The Power of Repetition

The thing artist’s value most is creativity. You’ve heard it; they whisper it in galleries, “Isn’t he creative?” Maybe you’ve seen it in an interview, “I value my creativity.” Even the craft shows on HGTV claim “Everyone has creativity.”

No one sings the praises of repetition. It is one of the most despised words in the language. It’s so boring you say. It’s mind-numbing, soul-stealing repetition. It’s repetitive.

It’s powerful, it’s educational, it’s magic. That’s right, repetition is magic. Shut up you say. Nope, I won’t. Repetition has for long ages been the key to success in the world of art.

In times past it was the major tool for beginning artists. They sat and copied the works of their masters, not once, but for days, and weeks and years and if, not when, they got it right, first time, every time they got a new work to master. They did this day in and day out for years until they could duplicate the lines and sight of their masters and then and only then did they get to work on the real art. And that’s the way it had to be for artists worked in materials which simply could not be redone. Frescoes and marble are unforgiving, they don’t redo.

Then times changed, no more apprentices, no more forced labor, no more repetition. Let the creativity flow!

And art survived and went on unfolding and growing anyway. But did the artist benefit? Have you ever done a series of studies on a single piece. Changed the perspective and done the piece the whole way round, just to see if you could do it. Try painting the human head from behind, with none of the landmarks like eyes, ears and a nose to anchor it. Try rendering a building without using hard guidelines, or a landscape with no colors for definition.

Why you ask, because it makes you a better artist. Maybe we could learn something from the photographers. The first rule any photographer learns is, “Take lots of pictures.” With a camera you can’t change what is in the frame. If you want to change the scene you have to change the frame. Oh sure, now we have digital manipulation which can morph an apple into a stealth fighter, but to do it you have to know which apple will have the right colors and reflections and the only way you can know that is to be lucky…or take hundreds of apples under thousands of different lighting conditions.

The Coos Art Museum just had its youth art show. One of the winners, a terribly smart young woman said in an interview with The World, “It’s about giving the judges what they want.” The picture she toiled over did not get an award. The picture she entered because she just liked it won. It was a self-portrait. How many times, for how many years have artists practiced on themselves? Could it be because the subject is always available, works cheap, and won’t throw a fit if the artist wants to do one more sketch? That’s the magic of repetition you should try it sometime…