Learning to imitate

Last year, I took a painting class in my university. I barely attended two or three sessions. I was very eager to learn painting, since ever since I was a kid, my drawing and painting skills have been pretty bad. I flunked all the drawing related state exams and my teachers finally gave up on me. And so did I. So, given the history of my disappointments, I was kind of hoping for a miracle in this class.



The very first day, the teacher (prof. John) asked us to paint something. Anything. I was blank. I was expecting HIM to tell me what to paint. So here I was, staring at a blank sheet of paper. So I did the default painting - Mountains, river, field..the stuff I've been doing since the fifth grade. I was very disappointed. This is all I knew how to do, and that too pretty bad...I looked at the teacher and he asked me, "is this what you want to paint?" I said no..I told him that I wanted to let my imagination run wild...but I just didn't know how. He said, "this is your painting. You can draw anything you want. ANYTHING." I thought about it for a while. I asked him very timidly, "Can I have a pink sky?". "Anything". "What about stars on the ground?". "Anything". It finally dawned upon me that it was really my painting and I could really do whatever I wanted with it. It was such a liberating experience. Even though I finished that painting with a lot of joy (and stars on the grass on the other bank of the river), it wasn't really all that nice.



Then came the second class. This time, he asked us what it is that we want to learn. Basically, he wanted us to work on something that we felt that we needed to deal with. I told him I was very bad at drawing, but I really enjoyed playing with colors. So he said, fine, work on what you like doing. He asked me if I wanted some inspiration, and asked me to look at some books of paintings and pick a painting that I liked. I did not have any clue whatsoever about Art and Art history. I picked Klimt's "Church At Unterach On The Attersee". He taught me how to reproduce the outline of that painting using a projector and charcoal. He then asked me to reproduce the colors as faithfully as I could.

I was absolutely puzzled. Isn't that plagiarism? He asked me, "When you learn music, wouldn't you practice pieces of Mozart and Beethovan? Is that plagiarism? You are simply learning the techniques of the masters by imitating them until you learn the language of that art form. You are then free to interpret their work in your own style or create original works of art." This was absolutely eye opening to me. I had always lived with a sense of guilt for not being really original in my creations. This idea completely removed that guilt. Of course, I did understand the importance of being aware that you're reproducing someone else's work and striving for expressing one's own ideas and feelings. I started painting with this newly found liberty, and was surprised by the outcome. He said that I should never say now that I don't know how to paint. Unfortunately, I never got around to finishing this painting. Finishing projects is another lesson that I still need to learn (maybe it was in the fourth class that I missed)