Perhaps you admire an artist or their style or technique.

Perhaps you want to learn from other artist and wonder. “How do I go about it?”

Is copying o.k.?

A practice common in the 14th, 15th and 16th century was to copy or emulate the style of an artist. Throughout the Middle Ages, artists training was controlled and operated by guilds. Artists, Sculptors and Painters belonged to the guild of the Doctors and Apothecaries (Arte dei Medici e Speziali) as they bought their pigments to make oil paint from the apothecaries, while sculptors were members of the Masters of Stone and Wood (Maestri di Pietra e Legname). These guilds also created a community for the artist.

During the Renaissance, art apprentices studied under the guidance of a master artist. Apprentices seem to have entered the artists’ shops in their early teens and spent their early career working for or doing menial tasks. In Venice however, an apprentice could move on to journeyman status after only two years. Copying allowed young artists to grow their ability to draw and render like their master. It was common to pay homage to an artist by honoring a revered artistic master of drawing, painting or both.

The big question is how do you learn the skills today, that centuries ago were passed from generation to generation in a guild or a craftsman’s family or through an apprenticeship with a master in a trade guild?

Look for an artist you love and admire.

Look for a master.

Homage

Homage refers to the idea that you are showing respect or tribute towards an artist where the artist emulates another artists works as a mark of respect. Young artists learned from copying celebrated works that could be seen in the cities they lived . For example in the city of Florence Italy, — Michelangelo, copied paintings by Giotto. Giotto is recognized as the most important Italian painter of the 14th century, whose works point to the innovations of the Renaissance style that developed a century later.

Young art students were happy to simply be copying a master artist. They began with simple helping tasks such as mixing paint or preparing panels and grinding pigments to make paint. They often learned to draw, first by copying drawings made by their masters or by helping prepare under cartoons or outlines for final painting. Drawing in this way served not only as training aids for young artists, but also became a references for future painting motifs that could be employed in their own new works.

Channelling or Homage

Another way to develop a style or learn technique, is perhaps, is to learn the art of channeling. If you are a medium or an artistic mimic it would be a great way to start. But if not, then copying or employing style or techniques used by the artist is another technique that is common today.

Another way is educating yourself by simply looking closely at the detail.

I have spent many hour in museums and galleries learning technique of artists I admire and hoping to be inspired and secretly perhaps wishing I could channel their talent. In the end simply observing and looking closely at the brush strokes and imagining how they created the look is a great way to start. I photographed many close ups of Joan Mitchell’s work in order to understand paint choices, colors and brush strokes.

No I am not adept at channeling. In the literal sense, I guess channeling is where a person allows their body to be used by the spirit or ghost of a deceased person. If I could I would Channel Joan Mitchell.

I am not getting that swirly, and in fact, I am pretty grounded in the present. However, I know this word “channeling” is a phrase psychics use to describe the process of inviting, calling for or making an open ‘channel’ of communication between themselves as a medium, and the ‘someone’ they are ‘channeling’ i.e., in my case my desire to learn from or even emulate the style of Joan Mitchell has been a lifelong passion.

There are so many artists I admire and long to study

I have spent many hours flying in front of artists I admire like Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell's paintings. I was simply exhilarated to be there and have spent many enjoyable hours viewing, absorbing and learning all I can.

Characters in my play or story of learning

At the center of a really good story are the characters in it. In this article aspiring writers or artists will discover a few characters that would be wonderful to bring to life. These characters are complex, vivid and unforgettable characters. The characters in my story are Mitchell, Monet, Pollack and others.

My main character is Joan Mitchell.

What an incredible artist she was. Working in a bold, colorful and inventive gestural style, Mitchell’s works are characterized by their luminous layers of color. Her works were often said to have their inspiration in nature.

“My paintings are titled after they are finished.” said Joan Mitchell.

“I carry my landscape with me…” said Joan. I love that sentence. David Zwirner Gallery echoed it in their latest show. Joan Mitchell: I carry my landscapes around with me — David Zwirner exhibited her multi paneled paintings. Sorry I missed it.

Joan described as Sauvage

“They call me sauvage [“wild”] in Europe, ’cause I’m direct and I say what I think,” she told director Marion Cajori in the 1992 documentary Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter. “And you’re not supposed to. You’re supposed to be diplomatic, which I call hypocrisy, lying really.”

What a unique personality and character she was. She painted the world around her in France and the United States. After viewing her works you will see her emotions provided the theme for Mitchell’s abstract paintings. One thing I found very interesting about Joan is that she painted at night and rarely if ever painted from life. Her style is varied but seems to always include strong gestural brush strokes.

