I thought this image by Ellsworth Kelly very interesting. Our first approach to a subject is to faithfully copy it, rather than 'interpreting it' and expressing your own personal way of depicting a subject.

Ellsworth Kelly began his studies as an artist at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1941, and the same year enlisted in the U.S. Army. In 1944 he participated in the operations in Normandy and Brittany. During the time his division was stationed in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Kelly made his first trip to Paris. When he returned to the United States, he entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he began training as a realist painter. In 1948, Kelly took advantage of the G.I. Bill to return to Paris, where he stayed for six years. While the years between 1948 and 1954 were crucial ones for the Abstract Expressionists in New York, Kelly's work, away from this influence, developed a greater affinity with that of Matisse and Arp.

Kelly's arrangement of the complementary colors, which work to intensify one another at their intersections, is also an essential component of the work. The opposite colours of red and green both add to the boldness of the work and divide the overall rectangle into distinct units. The artist has also exploited the tendency of warm colors to appear to come forward on the picture plane, and cool ones to recede. While the bright, unmodulated colours are unequivocally two-dimensional, we can nevertheless read the red strip at the bottom as foreground and the cool green and blue as receding background. When viewed as foreground and background in this way, the sources in nature for Kelly's forms are suggested. Blue and green are the colors of water and earth—perhaps lake and field, as indicated not only by hue but by the swelling, fluid shape of the ellipse and the flatness of the green surrounding it. While the painting itself is continuous with the European biomorphic tradition, its scale is that of the huge close-ups of billboards and movie screens—a very American form. (image and text description taken from Metropolitan Museum)

Another of my favourite artists, John Singer Sergeant. Title: John Singer Sargent Oyster Gatherers of Cancale.

I've long been an admirer of Sergeant's paintings. When alive, he was regarded as the world's foremost artists, especially for portraiture and painted all the famous people in the early part of the 20th centaury. Was also a war artist in the First World War. Went out of fashion for around 40 years, now he's been rediscovered. Also an accomplished watercolour artist.