Why you should study the master painters?
Master painters from all over the world developed what we know of art today. When people started painting on caves, they had limitations to their colors and the type of materials they used. It’s nothing like what we know today. They perfected color mixing and composition with a limited color palette.
Centuries later people developed mathematical ways to create paintings and experimented with technique. Fibonaci’s sequence became an advanced way of looking at composition. Two dimensional flat drawings of people left the cartoon style and became three dimensional form people suddenly analyzed through the idea of light hitting objects. With the idea of gravity and theories around light, art progressed to be a study of light and theory. The master painters dabbled in science, math, theory, and formed art. Many phenomenal artists today will say they work emerged and grew from studying the master painters.
The reason for this is simple. Studying their work can help artists to intimately know all of the fundamentals of painting. When I went to art school I resisted doing master studies. We were asked to copy master paintings to the best of our ability. This would force us to think like the master painters from centuries before. I disliked doing them, because it felt like we were copying and my painting never looked exactly like the master painting when I finished it. However, now I believe they are extremely important for an artist to develop their style. I learned how light hits buildings from copying an Italian master’s landscape painting.
A few ways artists improve by doing master studies are the following: learning color, composition, and different styles.
Composition
Color
Style
If you took a month and studied 30 paintings, one every day, your eye would be trained in 30 different ways of seeing a landscape, still life, or any object. You will be forced to use color in a different way. You’ll be forced to analyze how an artist approached painting light on a subject. There are many benefits to doing master studies. Let me know if you plan on doing a master painting challenge. I would love to join you or hear about your progress.
There are different approaches to doing master studies. You can read more about that in my next article: