why are you calling me out so early

I don't really post threads, but honestly if what I wrote keeps at least ONE person from feeling so disillusioned and discouraged from learning art as that person. I'll be happy.

And I’m not going to pretend it is easy. Being consistent is the hardest part, and god knows that I have not been consistent for most of my life. Learning is a skill that takes practice in of itself, and I hope my wall of text can motivate someone to keep going.

But even within those studies, I gave myself mini goals. Participating in those study sessions is how I taught myself and refined my pixel art process. 4 hours a week, that’s all I needed, as long as it was consistent. Small things add up over time. The important part is to keep at it.

Self regulating is hard, then that’s when courses and the like are handy. Even something as simple as @paulscottcanavan.com (sorry for the name drop, lol) Study Buddy stream was enough to CONSIDERABLY improve my painting skills. It gave me a consistent schedule, clear parameters and a dopamine hit

Whatever I struggled with during “play”, I knew I could address during “learning”. As long as I trusted the process and followed my protocol. It’s fine to skip or cut time spent short. You need to respect your own capacity and energy. Sometimes you have to deload your weights to hit that squat PR.

And in between all of that, you have “play” sessions. In martial arts, this is what sparring in class is. You get to play around, try things, make mistakes, have fun with what you’ve been practising in your learning sessions. So go and draw that OC brain rot, who cares if the anatomy is wrong.

The idea here is to have dedicated time to your skill development. Much like strength training, you NEED rest in between learning sessions for your body to adapt. Otherwise you will burn out and injure yourself. You can schedule multiple sessions of different things, as long as you respect your rest

Two hour self portraits every other day, with at least one study (master study or photo) per week. Some people might notice that it follows the typical 3 days a week strength training model, and that’s because it does. If it works for that, why wouldn’t it work for painting?

Goals are also key. A big goal and smaller goals leading up to the bigger goal. For example, I only really started to make gains in painting when I decided I wanted to learn to do portraits. Big goal: learn how to paint, small goal: paint portraits. So I created a “training” protocol for myself.

Like everyone has been saying. Practice is key. But even more so, structured practice and even more important is CONSISTENT structured practice. Much like an athlete training for a sport, an art student thrives off consistent structured practice. Otherwise you’re making things harder for yourself.

What I’m about to say works FOR ME and is based on my own insights from teaching myself and others. It is not meant to be a definitive approach to learning art. It is heavily influenced by my 30 years of practising martial arts along with teaching it for half of that time. Take what you need from it

I consider myself a sorta good draftsman and an ok painter. But I consider myself a very good learner. If anything, I would say it is the one superpower I have. Anyone who’s known me or followed me for long enough knows how varied my work is and how I can pick up almost any style given the time.

A little background; besides the time I spent in university, I consider myself a self-taught artist. I taught myself how to draw as a kid and I taught myself how to paint after getting my BFA in animation. I briefly studied art education and I have 15+ years of teaching/coaching martial arts.