Doing a master copy
Week 1 of TAD has just concluded and assignments have been flooding in! They’re given in the lectures but not all of the details are posted online which makes it difficult to track.
One of the more confusing assignments was to do a master copy of a drawing by Fechin. A master copy being where you find a master’s work and try to replicate it yourself.
I’ve never done a master copy before so I just lunged into it, which I shouldn’t have. So now, for the artistic viewing public I’ll elaborate on how and why you should go about doing a master copy, as explained by Carl Dobsky.
Carl told us that before doing a master copy you must have a goal in mind before commencing. My goal was to do the homework, and I just expected to have some revelation while doing so but it doesn’t quite work like that. I didn’t really connect the dots. My goal should’ve been ‘learn to use graphite’. Or more specifically, ‘learn how Fechin would’ve used graphite/charcoal.’ It all seems so obvious in retrospect.
Doing a master copy is supposed to make you figure out how another artist would’ve gone about doing something. To try and extrapolate how they produced the picture, assuming you can’t research and find out about their process. By thinking about it from this perspective it becomes more personal and invested. You chose this artwork because you want to figure out its secrets.
Here’s my master copy of Fechin’s Mexican Woman drawing using pencil. It’s not a perfect replication, and I have a lot to learn about working with graphite, but still I learnt a lot. Click to enlarge!
