Kanakaweb: Sargent: All Ava Maria. So awesome. (via)

Below the original is my attempt to copy Sargent’s painting. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how people learn to paint. I’m starting to think that maybe copying paintings you like is a good way to study other people’s paintings technique while forcing yourself to learn some basic skills along the way. I gather that this is how students learned to paint back in the day, so it seems like a good thing to try in my spare time.

The painting took about an hour to complete, but I feel like I learned a lot in that time. Here are my random notes in case you are interested…

This entire thing is fantastic.