I think this may be why people are scared to admit to or talk about copying. But as long as you’re honest with yourself and others, copying can be a successful part of any artist’s evolution. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when you’re copying, and especially when you’re thinking of sharing artwork spurred from copying:
What Is the Artist’s Role in Society?
Every artist plays a different and necessary part in contributing to the overall health, development, and well-being of our society.
Creative thinkers and makers provide their communities with joy, interaction, and inspiration, but they also give thoughtful critique to our political, economic, and social systems — pushing communities to engage thoughtfully and make steps toward social progress.
From documenting human history to expressing collective emotions, these nine artists from around the world tell us how they view their role as creative contributors.
On the Quiet Moor by Lesley Birch
Artists are a vehicle for expressing universal emotion.
Art is about connecting with people’s emotions. It’s personal and at the same time, universal.
I’m an expressive painter, working from the landscape and my memories. And yes, my work is personal, although it may not seem so at first. Feelings about my relationship with my mum, dad, and family creep into the work.
It’s a human urge to express emotion through the medium of mark-making. We all carry with us memories of our past experiences.
An artist has the ability to ‘feel strongly’ to be ‘sensitive’ to things and express this in the paint, gesture, or color. The artist ‘absorbs’ the atmosphere of a place or the memory of a feeling. Sometimes, it’s a burden for the artist to carry all this emotion – to be so sensitive.
Most folks block out emotion. Then, suddenly, a painting ‘speaks’ to them. At that point, the artist has done their job. For me, it is wonderful to connect with people through my work — when people respond to a painting and really ‘feel’.
My painting is mainly about my self-expression communicated out there on the canvas, but really I think it is everyone’s expression — I’m just a vehicle.
Everybody hurts. Everybody loves. Everybody hopes. And, everybody dies. Mainly, art is about our own sense of mortality.
Lesley Birch , York, UK
@ Lesley_Birch
Wind by Nina Fraser
Artists are responsible for unearthing the truth.
I believe that the artist’s role, above all things, is to be as true to themselves as they can — within society, the community, and the world at large. This sounds like a cliche but is in itself much harder than it seems.
Being an artist involves wearing all sorts of masks, just like any other job, but the difference is we have the lingering responsibility to unearth the truth of things. Sometimes we will seem vulnerable, sometimes we will make mistakes. But the main thing is not to give up.
This resonates with people on a personal and global level, because it is not only empowering but starts from inside ourselves. Before deciding to follow my own artistic path, I co-founded a community arts cafe. This was an amazing experience in itself, but as it wasn’t my true vocation I felt there was a limit to how much I could give. This is because I started from the outside in, trying to fix things around me, before realizing I needed to tap into something central to myself.
Nina Fraser , Portugal
@ Nina.fraser, @_ninafraser_
Kiss my. by Ginny Sikes
Copy to Imitate + Learn
“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery—it’s the sincerest form of learning.”
–George Bernard Shaw, playwright
It is extremely common for people new to drawing to copy other pieces of art. It’s one of those things everyone does, but no one talks about, so everyone thinks they’re the only one. I did it myself for years and I’m willing to bet you did too!
I spent a huge portion of my childhood copying page after page of Pokemon and Sailor Moon. I was trying to copy every shape, line, and color as closely to the original as I could—I was literally copying them. Not tracing, which teaches you nothing, but copying, which can teach you a great deal.
I copied because I wanted to learn how the animators drew all these characters I loved. I wanted to learn how to draw from a mechanical point of view: how do I move my pencil on the page to get my lines to look like those? It was only by copying again and again, over and over, that I was able to train my hand to move in a way I could command.
My Copy to Learn phase primarily happened in the 90’s, before social media or blogging exploded, so these drawings were stuffed inside a three-ring binder and mostly kept to myself. Now, in the era of the internet and social media, things are a bit more sticky with what to do with these drawings. See the end of this essay for best practices in sharing copied art.
