CHAPTER XXIV

COPYING

Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of
manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful,
sometimes necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the
results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter
must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. Before
the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be
placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and
their relation to that plan. This calls for some method of exact
reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that
purpose. The process of copying is that method.

From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical
means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter
whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why
and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study
with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as
the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the
expression at the same time.

This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said
before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye;
and the training of the power of perception rather than the
understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The
processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature
are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find
his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is
still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as
he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can
give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of
nature should come first. The _seeing_ of what is must precede the
_stating_ of it.

But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to
be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right
places.

Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for
something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student
makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing,
but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and
whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the
original.

This is not only for the sake of the copy,