What to copy is a little bit trickier. Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Don't imitate qualities of your heroes at random. Some are flaws they succeeded despite. The qualities that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws.

Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

What to copy is a little bit trickier. Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style.

Qué copiar es un poco más difícil. No sólo te robes un estilo, róbate el pensamiento detrás de ese estilo. No quieres verte como tus héroes, quieres observar como ellos.

Así que cópiale a tus héroes. Examina en qué te quedas corto. ¿Qué hay ahí que te haga diferente? Eso es lo que debes ampliar y transformar en tu propio trabajo. Al final, solamente imitar a tus héroes no es adular. Transformar su trabajo en algo tuyo es la mejor forma de que se sientan halagados; dándole algo al mundo que sólo tú tienes.

So: Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short. What's in there that makes you different? That's what you should amplify and transform into your own work.

In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the world that only you can add.

To transcend the influence of your heroes, copy them shamelessly like a student until you get them out of your system. That is the way of all masters.

That’s what you really want — to internalize their way of looking at the world. If you just mimic the surface of somebody’s work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff.

Copying or emulating heroes is true power learning.

En algún punto tendrás que dejar de imitar a tus héroes para empezar a emularlos

If I wanted to be a painter, I might think about trying to be like Van Gogh, or if I was an actor, act like Laurence Olivier. If I was an architect, there’s Frank Gehry. But you can’t just copy somebody. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.