How To Figure Out What To Draw Or Paint
If you don’t know what to draw, develop other activities, and see if you can draw for that. Working out? You could develop illustrations for that. Setting up a shop? You could do drawings on the shop window. Creating a website? Collecting favorite recipes? Keeping a diary? See if you can combine these with drawing!
Ponderings On Being A PRO Or Amateur, And An Attractive Alternative
Long ago, an acquaintance applied for a job in oceanic research that involved scuba diving. What I found particularly interesting about that back then was that she had to
pay to do that job! She wasn’t paid, she wasn’t even doing it for free. No, she had to pay to be allowed to do the job. Imagine people lining up for the cool job of scuba diving for scientific research.
Is This What The Human Side Of The Web Will Be In The Near future?
What Advice Would YOU Give YOURSELF?
Is it what they will tell me? I don’t know for sure, but the advice I imagine they give me almost always works!
Purple Swans
With drawing, it doesn't work that way! What is “true”? What is “a fact” when drawing? I can draw a hyper-realistic portrait, which is one representation of a person. I can also draw their caricature, one that deviates significantly from their true appearance, but that instead conveys their character, their personality. Which one of these two is more “truthful”?
A New Way To Do Value Studies!
I shared the new surround-view images of the statues I posted about last week and was thinking about the mistake I made of photographing at a too-fast shutter speed, resulting in unnecessarily noisy images, and fell into the rabbit hole of looking for solutions.
New Statues On The Website
I have been doing my memory-drawing exercises with a twist: I try to draw things rotated from imagination. This also forces me to understand the underlying simplified 3D forms and to come up with the details you only see from other angles.
The Art Of Noticing (Five Things)
And how it will make you and others better artists.What to do instead of doom-scrolling on your phone? Well, put your phone away, lock in to something near you, and start studying it, noticing five things about it. It will make you a better artist!
An Intervention!!!
And I am still in denial.A few extremely kind souls on the Discord banded together and took a lot of time to convince me to slow down, take a step back, stop coding on the website, and think of the bigger picture for the website.
Is There Such A Thing As Being Original?
Something extraordinary is happening lately: after one of my newsletters goes out, a larger YouTube account happens to release a video on the same topic!
Two Opposing Views On Art Block
One of my mother’s best friends, Jill, an artist, just started a podcast, and the first episode is fantastic! It is delightful to listen to while drawing.
Many Cool Updates To The Website
I haven’t been reporting on all the cool new features added to the website recently. That is because I was too busy creating these cool things! Someone is helping me go over the website, actually using it, and reporting on where it can be improved, which has sped up the process considerably.
The 20/80 Rule For Drawing Practice
Many people on our Discord want to “practice the fundamentals first” before they are “ready” to do the thing they want to do. Draw boxes, learn perspective, anatomy, and so on, before starting to make comics.
On The Nature Of Habits
It would be helpful to read within the context of Practice Drawing This, because one common struggle is that we find it hard to find time to draw, but have no problem procrastinating by wasting hours on social media.
The Easy Way To Become The Best In The World At Something
You will only find out whether it is also a good idea after you try.
Doing The Drawing Exercises With Digital Tools
You can draw and specify colors and pen widths. White acts as an eraser because the drawing is blended with the reference image through a multiply blend mode.
Lessons From Michelangelo
There was a great Michelangelo exhibition at the Teylers Museum near me recently, and, of course, I had to go, with a camera to capture images for the Morning Sketches APP section.
When I'm Happy, I Play Better
What we artists can learn from a soccer player like Ronaldinho It sounds obvious that you should be disciplined to become good, but there is evidence that another route might be better, or at least as good: instead of practicing hard, “party hard”, have fun.
Dead Ends In Art Are Necessary In The Creative Process, Otherwise You Are Not Doing Anything New
I discovered the drawing-from-memory exercise, and it changed how I practice drawing.
Try To Get Into The Head Of Your Favorite Artists
Don’t copy their styles; try to get into their heads! Besides that side note, try to get into the head of your favorite artists. Try to understand what must be going on in their mind as they draw. Then copy
that.
ALWAYS Work From Reference! Observation, Or Memory
He also mentioned somewhere that he’d memorize a stack of photos and draw them from memory.
What Would THEY Say?
Imagining teachers in your head.Play this little game while you look critically at your work: what would this teacher say? What would that artist advise?
The Media You Consume Has A Huge Impact On The Images You Create
When you are an artist, input informs output. Curate the media you consume.
Learning To Draw Is Also About Unlearning Bad Habits
When we set out to learn to draw realistically, we need to “unlearn” that so that we can see the abstract shapes in front of us and copy them to our paper, so the same scene magically re-appears.
