A Stunning FLOTUS Portrait To Push You Through This Damn Election

[Neema]

43. I absolutely love that this young woman was so moved

by a photograph of Michelle Obama that she decided to copy it to canvas. I did things like this many times when I was younger. Lots of young enthusiastic artists do to learn their craft. It's a wonderful way to learn technique. But you can't call it your own original artwork. That's not fair to the photographer. You have to take it further away from the original to call it your own.

If another artist took my work, ran it through a photoshop filter, projected it onto canvas and made an exact replica of that projection, then called it her own work, I would have a problem with that. Especially to profit off of it.

I don't have a problem with her, her vision, her enthusiasm, even her technical ability. And I completely understand her love of our amazing first lady and her desire to express that on canvas.

I'm sorry if my shorter answer came off as trite and demeaning. When I was in art school, "paint by numbers" was what our professors called our work when it was copied instead of interpreted. It was meant to encourage us to dig deeper.