Favorite Works vs Your Own Work

[Enyaw]

I once read that you should never try to emulate anyone: just steal what you understand helped make their art likeable to you. After all, what's to gain by having your art look like someone else's.
Everybody likes Vincent, including myself, but knowing that he used color and brushwork to lead the viewer through his piece is enough for me. I guess if I wanted a job on an assembly line producing hand painted prints I might think differently. I'd like my art more if someone else painted it because I'm much more demanding of myself than others. ...

 

[stlukesguild]

I've loved Derf Backderf's work for years. His "The City" comic strips were an underground classic here in Cleveland published in The Fee Times.

 

[stlukesguild]

My work is the result of having absorbed a broad array of Art over the years. Like many American boys of my generation, my first real artistic passion was comic books... and there are elements of these that I retain to this day. Among the artists who have been most important to me, I would include medieval European art, early Italian Renaissance painting (Simone Martini, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, etc...), Michelangelo, Mannerism, Islamic art, Rubens, Degas, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Schiele, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Indian sculpture, Pop Art, classic pin-up paintings and contemporary pinup revival photography, illustration, posters, Michael Bergt, Kelly Beeman, Yasunari Ikenaga, and many more. There are clearly elements of many of my favorite artists that show up in my art in variations. My chosen media (pastel, acrylic, color pencil, conte, and gold leaf) result in something unlike anyone else's art that I have seen. Years ago I would have thought, "Ugh! That looks just like something I would make!" when the work didn't live up to my expectations based on the work of the artists I most admired. Eventually, I came to realize that such a personal manner is what all artists should be striving toward.

 

[P. Barrie]

My work is the result of having absorbed a broad array of Art over the years. Like many American boys of my generation, my first real artistic passion was comic books...

Been there! I used to spend hours drawing Superman, Spiderman, Thor, Hulk, Wonder woman, etc. Now they’re all in the movies! I once had The Amazing Spider Man Vol 1, got lended away, oh well...
Got in trouble in grade school many times for drawing comic book figures during a lesson.

 

[stlukesguild]

I had almost no exposure to "fine art" until I was 15 or 16. None of the teachers I had talked about art history or introduced us to artists. It wasn't until I was in high school and had a young recent art school grad that I was exposed to any "serious" art. The first "serious" artist that I was exposed to was Salvador Dali. I was so enthralled that I ended up buying a big coffee table book on his paintings that sold for around $100... which was a fortune for me at that age. When I started to dig into art history I could help but recognize similarities between the Renaissance and Baroque paintings of gods and goddesses and comic book superheroes. Both were images of superhuman bodies... often seen in dynamic poses... wearing brightly colored (and revealing) costumes.

 

[classic]

I knew painting as a child, at home, through works of artists who were mostly friends of my father. Later, I could learn more from television documentary films. I adore the renaissance art as well as later centuries, classical and romantic masters and (more recently) 20th century art movements. I did visit various Museums, including Louvre, Jeu de Pomme and others in Paris, as well as the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I loved Van Gogh me too. I was impressed by David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gericault. In the late years I had the opportunity to read a book on Cezanne. After that I was very interested for him too.
As a novice in painting I would never think that I could paint like these great masters. Perhaps I could try to imitate them by copying some of their works (copying masters' works has been always a way to learn something more) but I don't think I could be creative as they were. All those great masters in the history of art were not just efficient artisans. They did go further, create new techniques, new expression ways.

Furthermore, I adore the art of the past but I think I could express myself through a newer artistic "language". In a similar manner, I love the masters of the past centuries music and musicians but I feel I could express myself sincerely in 20th-21st c. expression codes.

 

[Mississippi Hippie]

Well I do love Jean micheal basquit and have had my work compared to his. Tho since mine do..I wouldn’t own his I’d sell it. Hmm I don’t see the resemblance tho.