Mastery or familiarity
10mo
@kartoffelpuffer
I have a history of starting things and not finishing them. Which includes actively practicing art with the intent to improve. Multiple times I’ve tried to study consistently with a focus on a certain topic, such as gesture, faces, and perspective. It would go well for a while but then I would stop. Stop practicing, stop doing exercises, stop trying to improve on those things. I think the main reasons I stop every time are lack of structure and not knowing when to move on. Also nerve issues in my hands and arms, but that’s a whole other problem with other methods of managing.
I do have the resources now to follow a structured course, but none of them are live. The problem with this is that I have, and will, get stuck on certain thing. Be it a specific exercise or an entire topic. I can’t tell when I should move on when I'm just by myself with a book or videos.
So my question is, should I try to master every exercise before I move on to the next (which is what I felt compelled to do before) or should I just become familiar with it, enough to where I know how to do it and what the concept behind it is, and over time improve upon it while practicing other things alongside and potentially integrating it into other drawings?
I know I very much need to pop my art bubble. I should ask for feedback more often if I’m going to try to actively study again.
10mo
Apologies for the delayed response. It was difficult to organize my thoughts about all this.
I have started again, using the book “How to Draw” by Scott Robertson as my primary resource. I created a daily goal for practice that I should be able to maintain even when school starts again. So far it’s been pretty good, practicing nearly every day and going above the daily goal since I have a lot of free time right now. I’ve also done exercises I had avoided in the first try of this book, thinking I didn’t need to practice it or not taking the time to figure it out when little instruction was given. These early exercises are ones that I’m familiar with, but the new ones are coming up soon. I know it’s going to get more difficult and I am prepared for that.
Even if my lines aren’t perfectly straight, I move on when I feel I understand the exercise. I’ll come back to practice it more, and it may even be part of the newer exercise, but I won’t let perfectionism prevent me from progress.
I’ve kept everyone’s advice in mind. Thank you all. I am determined to not give up this time!!!!!!
Peter Anton
9mo
Well also, I'd say to reframe your thinking. You're phrasing it as if you failed and are having to restart from scratch. But you haven't quit and resstarted, you're just trying a different approach. If you make it this big thing of "everytime I don't finish something 100% it means I'm giving up" you set yourself up for failure. I'd suggest visualizing yourself climbing a mountain. You climbed the lower path, now you are climbing with Scott Robertson, and then maybe you climb the next part with Andrew Loomis. Maybe you slip and fall, but you're not falling all the way to the bottom of the mountain. Don't catastrophize every slip up, just recover and keep climbing:)
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10mo
I think you should move on from an exercise when you feel like you've learned most of what there is to learn. If there is still a lot of meat left on that chicken bone, keep picking at it. It's never going to be perfect, but you want to get the point of the exercise. With gestures, it's flow and rhythm and movement. Once you feel like you have a good feel for that, move onto structure. Stick with structure for a while, making sure to do a few gestures to keep your skills sharp so you don't lose them.
I would advise listening to a podcast episode called Deep Questions with Cal Newport, Ep. 254: The Laws of Less. Skip to minute 18 where he talks about disipline. You don't have to listen to the whole thing, just that part.
10mo
The reason you start and then stop has nothing to do with structure or being in a live class or using books or videos.
Research, shows that the reason this happens is because what you are doing gets harder and the brain avoids things that are hard and cause frustration.
To keep moving forward you have to lean into that frustration and keep fighting. You will then overcome your current plateau and you will move forward- until you reach another plateau, and it starts all over again- and again you will want to quit.
The more you do this, the more confidence you will gain, and the less you will want to quit.
This is what separates those who talk about doing it, and those who actually do it.
10mo
@kartoffelpuffer i've struggled with this to. Finding structure and not knowing what to practice. What i do is i don't strive for mastery but for progress/ improvement. For example i can practice as a total beginner line quality, do the exercises. Did i improve after a x-given time? I can move on to another topic. Of course i can always come back to a specific topic after a while and study it again. But you wouldn't spend a whole year training yourself drawing perfect circles, then you are stuck for too long on one topic. For structure i'm following this reddit curriculum: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnart/comments/dapk62/from_the_guy_who_made_the_most_comprehensive_list/
it consists of unit of 4 weeks around some topic. For me personally, a unit is often stuffed with to much resources to train them all in 4 weeks. But that is ok for me. I just move on and come back later to the things i haven't had time for.