Copy to Steal + Combine
“If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.”
–Jack Kirby, comic book artist
But drawing isn’t just mechanical movements across a page. There are other deeper things going on when we draw. Attempting to draw accurate copies of other artworks is great for teaching us the rules and principles of art. But at some point, to make your own original art, you have to choose which rules you want to follow and which you want to chuck out the window.
After a while, I became bored of copying Pokemon and thought it would be cool to make up my own Pokemon creatures. And that’s when my intention of copying shifted to the next stage. As I started drawing my own Pokemon creatures, I was still copying in many ways, but my intention was no longer to imitate and learn. My new intention was to steal and combine.
I lifted pieces of different Pokemon—eyes from Jigglypuff, legs from Bulbasaur, tail from my pet cat, Elvis—and mashed them up together to create a brand new Pokemon—my own Pokemon. Little did I know, I was on my way to making my first pieces of art.
“It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”
–Jean-Luc Godard, film director
If you copy something line for line, aiming for an exact replica, you haven’t made art. You’ve just made a copy of someone else’s art. But if you take little bits and pieces from many different sources and alter and combine them in new ways, you’ve now created something new and original—you’ve created art.
Copying with the intention to steal begins with a spark of inspiration. I loved and was inspired by the artistic elements of Pokemon, and my intention was to create something new from that inspiration. That’s what art is: taking an idea, combining it with other ideas in your head, and making a new idea.
It’s impossible to not be influenced by the things around us—it’s the very essence of creativity. Everything we create is a mashup of everything we’ve seen, heard, felt, and experienced. All these things together, from Pokemon to Sailor Moon to my pet cat, make up my artistic influences. And new influences are constantly absorbed into us becoming part of our ever-evolving artistic voice.
If I had never seen Pokemon, I would draw today in a completely different way. If I had never read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemna, I never would have been inspired to create We Are Fungi. These influences, inspirations, and the act of copying to steal and combine are essential parts of the creative process. Ideas create ideas. Art creates art.
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.”
–Jim Jarmusch, film director + screenwriter
Copy to Honor + Play
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
–Salvador Dali, painter
We artists often feel pressure to sit down and draw something completely original every time they draw. But making original art takes a certain mindset, inspiration, and energy level, and let’s be honest: sometimes it’s just not there. So if we’re aiming to draw consistently (which you are, aren’t you?), we need a way to draw when we don’t have any idea of what the heck to draw.
One of my favorite methods of drawing when I’m low on creativity is to copy some of my influences. My intention here is to honor something I love and lift the pressure of drawing something new—basically, to play on the page.
It’s a bit different than copying to learn, where I’m aiming for imitation and a direct copy. And it’s a bit different than copying to steal and combine, where I’m aiming to take bits and pieces from multiple different sources, combining them into something new. Copying to play is more light-hearted. There’s only one source of influence, but my artistic style is injected in the drawing as well.
This is similar to the popular hashtag, #DrawThisInYourStyle on Instagram. Artists offer up a piece of their art for other artist’s to copy in their own way, changing the linework, colors, and overall style, while crediting the original artist and artwork. In this method, the artists are not copying the piece closely enough to be learning, and they’re not deviating enough from it or stealing enough from other sources for it to be combining. It’s right in between: it’s playing. It’s a fun way to draw, when you just want to draw.
I’m actually feeling low on creative energy right now (helloooo month 8 of pregnancy!), so I made this week’s #MightCouldDrawToday theme Wallace and Gromit, the British claymation series, with this intention in mind. Throughout the week, we’ll be looking at these claymation characters and drawing our own versions of them in our own styles. My intention is to share this influence I love, and give myself (and you guys!) a creative outlet that’s easy to approach in a low energy mood.
So far all these methods of copying have been good—they’re beneficial and help us grow as artists in many different ways. But what happens if we move beyond the intentions of learning, stealing and playing? Can copying be bad?
