Class | Sturdevant Gallery

Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475-February 18, 1564), was sent for formal education, but he had no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings in the churches. Later he became friends and studied art with some of the great painters and sculptors of his time.

In museums around the world, you can watch artists create copies of paintings. In the Louvre Museum in Paris, you can see a stream of artists copying his great paintings. Copies of works of art has been a cornerstone of the traditional arts education for a long time. In fact, you can take a course from the New York Academy of Arts in New York, NY. It consists of students who walk a few blocks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) and copy paintings.

MMA artists who want to make copies can make their request to the Department of Education of MMA. The museum allows artists to obtain exclusive use for one month of a room or a gallery in the museum to make a copy of a specific painting. The public has no access, but an artist can copy the photo. I recommend doing the same.

The museums vary on allowing artists to make copies. Check with your museum. How it works varies from one museum to another, but usually you apply to obtain permission and follow the rules of the museum. For example, the Louvre and other museums, artists should not use the same size canvas as the original. You can not eat or drink in the museum. You must use a dropcloth on the floor where you paint on an easel and clean it thoroughly after each session. Some museums copyists are provided a space with lockers to leave their paintings and supplies rather than having to carry everything back and forth every day during their month access to the art gallery.

If you can not afford to go to art school for lack of time and/or money, or can not go to a museum to copy reproductions of great paintings, you can still find books from the library or paintings on the web.

Everyone is different in their ability to extract information from textbooks, videos or art classes. When you copy a masterpiece, you can learn something about the artist’s technique, handling of paint, use of color, composition, shape, and design.

Can you learn to copy great paintings? Michelangelo thought.

The author, Barry Waldman, has painted and taught for 50 years and has had over 30 art exhibits of his paintings. His USA based online art school has students in 19 countries. He taught art classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Manhattan, NY, Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, Famous Artists Schools in Westport, Connecticut, USA. He has also lectured on various art subjects all over the USA and in Holland, Belgium, France, South Africa and Australia.

His online interactive art school is at:
http://www.interactiveartschool.com

Links to people, images mentioned in article are at:
http://www.interactiveartschool.com/linksEzine.html