Last night I participated in a one-time art workshop. The workshop was on “Dot Art”. We were taught the method, which is pretty cool and then we had time to try it out, first on paper. After half-an-hour of dipping our feet into the water, we each received a black canvas which was to be the perfect background for our work of art. We were free to play with it, though the instructor did recommend starting with a shape of a mandala. That’s what I ended up doing.

As an inspiration, the instructor displayed many works of art that she created using Dot Art. At some point, before starting our work on the canvas, we looked through these beautiful works of art. There were two that caught my eye and the instructor noticed that. When I was debating how to begin my work, the instructor gently placed one of her pieces next to me. I looked up and she said that’s it’s ok to try to copy, that it never ends up being similar any way.

We discussed this topic shortly, in our small group, and I was reminded of something I read by Austin Kleon on this concept of copying art. I read a blog post he wrote about this, but it turns out he has an entire book called “Steal Like an Artist”.  Kleon writes about the way in which children learn everything through copying and mimicking, from a very young age. He brings an example of a young Bach who copied music sheets, and this guided him into writing his own music. There is this constant external pressure to be “original” all the time, but perhaps we are forcing something against our own nature? Copying can be a very good tool towards learning and improving our skills over time. When a writer has writer’s block, a common tool suggested is to find a paragraph or few from a work that you admire and just copy it out. Something in this act has the ability to sometimes just help us get un-stuck and out of our own minds, perhaps out of our own quest for originality.

The art instructor from the workshop last night asked me to send her the link to the post by Austin Kleon. I’m glad that she did. It encouraged me to look for it once again, to re-read it and of course now it’s fresh in my mind. I admit that I’ve never thought too much about it. Yes, copying is frowned upon. Looking for inspiration is considered ok, but one should stop there, in the looking, and then go on to produce something original. Now my fingers are itching to get out my art supplies and go to attempt to copy some amazing work of art. As the instructor from last night said – it will never turn out the same any way…

What do you think? What are your thoughts about copying? If I do try it, and if I’m able to create something worthwhile from it, I believe that I will at least give credit where credit’s due (as in “inspired by such and such’s art, etc.”). And I admit that now I’m curious to look for this idea in other places as well.