In humans, mimicry has been an essential developmental tool for one’s way of learning, most particularly within the art community. However, there’s been debate over the legitimacy of mimicry being beneficial for the art community, with some experts arguing that mimicry is the cause of plagiarism among artists. This paper will go into the history of mimicry; from the early stages of human development in babies to its usage within the creative field. Utilizing Leo Stevenson’s article Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: An Artist’s Take on the Art of Copying (2011) gives us an in-depth thesis on how copying the works of his mentors helped to develop important techniques to improve his works. In an experiment by Takeshi Okada and Kentaro Ishibashi in their article called Imitation, Inspiration, and Creation: Cognitive Process of Creative Drawing by Copying Others' Artworks (2016), they divided participants into three groups—Copy, Control, and Reproduction—to draw the objects given to them for three days, where Copy on the second day were given drawings of the objects from an artist to copy. It resulted in the Copy group having a higher creativity score than the Control, who made their original drawings from scratch. These examples helped demonstrate how mimicking/observing the works of others can benefit one’s learning and understanding of the work. And applying it reveals how mimicry is one of the most important tools for one’s development as an artist within the creative process.

Capstone Project: Self Study/Web Series