Impulse

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.)]

Related posts:

1. To fin­ish or to aban­don: that is the question
2. Creative progress & rip­ping off JFK
3. The per­fect story
4. Writer’s at bat
5. Take the direc­tor out of the director’s cut