I hope this update finds you well.  

Before I launch into storytime and share the work I’m making right now… as a reminder I’ll be manning my vendor booth tomorrow (Saturday December 3rd) all day from 10am to 5pm at the Mount Baker Community Clubhouse Arts Fair.  

I’ll have a bunch of original artwork with me, with a special focus on the plein air watercolor works I’ve made in the past year while living and working in the Mount Baker / South Rainier neighborhood.  Bear in mind that if you have your eye on any particular work of mine that matches that criteria, today is a very good window of time to own it for yourself, before it is shown for the first time in-person to the Mount Baker community.

One last reminder - if you have bought artwork, a book, anything from me before, your collector’s discount is still good through the end of the year, 12.31.22.  If you have bought from me and don’t have the code - contact me at David@DavidOSmithArtist.com, or reply to this email.

This week, I was having a conversation with someone who enjoys the watercolor plein air work I make. They were telling me they run their own experiments in watercolor, copying the work I make, specifically for use in their beautifully crafter homemade cards.  They asked permission - as if they needed it - is this ok?  To copy another artist’s work?

Absolutely it is ok.  The concept of working from another artist’s artwork, whether a direct, same media copy (oil painting to oil painting, for example), or transforming that work into a different media or scale, is a longstanding tradition and an integral part of a complete art education.  In the rigorous art training environments that I’ve been so lucky to be a part of - we call these master copies.

When I was fourteen, I attended a sprawling, beautiful exhibition of John Singer-Sargent’s work put on by the Seattle Art Museum, December 2000 to March 2001.  Aside from the plein air watercolor work, the gorgeous charcoal figure drawings, and superlative oil portraiture, was a small painting Sargent had made after Velazquez, the head of Aesop.  I had never seen the original, so I looked it up, and was introduced to another incredible artist (Velazquez) because of the painting by Sargent.

At left - Sargent’s master copy of Velazquez’s original, at right, Velazquez’s Head of Aesop (a detail of a full-length, life-size painting).

This fall, at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, I was given private audience with some of Sargent’s original charcoal figure drawings.  My eternal gratitude to the Hood Museum’s staff for this special experience.

In the 20 minutes I had with the drawings, I made a graphite copy of one of them, 9 x 12” instead of the original 18 x 24”.  The experience has inspired me to take up a few master copies in my own work again, especially after a project involving 46 of them made in 8 days in Fall 2021 was so enriching to my ongoing art education.  Of the 46 mastercopies I made for that project, 11 are still available.  It is a good sign to me that art collectors can embrace the value of working from other artist’s work just as I do.

I present the first three of the new series, available now, as well as a work in progress, another Sargent copy, in charcoal, but at a smaller scale than the original, 8 1/2 x 11” instead of 19 x 24”.

Lastly, I want to congratulate all of you who have already purchased the work of friend and painter Paul Rosiak, and if you have not already, some of his plein air oil paintings are still available, here.  Just reach out to him directly to find out what is still available, at rosiakpaul@gmail.com.

Forgive the unrefined nature of my prose - I am deep in the process of final touches and preparations for tomorrow’s day-long event.  If you are keen to do some drawing yourself, I highly recommend attending Gage Academy’s all-day Drawing Jam (I also have some small works on the walls for their Holiday Sale), which I would love to be there for if not for the Mount Baker commitment.

Happy December,

David

David@DavidOSmithArtist.com