She painted from her emotions or inspired from nearby landscapes. Her works are often called abstract landscapes.

“My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields…it’s more like a poem…and that’s what I want to paint.” -Joan Mitchell

A life of painting

Joan Mitchell had a varied career. Mitchell’s break into being recognized happened in New York. In 1950, she joined the Artists’ Club, an exclusive group of influential painters. She exhibited with her fellow Club members Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner andand Willem de Kooning, who are also considered to be eminent Abstract artists.

Joan had a long term relationship across Canada, the US and Europe with the artist Jean Paul Riopelle. They met at a party given by Hedda and Saul Steinberg during Joan’s summer trip to Paris. According to Patricia Albers’s 2011 biography, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, A Life. Their work has common similarities. Did she emulate him or did he emulate her? Jean-Paul Riopelle in 1956 confessed to adopting her materials and technique: “I’m happier because ultimately (my work) resemble(s) your painting, my love.”

So adopting is kind of like channeling I guess.

Born in Chicago, Joan grew up around Lake Michigan. Her father, a doctor, would often take her to the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums. In 1955 she began dividing her time between New York and France, and according to JoanMitchell.org in 1968 she settled in Vétheuil, a small town in the countryside outside of Paris, where she worked continuously until her death in 1992. She painted for almost 50 years as an Abstract Expressionist and was committed to the tenets of gestural abstraction.

Would it not be wonderful if we could channel Joan Mitchell or any other artist we admire.

Perhaps Joan Channeled some of your favorite artists as well.

Joan Mitchell it is reported was influenced by many artists, who I also admire and often study and emulate. Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Franz Kline and William de Kooning and Jean Paul Riopelle and I am sure many more.

I thought originally that the term channeling had to to do with connecting with the departed. Accordingly, when someone told me that I must have channelled Joan Mitchell in one of my recent paintings, I kind of had an about face and said to myself. Wow I finally made it. I am painting with Joan Mitchell’s style.

Passion

Some artists I have read encourage viewers to believe their artistic performance is a parapsychological or paranormal event. Mine is simply a passion I must release and if they ever resemble Joan Mitchell I am thrilled. I do not purposefully go about painting or copying one of her paintings but alas I am influenced.

No, I have not seen the ghost of Joan Mitchell and no she does not enter me and paint for me and no I am not a medium. I am influenced and adore her work.

In the parapsychological or spiritualistic context, mediums are thought to be mediators of messages. Messages come from supernatural places or worlds. Mediums experience themselves as channels able to let pass the gifts from some unknown power. Mediums are able to turn off conscious control and allow themselves to be disposed to influences that are experienced as coming from the supernatural or outside the boundaries of the person and usually appear personified as spirits.

I would love it if Joan Mitchell, who is one of my favorite American abstract expressionist painters, could channel somehow into my brush. I have written about her before. I continue to love her work and will continue to have a:

Love Affair with Art : Joan Mitchell, Monet and, Gerhardt Ricther.

“Anyone could paint that! “

I am drawn to her work and how cool it would be if I was able to selectively pick my favorite artists and then allow them to take over my brush when I painted and let their emotions guide me to emulate or paint in their style.

If you delve into words you will learn. If you really are a a logophile and a lover of words then “medium” should be on your list to explore.

A medium is supposed to connect with the person in spirit and through some magical power you are able to demonstrate or give enough detailed evidence to demonstrate that you’re really linking with a specific individual who has passed.

In spiritual terms, a “medium” is a person who converses or communes with the dead. This type of medium is a psyche or a spiritualist. I am none of these.

The word medium — from the Latin adjective medius, “middle” — has several meanings that all center on the idea of being in between.

Emulate a Style

I have never used the word channeling before, but I have titled some of my paintings. “ Joan Mitchell Inspired painting.”

I wrote in the description when marketing the painting above. Please review the following excerpt:

“I have always had a love affair with Joan Mitchell and finally I just let loose and emulated her style. What a joy to simply use energy to paint.

Joan Mitchell is known for the compositional rhythms, bold coloration, and sweeping gestural brushstrokes of her large and often multi-paneled paintings. Inspired by landscape, nature, and poetry, her intent was not to create a recognizable image, but to convey emotions.

This painting was inspired by Joan Mitchell.

I love to explore technique and style and enlarge my skills. The paintings that I create are meant to bring you joy, and pleasure. I hope they inspire and uplift, as well as enhance your interiors.

