I did my first mastercopy for the first oil painting class I took in college. I decided to copy a painting by Milt Kobayashi because it looked simple enough. Once I started working on it, though, I realized it wouldn’t be as easy as I’d thought. Kobayashi has an amazing ability to mix just the right color and place it just right to create the effect he wants. I had to fix things over and over just to get them to look deliberate, which had the opposite effect, of course. My mastercopy looks pretty similar to the original, but it looks overworked and uncertain. It doesn’t have the *magic* of the original. I learned not to underestimate something just because it looks simple and I learned the power of working with confidence.