#165 - When Are You As An Artist Ever Ready For Art Instruction? And When Are You Not?
Does art instruction even matter?
YouTube Video - Young Woman Standing With A Rucksack
I wanted to try a drawing demo based on an Inktober prompt, since it is around the corner. I chose the one for October 1st 2024, Backpack, as I have pictures I took of people wearing backpacks. If you have ten minutes to draw along with this video, that's your first day of Inktober!
— Tao Te Ching
arren Buffett is the most successful investor who has ever lived by far. He’s been an investor for eighty years: he bought and sold companies as a child. I watched some videos where he tries to explain investing. What is interesting about that is that he is even willing to do that: isn’t he training his competition? No matter how much he tries to explain, no one manages to be like him. He can not explain how to others.
I sometimes have that feeling with the fantastic artist Kim Jung-Gi, too. His work is astonishing, and he made lots of YouTube videos where he tried to explain how he did that. For example, he kept showing the wide variety of pens he used, trying to communicate that the pen didn’t matter. Students kept asking what pen he used anyway. He tried to explain about memorizing what he saw during the day, but people latched on to his drawings in boxes. He was trying to communicate that he saw these boxes in his mind. He didn’t draw them. Drawing from memory helps you better visualize these boxes, too.
When you teach, you will discover that when a student struggles with something for a week, they understand the problem so well that a half-word is often enough for them to understand the solution.
It is important to struggle through a problem first because only then are you ready for the solution.
The way to work with all that knowledge available online nowadays is to do the work, draw a lot, look at it critically, figure out where you need to improve and seek out the artists you think do it well. Find out about their process, the tools they used, and the size of their work. Start copying their work for practice; chances are you figure out how they did it. You’re ready for the solution because you understand the problem. These artists become your teachers; it doesn’t have to cost you more than the cost of some art supplies, and a lot of time.
This applies to all skills, not just art creation. Get this tool into your tool chest, and you can learn any skill.