Mr. Fahrenheit: Thanks!
Do not paint a Rembrandt, but BE Rembrandt. Of course, this is extremely difficult to do but is the highest form of master study.
Offtopic:
just curious how you want to be someone you never met and you just know pictures of. Work of that person(s workshop, or work labeled as their work) made for clients and not even the complete Opus is at your fingertips due to time and a lot of pieces got lost (at least if it comes to "old" masters)
At the end trying to be someone else just will always end up with yourself imagining something, at least as far as I understand.
YOu yourself Imagining and acting like some idealized/idolized view of someone.
is acting in in someone you don't know and you won't ever met and you don't have valid information about his personality truly the highest form of the master study?
I think it's possible to reproduce style and even to reproduce someones ideas to a certain degree. I don't think you will ever be able to really "be" someone. You just don't share the exact view of world and experiences as this person and you might miss key experiences which were important for the artist - conscious or inconscious.
Maybe I just misunderstood or misinterpreted what you wrote, but I am curious what's the big idea behind this. I know some actors actin gin certain characters, but that sounds to me like a completely a different story.
Quite late... uhm early here.
My verbiage was hyperbolic.
By " very difficult" I really meant impossible. Sometimes however, even if the goal is impossible, it is still the clearest aim. Depending on the artist, we can know what time they lived, what was going on around them, and perhaps get a sense of their personality and world view by letters they write and work they create.
But I didn't mean to that extent. More so, become the artist in the moment of your painting. For example, many artists seek the " secrets" of the old masters, yet they don't use flake white, make their own pigments, or paint exclusively by daylight. Of course, the more experienced someone is, the closer they can get to the essentials of a certain artist's work, despite not following things such as these. These are things that may seem trivial at first, but when they compound on each other they grow into a direction that differs greatly from the path of someone who makes no attempt to " become the artist". One could copy a painting by John Singer Sargent using glazing and multiple layers, making their brushstrokes invisible, taking reference from a digital image etc, but that is sub-optimal. If an artist uses loaded brushstrokes with a flat brush, standing an arms length away from the painting, it's in your best interest to do the same.
I merely meant "be the artist" in a technical, and to some extent, environment, manner (tools, process when known, color palette etc).
However, Master studies have many uses beyond this and this is definitely not the only way to do one- but I do think it is the most sincere way, and most useful in absorbing all qualities of an artist's work at once. If I have video tutorial confirmation that one artist uses painter, it's stupid of me to do a study from them in photoshop if some of the qualities I am after in their work may be due to the painter workflow. If I am after just color, just value, or just drawing however, I can really use any tool or medium to replicate those aspects in a more segmented way.
