How To: An Artistic Journey

Not many things maintain my interest. There aren’t that many avenues that I enjoy, but I always love art. No matter what age I was growing up until now, I am always drawn back into creating. So here I am, keeping myself accountable through the power of you whom I don’t know yet, to make the claim that I shall continue on this path of doing what I love. 

For almost 8 months now, I have been slowly developing Sweet Vicious Designs. As a small owned art business, there are so many ideas and avenues I want to expand on with my art and my merchandise. I want to ensure that I have the necessary skills it takes to bring those ideas to life. And while I have a long way to go with many mistakes along the way, I am committing myself to enjoying the process. I am committing myself to growing as an artist.

No teaching is one size fits all, so I am going to do my best to find something that fits and develop my skills from one or many more experienced artists that I can find. I will give you some things that I will be implementing as I practice to improve my skills. The artistic journey is a long one, but I imagine that it will be most fulfilling.

Every artist I have researched and taken notes of, emphasized the importance of daily drawing. Or at least very consistent drawing. Drawing, like many other physical activities, has a level of muscle memory. The more you draw, the better you will get. You are training your hand to make straighter lines, better circles, value in form, and more. While this is true for the physical aspect, drawing practice also requires training the eye.

As I get more drawing practice in, I remember something from a class I took at university (I ended up dropping it later). The professor insisted on us spending 5 minutes just looking at the object and then only 1 minute on actually drawing it. The practice was to reinforce our ability to see the object and recreate it, not just look at it and copy it. I was an avid copier. Not a tracer. But I could recreate a design that I looked at, but of course it was never mine. And you could tell in the strokes of the pencil that I wasn’t really learning or growing as an artist. I was merely a mimic.

Doing my research, plenty of artists say the same thing. The most important art skill: Ability to Observe. Marc Burnet, a former Blizzard Senior artist and now art teacher, has a whole video on how important observing is for art development. Learn more from him down below:

He talks about how you can be doing this all the time, not just when you’re doing art. Looking at the world in this lens, thinking about the form, the way it moves and how it looks in perspective are all things I can be doing anywhere. When I’m bored at my day job or riding as a passenger in the car and of course when I’m looking at my reference photos when drawing. I plan to put this into practice over the next year and see just how much it makes a difference in my improvement. I can tell you already, with the intentional observation, I am already seeing my mistakes more and learning how to improve on them.

That brings me to my next mandated implementation on my plan to become a better artist. In my search, I found an artist that mentions a “scientific method” in improving one’s art skills. YanSculpts, an artist and content creator that does it all from sculpting videos to educational videos like this one:

While I do love art, sometimes I need a little bit more of an analytic take on things. I like his video because it’s measurable and digestible in a way that is less ambiguous than practice, practice, practice. He goes over his five steps of his scientific method and while I’m trying not to focus too much on getting better fast, I think what he talks about in the video are great tangible things that I can implement on my artistic journey.

I’m no stranger to recall and critique. You do this in sports when watching game play to help the team find any weak spots and discuss how to improve even minor changes. Applying this to art, when you take a step back from the work, you can spot small adjustments that could have been made. The next time you draw, you remember that adjustment and see how you can better it. Maybe it doesn’t follow anatomy quite right or maybe it doesn’t match the directional flow of gravity or movement properly. Putting in this revision process is key for almost any kind of skill you want to develop. So, combining revision with observing more, I can find the mistakes I make and have a better understanding each time I draw.

I think the most vital advice I am taking from other artists is to draw what interests me. Probably one of the seemingly most simple things to do, but it is so easy to get caught up in wanting to be better and doing what the greats do, that we lose the path of why we even do art. In that same art class that I was in for less than a week, I only drew fruit. The whole week. The assignment was to focus on organic forms which I understand but drawing fruit gets quite boring after the first couple of sheets of the same fruit. To really stay engaged, minimize burnout, and see the most desire in continuous growth, it’s important to draw what you like. It’s the only real way that you’ll stay interested. Feeling forced to do anything hardly ever lasts long.

I love to read. That is an unarguable fact. I can finish a novel within a day if it keeps me interested enough. Whenever class assigned a reading, however, suddenly I lost my ability to pay attention for more than five minutes. And the same can go for art. I love to draw people. I like drawing hair, designing clothes. While it might not help me draw cars, I am still learning fundamental techniques when it comes to understanding form, shading, perspective. When the time comes to draw a car, I might not be as good, but I’ll still have a grasp on technique in order to get there efficiently. 

Here I start my artistic journey. I have already begun to implement drawing into my daily routine in order to maximize my growth. I don’t expect it to be immediate, it can even talk a while, but I know I want to put in the effort I’ve been delaying all this time. Having a full time job aside from art means I need to be disciplined about how I make time for it. I have been recently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and it’s really putting into perspective the ways I can shape my life around to form better habits. Easy, smaller steps and changes are what make a big difference. I know for me, my environment and being around people influences my productivity greatly.

So right after work, I head to my local library to get an extra hour or so of peace and quiet. There, I focus on developing better technique and getting in much needed undistracted practice. It’s a small change. A less than five minute car ride difference, I have begun to get more consistent drawing practice than I probably ever have.

As I continue to artistic journey, I hope we can get to know each other through our shared love for creating. I will be documenting my progress here, providing the transparency of my growth on this artistic journey. I know that I have a lot to learn and a lot of intentional practice to make up for, but I am so delighted that I am pursuing something that I truly love. While it is still very nerve wracking, I find myself compelled to continue.  I will cheer you on to go after what you love so we can be on this artistic journey together. May we reap the rewards that we earn for ourselves for going after what we want despite our fears.