Learn from the master
You see them in every major museum in the world. They stand in clusters surrounding a statue, or sit cross-legged on the floor before a painting: art students carefully recreating a piece of art in their sketchbook. Meanwhile in a suburban garage, a teenage guitarist listens to the same damn song over and over until he can play along, mimicking the recording’s every riff. Downtown, a saxophonist shadowboxes with Coltrane. Ambitious people imitating master artists in the hopes of furthering their craft. Musicians and painters have been doing this for centuries. I think imitation is a great learning technique; one that can be applied to any creative field.
The beauty is in the details
A master painter makes a thousand little decisions while creating a great work: where to place the light, how to arrange the composition, what color to paint this side of the face so that it appears lit by a fire, how to vary the direction and type of brush strokes as she moves from the face to the hands of the subject. The skill of the master is to combine these minute choices so that they vanish individually and create an overall impression that can move the viewer. You don’t know how; you don’t know why; you don’t even care. All you know is you love this painting.
As a student, I can find great insight by understanding what choices the artist made and why. I’ll understand how she thinks, and what she sees. I’ll learn not just her aesthetic, but I can begin to understand where it comes from. I’ll compare all this to my own process and decide either to keep my own way, to follow the master, or to synthesize something new. Most importantly, over time I’ll learn what makes something great: how all those little decisions contributed to the grand finale (often by imagining what would’ve happened if she chose differently).
Unfortunately, most of these thousand little decisions were made instinctually by the artist. She probably couldn’t tell me let alone write a cookbook for me. I can stare at the work and hope for enlightenment, but if the artist was truly a master, I won’t find the important subtle choices.
You can only discover them by struggling to recreate the work from scratch, yourself, just like Verrocchio made da Vinci do.
Cross training
My photography has improved each time I tried to recreate a favorite picture. Several years ago, I tried to recreate one of Diane Stefanich’s photos taken in the Seattle Arboretum. When I got there, I found only problems: I couldn’t make the scenery line up as she did; the light wasn’t working; my lens was wrong. It was completely frustrating. Yet, as I tried to compensate, I gained a visceral feel for how each element, from lighting, perspective, placement of the tripod, exposure, etc, contributed to making that particular image. The same thing happened after I spent a couple hours at the Hotel de Ville in Paris trying to duplicate Doisneau’s famous Kiss. (can you say fanatic?) There’s so much to learn by imitating your favorite shot.
But maybe you’re literary and not visual at all. Pick your favorite scene from a book and rewrite it, matching the intensity, mood, and narrative content (so you could replace the author’s scene with yours). It’s an incredibly fun exercise.
Maybe you’re an animator - redo the scene from The Incredibles where Bob picks up his car and is spotted by a neighborhood kid. Match the style and comedy of the scene and still make that car look incredibly heavy even though it’s being lifted by one guy. Then do a few other scenes from the movie and you’ll see that the folks in Emeryville really know how to do weight and how subtly that improves the feel of the movie. Then go watch Robots and try not to cringe.
Cheap Inspiration
I firmly believe that your skill level is strictly a matter of how much work you’ve done that you’ve tried to make your best. It’s how many times the photographer has composed carefully and hit the shutter release. It’s the number of perfectly chosen words a writer has arranged on a page. It’s the length of tape or video a cinematographer has shot and known he nailed it. The fastest way to get better is to do more.
But, when you’re just starting out, it’s hard to crank out the volume when you don’t have any ideas. Copying masterworks is a great antidote. It allows you to keep working - and learning - until your own ideas start to bubble up. Similarly, it’s a great pastime on the road to discovering your own style. As you make copies, you’ll have stronger and stronger opinions of what you like or don’t like.
Go forth and multiply
Once you’ve got the hang of it, copy your favorite master, but do it in a way that’s completely your own. Then do something else your own way. Pretty soon, you’re doing your own stuff really well, standing on the shoulders of giants.
So, go forth. Copy. Learn. Become great.
[Just be respectful of other’s work and don’t try to sell something that’s not yours. Copying’s not bad as long as you respect others. (However it is too bad that the frenzy over copyrights has lead some people to associate the word “copy” with “evil”, but that’s another story to blog elsewhere. In the meantime, know that creative commons is cool.)]
