"I've started painting using acrylics, I've been practicing painting skies and the tip of the brush is faint blue, does this matter?" -- Ash

Short 'n sweet: no.

Well, actually, not that sweet because having a staining pigment transform the hairs on a brand-new brush from pristine to stained in one painting session isn't sweet. I know, I know... a brush is merely a tool and it's there to be used. Pointless not using it...

See Also:
• Parts of an Artist's Brush
• How Many Brushes Should You Use in a Painting?

^{Image: © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc}

"I got kind of disheartened by doing my own original work ... none of it ever sold and eventually I felt like I was just spinning my wheels and spending money on work I didn't enjoy doing...

I just simply enjoy doing other artist's existing work (in reproduction a.k.a. copying their work) for myself. I don't ever sell the copied work; I just love to do them. Does this make me a bad artist or even, yikes, a bad person?"-- Michael, on the Painting Forum

If you're producing reasonable copies, then you can't be a bad artist because otherwise the copies wouldn't look anything like the originals. And if copying made you a bad person, then the list of bad people would have to include many prominent names across the centuries because copying has long been a tradition in art, both to learn and to earn money. In his youth Renoir, for example, knocked off copies of paintings in the Louvre to earn some money.

My question to Michael is "How far are you taking the copying?" Are you working with traditional materials or modern equivalents? Are you creating canvases in a traditional style or buying ready-made ones? If you're enjoying recreating works, perhaps you'll also enjoy learning to use the materials the artist would've used. Add your thoughts...

See Also:
• Review: The Art Forger's Handbook

When we're looking at a painting it's impossible for our knowledge of how the world works and is laid out not to automatically be applied, so we don't need everything depicted in fine detail. Our minds will interpret and fill in "missing" information. Our curiosity is aroused and we engage with the painting.

Adapting our perception of perspective is part of the challenge of the Matisse Painting Project and when look at Maddy's Blue Studio painting I found myself wondering whether the line between the floor and back wall wanted to be there at all. So I played around in a photo-editing program to see what it would look like. First spend a moment looking at the original painting, then at my two altered versions, and see what you think.

^{Image: Detail from Blue Studio by Maddy Buckman}

The cliché has it that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so could a painter then be worth 1,000 pages? Certainly biography Hilary Spurling thought so with her two-volume biography of the artist Henri Matisse which comes in at that sort of length.

Matisse is the artist I've chosen for this year's "in the style of" painting project. If the project grabs your imagination, if you may want to immerse yourself in his life, times, and work by reading Spurling's epic biography. Don't be intimidated by its length. It's written in a very readable style and when I'd finished I could happily have continued for a third volume. Read my review...

See Also:
• Matisse Painting Project
• Great Art Reads for Painters

^{Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc}