-Reductions, Reproducibility and Painting Music-

    I'm nearing completion on the 6th of a series of reductions and the thought crosses my mind of the musical quality of creating reductions.
    Reductions are smaller scale versions of a painting, usually at a reduced rate.  The difficulty of them is that they can't contain any errors or, in other words, the composition must be able to be reproduced deliberately.  It's intriguing to attempt reductions because the painting becomes almost akin to a piece of music.  While it is impossible to copy an exact version, the general picture should be an artistic copy of the original.  It's just like playing a piece of music the same exact way twice.  The guide that I do have are my sketches.  All my sketches are the sheet music and they tell me what colors and where to place them.
        It helps to have the original painting in front of you for reductions, but the sketches can suffice if you don't have the original.  The fun of reductions and the difficulty is that it's like a calculated test of skill.  Everything must be thought out beforehand.  When I see paintings, I always ask myself, "Would this artist be able to reproduce this picture?"  Because, in asking this question, it becomes clear what was an accident and what was thought out before setting brush to canvas. 

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