Listen & Draw - Erasing Your Art To Improve it?
In this podcast, I will talk about the benefits of destroying your art, but not in this way. These teachers asked students to destroy art they had worked on so hard and for so long. There was a hard lesson there: are you willing to start from scratch to make something even better if the result isn’t perfect?
Listen & Draw - Two Ways Your Survival Instincts Influence Your Art
I created this YouTube video a while back, but I never showed it in my newsletter. I recently updated the thumbnail and thought that might be a good moment to share it here. It is designed to be listened to while drawing.
Listen & Draw - How To Improve Your Art Habit
The routine is simply to reserve time for it, perhaps during the weekend, to write down what you had planned to do the past week, what you did do, how things went, what you are happy about and what you are not happy about. Then, mull over things you want to change, and write down what you want to try to do the next week. And next week, on Saturday for example, just repeat it.
Line Art Generator
I am currently drawing in my sketchbook more and wanted to see if I could create a more efficient way to just post sketchbook pages. An important step was always the scanning and then turning it into crisp black and white line art.
Listen and Draw: 7 Ways You Can Make Time To Draw
With our busy lives it is hard to find time to draw. This podcast provides seven tips that can help you find time in your busy day to draw.
Listen and Draw: Drawing With Your Brain
A large part of drawing is about training your brain. This podcast episode dives deeper into what you need to train your brain to become better at drawing.
Some New Things On The Website
I am not good at communicating improvements to the website. I regularly add new things and then forget to mention them. So here are a few recent additions.
Use Your Old Sketchbooks To Take A Trip Down Memory Lane - And Discover How You Are Kinder To Yourself After That
I draw better today but enjoy looking at my first feeble steps on this path. Looking at your older work allows you to be kinder to yourself. Sure, there are mistakes in your work, but look how far you have come!
What Are The Pros And Cons For Showing Your Artistic Work Early?
You get rewarded with a dopamine hit immediately. You are less likely to continue because you already got that rewarding dopamine hit you usually only get after you finish things.
The Met Open Access Has Amazing Images!
You can find a small selection of them on the website nowSo that's the problem with social media: occasionally, very occasionally, there is a true gem hidden in all that content, and that gem makes it all worth your while again. Do away with social media, and unfortunately, lose exposure to these as well.
A Decluttered Workspace Makes You Far More Productive As An Artist
Consider it a part of your drawing routine; do it when you need a break, and your workspace has become too cluttered.
The Curious Case Of The Creative Challenge
People were discussing challenges on the Discord server the other day, and that got me thinking about challenges. Why do artists crave them?
Join Our FREE Lynda Barry Making Comics Read-Along Workgroup!
Join our free workgroup!Let’s learn to enjoy drawing like a child again! We’ve started a Discord group to read through and tackle the exercises in Lynda Barry’s fantastic book, Making Comics, and we’d love for you to join us.
If You Want To Do Something, Just Start, And Figure Out Along The Way How To Do It
If you plan to go on some journey, start. Create, look back at it later, and see how it went and how you feel about it. Figure out what you want to change. You find out what works for you by doing.
An Improved Art Critique Server
The philosophy behind this server is that if students can become each other’s critique-givers, it could theoretically handle any number of students because the number of critique-givers would grow equally fast.
The Pleasure Of Finding Out How To Draw Things Is All It Has To Be
Many artists started like that at a young age. “Woah, Spiderman looks cool! I wonder if I can draw that!” And then being able to draw it from memory later is satisfying.
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!
