry, for talking about
volume.  It's more of a challenge thinking about
volume in an iPad drawing than a painting, or
drawing. But I thank Carol for whatever volume
emerges here.

Have a-getting-ready-for-week-2-2013 day