Well the other day I was cruising through an elearning class about productive thinking, and the term “reproductive thinking” came up. I must admit that this is the first time I heard the phrase before, so for all those in a similar situation, I will share with you the meaning.

Reproductive thinking is the action of following a pattern when it comes to solving problems or thinking of solutions. The example they gave in the lesson was about an insect called the processionary caterpillar.

Processionaries got their name because of their distinctive behavior. When they leave their nests to forage for food, they travel in a line, like elephants in a circus, head to tail, head to tail.
The lead caterpillar spins a fine trail of silk as it crawls along. The next caterpillar in line walks along the silk trail and adds its own. Processionaries can form trains hundreds of creatures long as they march through the forest.
If you remove the lead caterpillar, the second in line takes its place. If you remove the new lead, the next will take its place. The trailing caterpillars don't seem to care about the change in leadership.

This got me thinking about how in Art we tend to see patterns or reproductive thinking. When somebody we like has a style we tend to mimic it as if he or she is the lead caterpillar spinning silk. Most of us have no thought about looking to develop our own style, but to simply mimic that which we like. This is a safe road to take, but something has to be said about those that pave the paths instead of follow the paths.

I for one know I am guilty of following the “trend”. When I first started it was grunge and everything I found or looked for was related to this particular style. I looked at tutorials trying to mimic the exact outcome they produced. I judged others art work based off my own liking within that style, but did I really do anything more than just follow the path of others?

No I didn’t until I started to think and design things based off my feelings instead of the feelings of others. Obviously the critics had their fair share of things to say because it was different from what they were accustomed to seeing, but honestly can you please everybody??? I hope that we all as artists can see the errors in our ways and learn to break away from the mold. If everybody followed that which was laid in front of them we wouldn’t have a lot of the standards we have today. I want to challenge all of you out there that read this article to look at art in a different way. Think what can I learn from this and apply into my own style because art is ultimately in the eye of the beholder and we can all be visionaries in this field.