How to Improve?

A few notes to myself on improvement:

To improve at drawing you have to change the way you think and act. That in turn changes the way you perceive--which in turn changes the way you think and act. A cycle of improvement begins.

Too often you impatiently want to make huge leaps. As in many things, a wiser course is to make small incremental improvements, rather than try for instant revolutionary change.

Examples of changes you can make:

• If you never redraw anything, learn to redraw, flip the drawing, improve it. Trace it on the back, then turn the paper over and erase the original drawing on the front and redraw the drawing again. Or trace it on successive pieces of paper if you like. Or draw with three different colors of pencil, trying to improve the drawing each time, having a clear reason for why you’re making a change.

• If you always draw and think in terms of lines, learn to draw and think in terms of forms and masses. The same for shapes. You need to think/draw with all three together (lines, shapes, forms). You can see this in the great artists. There are exceptions of course, such as drawing intentionally in a “flat” style, or a style with no lines, etc etc.

• If you always draw "out of your head", learn to use photos in your work--wisely. Learn to research your subject, to get appropriate reference. The internet makes it very easy.

• If you always draw from photos, throw them away and learn to draw and invent "out of your head". Be free and imaginative---for the moment stop worrying about "accuracy and correctness".

• If you don't know perspective, study it. If you think you know it, learn it better.

• If you usually draw fast, try slowing down, and vice-versa.

• If you always draw “tightly”, then try drawing in a looser fashion, and vice versa.

• If you always draw large, then try drawing tiny, it can be very revealing. Again, the reverse also applies: if your habit is to draw tiny cramped little things, try drawing large.

• Similar to the above, if you habitually draw with tiny thin spider-lines, try drawing with only thick bold lines, and fewer of them too. Or the reverse. Surprise yourself!

• If you always draw only in short bursts—for a few minutes---try pushing yourself far longer. Draw for an extended period of time: push past your normal “fatigue point”. You may have a breakthrough---a magical “second wind”, just like a marathon runner.

• If you never sketch, learn to sketch, keep a sketchbook. Conversely, if you always sketch and never sit down to finish anything properly, force yourself to focus on one image and finish it as well as possible, even if you aren’t happy with it.

There are many, many more such changes you can devise for yourself. Only you can figure out which ones apply to your particular set of habits.

The main thing is this:

FIGURE OUT HOW TO FORCE YOURSELF INTO LEARNING AND IMPROVING. You have to do it yourself. No class, no book, no teacher, can do it for you---they can only point the way.

It’s strange to realize that you have to study yourself as part of your learning--study your own ways of doing things, your own good and bad habits, and then trick or force yourself into changing the problem ones into something better. Study what you do each day; is it enough? Keep and date your sketches over the course of years…then look back through them one rainy day. You will instantly see where you stand. If you look back through your old drawings and can see exactly what is wrong in them, and what you would change to fix them, then you know you have improved. On the other hand, if you look through them and find them all to be just wonderful, it’s possible you have stalled.

Lastly---which artists do you study? How do you study them? Who else could you look at? Break the pattern. What you spend the most time looking at? That is what you tend to end up drawing like. It is useful to study and compare as many different styles as possible.

If you do some of these exercises sincerely, they may be painful over the short term, but in the long term they can be joyful, because there is no joy like improving.