I believe that our homes should be sanctuaries that surrounds us with comfort, color, beauty and the things we love.

I loved creating the colors and brush work in this work. I hope you feel an emotional connection to this work, or perhaps LOVE Joan Mitchell like I do.

I hope this painting makes you feel good, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.”

So in essence “To channel someone”, then, is “to allow (that someone) to communicate through a connection” to receive a message or a method. Mitchell’s works are characterized by her luminous layers of color and layered brush strokes often inspired from nature. So I would, if I could channel Joan Mitchell, however I am only able to emulate perhaps some of her layered brush work technique.

Learn from those you know and love

Perhaps if you are lucky to live with another artist you will learn from them.

There are some famous talents and romantic partners who were both artists: Mitchell and Riopelle are just two such artists. There are other modern art couples such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Perhaps they were emulating or mediums.

Medium

Words can be tricky. For instance what about the word medium.

I am writing in Medium. Medium defined by wikipedia is “an online publishing platform developed by Evan Williams co founder of Twitter launched in August 2012. … The platform is an example of social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or exclusive blogs or publishers on Medium, and is regularly regarded as a blog.

Now I am an artist and so when I use the word medium I am referring to my various types of paints. Cambridge Dictonary says:

“The medium that an artist works in is the materials or method used to create things:

The work of art was done in mixed media (= using different substances), oil paint, acrylic, crayon, etc.”

In your early career when you start to sketch or to draw you are naturally influenced by those around you. I loved using fuchsia crayons like my best friend Lynn Brown when I was in grade school because I wanted to do everything she did. I am influenced by the work of other artists, either because I like them or because I want to learn from them. By the way my favorite color is red, not fuschia.

As we grow as an artist little by little we try to figure out what other artists did to achieve the end result in a painting and why they did what they did and why and how they developed a style in order to help develop our own unique style.

It is o.k. To learn from others as we are acquiring our own style.

I must say if you look at art in galleries today you will see there are those artists that are obsessed so much by an artist, that they try copying everything that he or she does.

I believe, copying is good for learning and if you work every day to learn the style of another artist or try to emulate their artwork to the degree that your work then looks very similar is that cheating?

Can you paint well enough to be a great imposter?

Painting identically to another artist is almost impossible because the master artists create without thinking, naturally, and for you it is a very complicated process to repeat. It’s like pretending to be someone else you are not. It is virtually not possible. But there are many fakes out there.

I read an article by CBS News that shared the story of Glafira Rosales who presented a painting to Knoedler Gallery that she claimed was the work of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. But in reality the art Rosales was wanting to sell was the work of Chinese immigrant Pei-Shen Qian, who would imitate the styles of the masters, then “age” his work with tea or dirt. A fake Rothko abstract sold for $8.3 million, and a fake Jackson Pollock painting sold for $17 million, before art experts began to realize the fakes.

Influence, emulate or copy. You can have influences from other artists, of course. The result may not be perceptible to the not trained or untuned observer but why not just paint in your own style.

I went through a period where I dripped and scraped and tried every painting technique or tool I could find and Jackson Pollack and Gerhard Richter became my new teachers. I play with dots and squinted at many a Seurat painting. I spent hours looking at Monet and Manet and was enthralled with the brush work of Cezanne. And over the years I continually marvel at the brush work of Joan Mitchell.

Copying someone else’s style is to some stealing, but to me and many art teachers I have reviewed it is a wonderful way to expand your own skils and learn.

Self Exploration Creating Your Own Voice

When you copy the style of another artist you can miss the joy or the process of self exploration, to lose of all the fun of dripping and mixing your own favorite colors and learn to reinterpret your own reality.

There are other ways that can lead you to have a style of your own.

Some artists are naturals and just pick up a brush and voila out come a masterpiece and they do not bother at all who is copying or trying out some other artists style. Copying an artist is not only about learning technique but also about exploring mediums, paints i.e., oil vs acrylics. As you can see from my early work, sometimes styles are born of the experiments and explorations that we do when studying others.

Learning from others

When copying your favorite artist do it with the purpose of exploring to get your style and not just to try to emulate it, then continue experimenting, exploring and copying and studying, because it is one of the ways to get your voice and style.

As long as you develop or create something that is coming from inside you and is your honest and sincere expression, that comes from deep within you you will grow both as an artist and as a person. Try to connect with your own artistic expression but walk the halls of as many museums and galleries you can and be inspired with the voices and brushes of the past. They will speak to you.

And do not feel guilty about doing it, we all need inspiration. That is the way of learning of the human being.