Killing Creativity 3: Copying — Crime or Compliment?

http://www.pxlcut.com/blog/copying-crime-or-compliment

Copying. This seems to be one of the common topics for discussion among creatives. And people seem to be divided about this. Is it a crime or a compliment? I would say, depending on how much and how you do it, it can be one or the other, or a bit of both. It can also be neither.

First, copying something outright. Exactly as it is. To the dot, with a passion for precision. This is highly uncool for two main reasons: one, you are being very unoriginal; two, you are probably going to get into trouble for copyright infringement. But again this depends on how you are copying something and why you are doing it. If you are, say, imitating or copying an image or artwork for personal practice to hone and explore your own skills, that is perfectly alright. However, if you were copying someone else’s work in one form or another to then pass it off as your own and maybe profit from it in some way, that would almost surely be infringing copyright which is definitely not something that you want to do.

So is it okay to copy? Or is it okay at all?

You may have heard the saying: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

Now this is a saying that is not meant to be taken literally. Good artists copy. We all learn from copying. As babies we learned to speak by imitating what we heard. We learned to write by mimicking the shapes and lines we saw on paper. We also learn to draw by copying what we see. And that doesn’t only refer to the work of our fellow artists. What we see refers to everything around us. Animals, people, objects. But what happened after that? We learned to walk on our own. We learned whether we preferred to jog or run, bike or rollerblade. We decided whether we liked cursive or not, developed our own handwriting. The same should be for our writing and art. You may start of, learn faster, in fact, by copying. But you should be careful to not rely on copying other artists or other creatives’ styles too closely lest it begin to hamper your own development. I was watching one of Keinan Lafferty’s videos on how he developed his own style and one of the phrases I never forgot was, “Look, but don’t stare.”

Great artists steal. It should be fairly obvious that this does not mean stealing anything physically or literally. Or does it?

Try and look back on how you learned to write. You started off by tracing lines on a sheet of paper in school. Most likely, someone at home also helped you, held your hand as you started learning your letters. As you grew older, you unconsciously would look at your teacher’s letter forms on the blackboard, or those on the pages of a book. Without knowing it, you would copy that. Maybe you saw a fancy looping script while reading Harry Potter and that influenced that enviable handwriting you have to this day. So what happened? Influence. Inspiration. We like to emulate those we admire. And by doing so, we take the time to study styles, practice them so that we can be as good or better.

So how can you translate that into developing your own art style? Look, but don’t stare. Go and look at the artists you admire. See what you like in their art, in their style. Find what catches your eye when you look at a piece. And then look away.

You see, when we look too closely for too long, we start going into the nitty gritty details. That is fine when you are actually studying a piece in itself to analyze the artist or writer’s style, meaning, and the work’s denotation or connotation. When you are looking to develop your own skill, looking much too closely can hinder more than help. Why? Because more often than not, we tend to copy what we see that we like. This goes for prose, poetry, drawing, painting, music, just about any form of creativity. And that’s completely normal. That’s just how we are by nature.

I have experienced this myself. Watch one person’s style too closely with the intent to learn and you will almost certainly come to a point where you are constantly comparing yourself to the work of the person you admire. And while it is not wrong to compare, we should not forget that there is no complete right or wrong form when it comes to art, whatever type of art it is. Our art is our own unique language, our personal form of expression. Just like handwriting, no two can be exactly the same. And that’s just the beauty of it.

So look around you. Look at the work of your favourite artists. See what you like, and what you don’t like in each of them. Then go and emulate the little bits from each that you like. Maybe you like how someone draws leaves, but are more enchanted by how someone else paints eyelashes. At the same time, you are a huge fan of how someone else shows the flow in cloth or hair. Go ahead and emulate the little bits from here and there. Look but don’t stare. Copy, steal and then let go. In time — and lots of patience — you will see that you are starting to discover and develop your own style.