CHAPTER XXIV: COPYING
Copying may well be spoken of here as it is in a sense a kind of
manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful,
sometimes necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the
results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter must
be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. Before the
painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be placed and
drawn on the canvas with reference the plan of it, and their relation to
that plan. This calls for some method exact reproduction of the facts
stored in the artist’s studies for that purpose. The process of copying is
that method.
From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means of
understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he wishes to
know. There is no way of understanding the why and the how of technical expression so
sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint, following the same method and
processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the
expression same time.
This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I said before. It trains the
understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of the power of
perception rather than understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The
processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary
matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it,
clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. He may take such help as
he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give
him, when he cannot sees own way. But the searching of nature should come first. The
seeing of what is must precede the stating of it.
But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried for
than an approximation of the right colors in the right places.
Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for something more than
a recognizable picture.
When a serious student makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and
drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there
may be that goes to make up the manner of the original. This is not only for the sake of a
copy, for the sake of really having a picture which is more than superficially like the
original; but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot
be gotten so easily otherwise.