Become a Skilled Artist with Repetition

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Becoming competent at any skill involves practice, and painting is no different.

As a beginning painter, you need to learn and then practice the basics involved with getting pigment on a support.

Once you’re comfortable with the fundamentals, you move on to understanding principles like color theory, composition, perspective and all that book-learnin’ stuff.

With all that knowledge, a student needs to practice what he or she has learned. Painting, like music, requires practice. A piano student who attends class but never practices won’t ever play at Carnegie Hall. It’s the same for painters. You can read all the books you want, but if you don’t spend time flinging paint, you’ll never see your work hanging in a gallery or show.

Follow The Method Of The Old Masters

You can’t expect to paint a subject for the first time and wind up with a masterpiece when you’re starting your journey as an artist. For example, let’s say you’ve created some still life paintings that contain ceramic vases. You’ve painted them pretty well, and you’re pleased with the shading, highlights and the three-dimensional appearance you’ve achieved.

Now, try painting a similar vase that’s silver or – yikes- cut crystal. You’ve entered a whole new level of painting, and you’re not going to master that vase with just one try. That’s where repetition comes into play.

The great masters taught students and apprentices to copy not only paintings, but to do it over and over. With each incarnation of the piece, the student’s skill would improve. Over time, the apprentice learned the techniques he needed to proceed on his own.

Deliberate Practice

Repeating a subject doesn’t just mean copying the exact same thing. You’re not just painting yet another vase willy-nilly. Every time you paint the same object, you should be doing so with a specific goal to learn something new about your subject.

It’s the quality of your practice as much as it is the quantity of that practice. A music student practices pieces at his current level to improve and perfect the skills he needs at that level. As he becomes confident with those pieces, his instructor will add pieces that are progressively more challenging.

It’s the same thing with painting. When you took your first classes in painting, your instructor didn’t set a cut crystal vase in front of you and expected you to paint it. The teacher most likely had you paint an egg, an apple or a plain ceramic vase, and encouraged you to paint it multiple times.

Deliberate practice means you learn something each time you repeat your lesson and use it a building block to make your painting more refined and to develop a natural and effortless quality to your technique.

The Difference Between Repetition And Copying

Copying a subject verbatim is sterile imitation, while repeating a theme is a way to delve deeper into the subject. Doing the same thing over and over doesn’t guarantee perfection. You need to focus your attention and concentration. It’s almost like meditation – peeling the layers to see what’s beneath. The more you paint the subject in all its diverse forms and appearances, the more intimately you understand and appreciate it.

Vincent Van Gogh painted sunflowers many times over a period of years. He’d return to the flower as both the main focal point of his work, as well as include them as integral parts of a scene or even in the background.

Pablo Picasso created a series of 58 pieces reinterpreting the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez during a six month period. He used different techniques and reconstructed this work in his own interpretations. No one will ever say that Picasso copied Velázquez.

Repeating themes and subjects is a sure way to develop skills and learn from your mistakes. You’ll become comfortable with your subject. With that familiarity, you’ll be able to push your expression of that subject to the limits. Maybe pushing as much as Picasso did isn’t your goal, but you’ll broaden your skills as a technician as well as an artist.

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