MayBE 2019: Day Twenty-Seven

Steal Like An Artist.

(I stole that from Austin Kleon.)

“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.”

– Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Copying. I touched on it yesterday at the end of post. This has been the one thing that my kids do everyday. They copy poetry, quotes, artwork, passages, songs, and anything else that inspires them.

Right now, my 16 year old is exploring the theme of cities based on the prompt I created on Day 14. She loves the book by Italo Calvino and has been searching for quotes and passages on cities and copying them. Her favourites are from Jane Jacobs and from Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking.

My son is always copying superheroes and anime faces. My daughter copies patterns to sew. My other daughter is currently copying quotes from Emerson and her latest book Well-Read Black Girl.

“You start when you’re young and you copy. You straight up copy.”

• Shel Silverstein

I am constantly copying quotes and artwork in my daily practice. What we have found is that we start to infuse our own experience and interpretation. We start to make off-shoots which lead to original projects.

This creation was inspired by this illustration by Brothers Hilts in the book Velocity of Being:

It’s like we collaborate with our mentors to create our art, our writing, our ideas. We pay homage and ALWAYS give credit that inspire us to connect dots in other ways.

Steal, copy, imitate. REPEAT.

”Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

• Salvador Dali

TODAY’S PROMPT:

• Copy the above quote.
• Copy a passage from a book that makes your heart sing.
• Copy a piece of art.

  -Copy any of my art on the blog.

(But always give credit.)