Saturday 30 May 2015
Tuesday 26 May 2015
Reflecting and progressing
You can do something a thousand times and never get better at it if you don't understand how to get better.
Whenever I have 'improved' upon something it has been by listening to my feelings / intuitions and acting upon them. Relax and 'feel' whatever it is you are doing. This has worked for me in anything, getting better at sports, learning to play instruments, writing music, learning to socialise.
I've just spent about twenty minutes going over this blog looking at all the old stuff I've done. In a way it as nice. I had forgotten about most of the things I have done and it was a pleasant reminder of the brief journey I have been on thus far. All the pain / frustration / impatience is still a memory in the pictures I have placed, and there is not so much memory for the things I have learned or improved upon.
So I realise in part I am focusing on the wrong things emotionally. I'm literally holding onto all the negative things - so much that I don't have any mental space left to remember what is I have learned or how I have improved. I know that since I started I have improved - I just don't know how.
But in my head I have devised a plan anyway. My modus operandi for art here on out is thus:
1. Spend more time on things.
2. Slow down painting, take your time and enjoy it.
3. Compare your efforts to the subject. What worked? What didn't?
4. Compare your efforts to people you admire. How did they do it? How would they do it?
I think number four will be quite a controversial item for some - the big thing in self-improvement is to be beat yourself, not the other guy. It doesn't matter where other people are at - just that you are getting better. This is obviously brilliant advice, you can't compete with people that have been doing something much longer than you have, you can only compete with what you did yesterday.
The point of number four is to study approach however. And I'd like to demonstrate how below:
There is a great subreddit where people post photographs of themselves called Reddit Gets Drawn. Artists then draw / paint / sculpt / whatever these photographs in their own interpretation, ranging in talent from beginners to seasoned pros.
I dabble every now and then and here is a recent piece.
Whenever I have 'improved' upon something it has been by listening to my feelings / intuitions and acting upon them. Relax and 'feel' whatever it is you are doing. This has worked for me in anything, getting better at sports, learning to play instruments, writing music, learning to socialise.
I've just spent about twenty minutes going over this blog looking at all the old stuff I've done. In a way it as nice. I had forgotten about most of the things I have done and it was a pleasant reminder of the brief journey I have been on thus far. All the pain / frustration / impatience is still a memory in the pictures I have placed, and there is not so much memory for the things I have learned or improved upon.
So I realise in part I am focusing on the wrong things emotionally. I'm literally holding onto all the negative things - so much that I don't have any mental space left to remember what is I have learned or how I have improved. I know that since I started I have improved - I just don't know how.
But in my head I have devised a plan anyway. My modus operandi for art here on out is thus:
1. Spend more time on things.
2. Slow down painting, take your time and enjoy it.
3. Compare your efforts to the subject. What worked? What didn't?
4. Compare your efforts to people you admire. How did they do it? How would they do it?
I think number four will be quite a controversial item for some - the big thing in self-improvement is to be beat yourself, not the other guy. It doesn't matter where other people are at - just that you are getting better. This is obviously brilliant advice, you can't compete with people that have been doing something much longer than you have, you can only compete with what you did yesterday.
The point of number four is to study approach however. And I'd like to demonstrate how below:
There is a great subreddit where people post photographs of themselves called Reddit Gets Drawn. Artists then draw / paint / sculpt / whatever these photographs in their own interpretation, ranging in talent from beginners to seasoned pros.
I dabble every now and then and here is a recent piece.
Photo by mmmmpork
My quick interpretation
Art by user 'Sweetstreetmeat'.
The latter image is my favourite interpretation by another artist in RedditGetsDrawn, user 'Sweetstreetmeat'. As you can see their image is just phenomenal. It's what I thought my image looked like when I closed photoshop (really) - after going back and comparing the two I can't believe I left it where I did.
What don't I like about my interpretation? The colours feels cold, flat and there is no real cohesion. Rendering is minimal, and it is more paint by colours then paint by painting. On the other hand Sweetstreetmeat has terrific colour, volume and value.
Biggest problems, rushed and didn't take my time. As a consequence the image is sloppy and doesn't hold up against something like 'Sweetstreetmeat''s image. I'm not going to study this image or mine in any further practical sense - but I'm going to keep these things in mind for my next venture.
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