#186 - The Counter-Intuitive Way To Figure Out Which Creative Direction You Should Take
Finding your artistic strengths this way.
Practice Drawing This Draw-along.
hen you decide what you want to do, you can start by listing what you are good at to figure out what you should start doing. But it might be a good idea to turn that around: given a specific activity, do I have natural advantages?
It is helpful to do a thought experiment and imagine doing something. Do you have special abilities or access to resources that make it particularly easy for you to pursue that direction?
You will discover personal advantages you would not list as strengths initially: living in a certain location, being able to speak certain languages, your home being suitable for certain things, you owning certain books, and knowing certain people. These are not art-skill-related but can mean you have natural advantages over other people when doing certain things.
For me, for example, I contemplated making and publishing comics once, but my living situation was not quite suited to storing large quantities of comics. I didn’t have a natural advantage there.
But I can program and have a mathematical background, so I can easily make art education material with these parametrized randomizable 3D models . Others would have to hire programmers and mathematicians.
I am at a natural disadvantage when it comes to creating American comics because I don’t have access to that market.
I have access to Dutch publishing outlets for cartoons and comics, which gives me an advantage over Americans in that market.
When it comes to writing stories set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, I have a natural advantage over anyone who isn’t a native Dutch speaker because I can read original old Dutch texts and authentic witness reports from the time firsthand. Non-Dutch people can only read these if they have been translated into English, and I have seen some poor translations. I also live nearby, so I can easily walk around the area where it all happened and examine the building still standing.
You start with the hypothetical activity and then work back, determining whether you have skills or resources that would make you ideally suited to doing that activity in a certain way.
It’s different from the advice others give: start with what you are good at and figure out what you can do with that. I would never have come up with the idea of parametrized randomizable 3D models for artists by starting with the idea that I am good at programming.
Work the other way around. Start with an activity, and work back, seeing if there are skills or resources you have that would make it a natural fit for you. You’ll have an advantage over others who don’t have access to these.
You realize you have natural advantages or disadvantages when you start doing things.
This Week
My current goal is to strengthen my ability to break down things into simplified forms. As I wrote elsewhere, I work in campaigns, which have beginnings where I set goals, middles where I work on them, and ends where I evaluate. Rotating from imagination is currently my weakest skill. To that end, I created new 3D forms, as mentioned last week.
As I wrote elsewhere, it is better to stay in the “student” mindset than in the “teacher” mindset because you stop learning when you get into the teacher mindset. There’s no point in acting like a teacher for me! Practice Drawing This is free. I don’t make money on it. To force myself into teacher mode would mean I would stop learning, which would not make sense.
I also re-joined Artwod for that purpose.
Artwod
Artwod is an art education website that focuses on a specific way to construct images: breaking subjects down into simplified forms and manipulating and rotating the forms. The website offers Roadmaps, Workouts, and Puzzles. These consist of small, bite-sized exercises that allow you to practice one small aspect.
The Roadmaps consist of videos, followed by puzzles. There is also a daily puzzle. Workouts are more elaborate, and one is posted every week. Depending on your subscription, you can also get feedback on your work. The Discord community is active and very friendly. Artwod uses gamification to make the exercises addictive and fun.
Artwod is not paying me to say this: Artwod is a great art education resource. I can highly recommend it.
Artwod ’s philosophy is compatible with that of Practice Drawing This, and the sites complement each other by providing different learning tools for the same thing.
Artwod has Roadmaps, Workouts, and Puzzles, which I can not hope to offer. So much work must have gone into making these! I would not have the time for it. (I would not have a natural advantage. Artwod has the resources for that.)
The bite-sized puzzles make the learning curve much less steep.
Practice Drawing This offers parametrized randomizable primitives, manipulated forms, and complex forms. In addition to other resources, it also offers a flashcard scheduler system.
Both Artwod and Practice Drawing This focus on it being fun to practice drawing.
The two sites are compatible and complement each other well. I can highly recommend Artwod.
New 3D Models
I created a few new 3D models inspired by the Artwod exercises. Click on the images to open the models.
Roller
A simplified 3D model of a roller used in fitness spaces:
Dumbbell
A simplified 3D model of a dumbbell used in fitness spaces:
Single-Rounded Box
A 3D model of a single-rounded box:
Double-Rounded Box
A 3D model of a double-rounded box:
Again, these are parametrized randomizable models. Click on the dice icon to change the proportions of the models’ parts.