Grenbug

This lesson is for Master Studies.

As part of my 2026 goals, I want to try to finish a Master Study each week. These are making copies of art that I love from contemporary artists that I follow and want to learn from. Master Studies are amazing because you are already working with a piece that has composition, subjects, color and linework that you already love. Instead of trying to create a new piece and do all that from scratch, you are doing a deep analysis of the choices that another artist has made. It means you can follow those good choices and just focus on the techniques involved to recreate the piece.

I am still learning about composition, color, style, etc. So when I make pieces of my own, I’m often disappointed in the results. There’s just too many issues with my work. Doing Master Studies really helps give me confidence that these are things I will learn eventually. It’s an excellent way to learn.

However, I can’t post my copies publicly! I feel it would be wrong to post work that isn’t my own. So, as a workaround, I’m going to make a small piece of my own composition influenced by the master work. That gives me practice with applying the lessons from the Master Study, and also gives me a test piece to try out the linework and colors that I’m using.

So, this piece is a little test piece of my own of a potion bottle. I really love the idea of potion bottles. I think I’ll work on other pieces like this for practice

Next time, I need to give myself more time to complete these. Even small pieces take more than an hour. I can also make my test piece a little bigger, just to have more to work with.

Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen and watercolors in a Moleskin Art sketchbook.

The master study and companion piece took about 2.5 hours.