How to steal from a master's work instead of plagiarism

Hello! Cutie, I am Comic black rainbow.

Sometimes you would be troubled by the problem as "I just don't know how to refer to someone else" or "During the stage of learning and imitation, my works always look like other works".

I know how you feel.

When I learn to draw for the first time, I only see works that I like, I only draw what I like, because I just want to focus on what I like.

But drawing for a long time, I found that what I drew would also look like a certain style.

If today I took a painting, and use the pose and composition as references for my work, maybe said that I copy someone's work.

To reduce the occurrence of such things, let's talk about how to be a painting thief.

Further reading you might find interesting:

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”－Pablo Picasso

Plagiarism, in short, is that you copy the appearance of other's works, just as you copy other's expressions. Copying is an easy way to draw something without effort and disassembly with a brain. This is the worst way to learn, and the poor technique in the commercial market. It can deceive people for a while, it cannot be a classic long time.

Imitation is the most important part of the learning stage. Everyone must learn from imitation. Babies to learning to walk and speaking accents, all need an imitation. Imitation is one of the fastest ways to learn something! You may say "Imitation is not the same as plagiarism?" Actually, it's not, when you are imitating other's works, you may use your brain to analyze its internal principles and learn something. By learning the skills and expression of others, you will know how you can draw and express. But at this time, you can only learn appearance skills, not understand its profound meaning. So it is just good work, not great work!

"Stealing is that you take something from others without telling." It is "stolen" to take someone else's things without their consent, even you say that this thing is yours! In short, your brain absorbs the essence from other's works, and it becomes nutrients for you. Then present what you want to express in your way!

If you still don't understand the meaning, this picture should be clear enough.

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas”－Steve Jobs

After we have clarified the differences between plagiarism, imitation, and theft, you will find that most people like to learn about the master's skills when they study master's works, especially the creators who have good skills of painting. How does the master draw hair? How to color? What're tools do they use? But how did you use these skills after you learned the techniques from these masters? In many cases, you don't know how to use it or you don't use it after you have learned it. And you will lose the knowledge and forget it if you don't use the knowledge and skills for a long time. It's good to learn the knowledge and skills, but if you don't know how to use them or when you can use them, it means that you have only a superficial understanding, not the essence.

In order to ensure that you learn the essence, when you see the master's work, always ask the question "why?" After understanding the knowledge and skills, you have to understand why the master paints like this? Why the master express the work like this? According to the laws of nature or personal preference? After you have learned the skills and understood the meaning, the next step is done! Now, you are the creator, what do you want to express? How would you express it? How do you apply the knowledge and skills you have learned to the works when you are drawing? Turn everything you absorb from masterworks into your works! Just like a tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet, and Titanic are different in the way they tell stories. How do you interpret the same idea and concept in different ways? How do you use a technique that most people have used to interpret a different perspective and idea? It depends on your ability!

I am so happy that you read this article. It is really not easy to steal the essence from the master's work. Sometimes it takes a long time to imitate, learn and explore in order to really understand the essence of different masters. If you have any questions about learning, please feel free to tell me in the comment below or use social media or mail to share with me! I hope that these questions I asked above will help you to think deeper and find out your own expression when you are creating! So take the works from the masters who you like now and see what you can steal!!!