The Masters!

David Hockney’s theories about how the Masters painted with such preciseness really opened my eyes to the fact that you don’t have to be a painting “superhero” in order to paint such extravagant compositions. I looked at those paintings before with such amazement and bewilderment about how the artist could have possibility painted something so elaborate and beautiful especially back then when they were still discovering how things were done. I couldn’t possibly begin to paint a composition with such detail as the masters do with all of the new painting tools and knowledge that we have today. It may have not been just from the artist observing the subject and drawing it on to the canvas but they still had to turn late loose sketch into the wonderful colorful, realistic painting that we see today. It is not just simply feeling in the lines like a color book. This still took skill, talent and patience which many who haven’t tried to tackle such a project themselves would have no idea of what a tedious tasks it actually is. Not raw talent, cheating, takes the magic out of it, is what some say about the theories that Hockney under covers. But I say it is no different than a extremely talented magician who has trained, studied to become a master himself, if he was taught by other great magician and shown all of the secret trades and tricks that they do to make it an illusion than is that cheating or is the outcome still as amazing as before just with more understanding.
Why say one is cheating just because he has a secret tool to make is job easier and more precise? Does the artist still have the ability to create something amazing, unique, and still to this day copied? Can you take a simple tracing of something and turn it into a replica of a masters painting?
The Masters will always be Masters! So what if they used what they considered to modern technology to help their process along, we could not survive one day with out using some form of modern technology and I am pretty sure that if they came and painted with our so called “tools” they to may say that we ourselves have been taking some artist shortcuts or as some may call it “cheating”. Think what you want but I, myself, couldn’t produce those paintings even with the trace. Could you?