#195 - Why You Should Also Write

A weekly writing habit that is beneficial to visual artists.

A good habit is to sit once a week, maybe during the weekend, and to reflect on your plans for last week, what you did, how it went, and how to process that and come up with plans for the coming week, using what you learned. What worked, and what didn’t? What do you want to keep doing? What needs to change?

#194 - Why You Should Consider Slowing Down

Slow down. Look slowly. Draw. And then draw it again. A dozen times. For a few hours.

#193 - I Maketh Technology For Thee, Not For Me

On Artificial Intelligence and other tech you should stay away from.

I have resisted writing about Artificial Intelligence (AI). I had written several articles for this newsletter, but I decided against publishing them because, for one, the articles tend to amount to predicting the future, and no one can predict the future. Also, I risked cluing in the tech bros on what they were doing wrong.

#192 - Develop Better As An Artist By Working In Private And Not Showing Everything Online

The online world tempts us to show everything we make, and getting more views is the reward for publishing in volume. But for the development of artists, it is healthier to do a lot in private.

#191 - What If You Discover You Have Been Doing Something Wrong For A Long Time - Do You Really Have To Re-Learn To Draw?

He was the greatest golf player of all time, and yet he found himself having to re-learn golf.

#190 - Learning To Draw, Kids Have An Unfair Advantage

They might copy a Spiderman drawing from a comic, or they may have drawn comic pages themselves. And it probably wasn’t good yet. But they didn’t see that, didn’t notice it, and thoroughly enjoyed the process.

#189 - Being Shunned From An Industry Can Be A Blessing In Disguise

Try to break into industries you want to work in. But if you find reasons you can not break in and are adequately trained, you might get lucky and stumble into a lucrative new field no one else has found yet.

#188 - What Artists Can Learn From Dating Apps

When it comes to beauty! Not dating!

And as soon as you deviate from realism, it becomes a matter of taste. And some people will not like it as much, and some will utterly adore and be in love with it.

#187 - Never Worry About People Coming Up With The Same Idea

Or stealing your idea, for that matter.

They all started from the same prompt and ended up somewhere radically different.

#186 - The Counter-Intuitive Way To Figure Out Which Creative Direction You Should Take

Finding your artistic strengths this way.

But it might be a good idea to turn that around: given a specific activity, do I have natural advantages?

#185 - The Thing That Makes You Different Can Make You Valuable

One thing large corporations get wrong.

Don’t be replaceable. Try to create your unique way of doing things. If there is demand for it, you are not easy to replace.

#184 - When It Comes To Making Art, Which Is More Important, Craft, Or Self-Expression?

The answer is yes.

Self-expression without craft leads to works that are not easy to understand.

#183 - Why Comparing Yourself To Other Artists Is HarmFul For Artists, But Being Inspired By Great Art Is Not

Your work will fall short. You see all the mistakes in your work and how amazing their work is. It can be demoralizing.

#182 - You Can Design And Configure Your Workspace So That You Can Not Help But Be Productive

When I was at university, you’d have these trimesters where you’d have an exam period at the end.

#181 - The One Thing You Need To Know About Zettelkasten

Combining ideas can give surprising, highly enlightening new insights. And that is what you need to take away from the Zettelkasten methods: don’t try to come up with as many ideas as possible, but rather with as many combinations between ideas as possible.

#180 - Hunting Versus Gathering In The Digital World

While you cast your net into the ocean once, haul it in, and then forget about it, it pays to nurture the plants and other flora in your garden.

#179 - What If All Online Advice (Including Mine) Were Wrong?

Ten years from now, the social media landscape will have changed unrecognizably, and all the work you put into creating social media posts will be for naught. What lasts is the tangible body of work you made as you went offline. That’s when we’ll walk through museums and see all the work made by people who had the sense to stay offline and in their studios.

#178 - Find-Your-Why Is Nonsense

The driving force is curiosity. It gets you jumping out of bed, continuing where you left off yesterday. Curiosity chases away feelings of emptiness.

#177 - How To Make Yourself WANT To Draw

What if there was a way to get a dopamine hit from the anticipation of making art?

#176 - When Your Audience Gives You A Hint

To share, or not to share. Depends on how an audience receives it. But that should be independent of whether you make something. That should depend on whether it pleases you.

#175 - Five Content Types Artists Can Share (Part 3)

Do decide beforehand what you will and will not share.

#174 - Proko On Memory Drawing

When you practice drawing from memory, you get better at drawing things you didn’t even practice drawing this way. You also get better at drawing from observation because you get better at seeing when and why lines and shapes are off.

#173 - Five Content Types Artists Can Share (Part 2)

You, as, say, a portrait painter, may share your process and tips and tricks when painting portraits. This shows off your expertise in that area and might get people to participate in one of your portrait painting courses.

#172 - You Have To Build A Good Drawing Habit Up Slowly

You will stumble. Just pick yourself back up again.

Bad habits are impossible to stop slowly, and good habits are impossible to start quickly.

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